FLASH
Shkruar nga Enver Robelli
After refusing to salute the ruler's hat, Wilhelm Tell was arrested and the next day was forced to shoot an apple with an arrow at his son's head.
1.
Power is a big and responsible job. No matter where you exercise it: in the province, in the town or at the court. Whoever has power must (is called upon) to exercise it. To make decisions. For this, he wins a mandate from the people. Sometimes with a free vote, sometimes with a very cheap vote (this very cheap vote is usually bought). There are those who have power and do not know what to do with it. There are those who have power and know very well what to do with it: they abuse it! (Those who expect that a bunch of robbers, bullfighters, matadors and Balkan bullfighters will appear here now, can stop reading).
2.
Friedrich Schiller, a German writer, based his play Wilhelm Tell on several Scandinavian legends and a Swiss legend. This play is dedicated to the Swiss national hero, Wilhelm Tell. (A digression: in the Albanian national hero, apart from Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, the sword, the helmet and the horse are important. At least).
In the Swiss hero, besides the main hero (Tell!), a hat plays an important role. The hat belongs to the ruler, who is called Hermann Gessler. Gessler was in the service of the Habsburgs, a Swiss family, which after quarreling with Helvetic uncles and cousins, fled to Austria and from there built a large empire. Next to chocolate, the Habsburgs are Switzerland's most important export to the world.
One day Gessler stopped in the village of Altdorf in central Switzerland, planted a fence post and placed his hat on top. His request was clear: whoever passes by must salute the hat. Because the hat symbolizes power. Power is Gessler – even when he is not near the hat.
3.
Another day, the Swiss rebel Wilhelm Tell passed through the Altdorf square, but he did not greet the chapel at all, did not say "Grüezi" to it (those who understand the dialect of German Switzerland also understand this sentence; for those who do not understand: this is the Swiss version of the Kosovar word "tung", which has now also been included in the new Dictionary of the Albanian Language).
After refusing to salute the ruler's hat, Wilhelm Tell was arrested and the next day was forced to shoot an apple at his son's head with an arrow. Tell had also taken a second arrow with him, which he kept hidden under his clothes. When Gessler asked him why he had done this, Tell said: the second arrow was intended to kill the Habsburg governor, Gessler himself, in case the apple shot failed.
Like any brutal ruler, Gessler took revenge. He ordered Tell's arrest and demanded that he be sent by boat to the village of Küssnacht to be imprisoned for life. During the voyage, the boat was hit by a violent storm. The boatmen did not know where to turn, did not know the terrain, did not know how to face the waves. They untied Tell's hands and told him to take the helm of the boat. When he reached the shore, he jumped onto a rock and with all his strength pushed the boat back into the waves of the lake.
4.
For those who think this is the end of the story: a little more patience. After jumping from the boat, Wilhelm Tell ambushed the infamous Gessler in an alley in the village of Küssnacht. There he shot the tyrant with an arrow right in the heart.
The moral of this story: misusing power – even with a hat – can have consequences. Fatal!
5.
Did Wilhelm Tell exist? There is no evidence for this. But the Swiss have no problem with this. What is important is that the legend of Tell carries the message of rebellion against tyranny.
In Altdorf, where the (perhaps fictional) Tell did not salute the ruler's hat, today stands a monument to the national hero of Switzerland. It was unveiled in 1895.
“Altdorf is a beautiful town, whose main streets and alleys give a medieval impression, although the houses – as is recently noted on every old building – all burned down in 1799. (It is said that the fireman, Albani, started the fire himself after a windstorm blew the embers out of his pipe),” wrote Swiss writer Urs Widmer a few years ago in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper.
A fantastical polish: the embers that come out of the fire extinguisher's pipe and cause a fire. Was it like that or not? It's irrelevant. Even if it's an invention, it's beautiful.
The same goes for Tell: although there is no evidence that he ever existed, his fame even frightened Adolf Hitler. On June 3, 1941, Hitler's general staff ordered: "The Führer (Nazi leader, vj) wishes that Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell should no longer be performed and should no longer be taught in schools." The Nazi dictator feared that Tell's act might inspire some German to assassinate him.
6.
Unlike the seemingly non-existent Tell, the Habsburg Empire did exist. Between 1683 and 1699, the Habsburg army penetrated as far as Kosovo. It did not last long, and was defeated by the Ottomans, who would rule over Albanian lands for over 200 years. Around that time, several portraits of Skanderbeg were also found in the Habsburg collections at Ambras Castle in Tyrol. The Habsburg family also purchased Skanderbeg's sword and helmet at the end of the 16th century, which were believed to have belonged to the hero. It can be said that the descendants of a Swiss family preserved Skanderbeg's sword and helmet. They could not preserve Wilhelm Tell's arrow. It killed the Habsburg tyrant.
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