Parts of
Swiss German
Swiss German (Standard German: , gsw, Schwiizerdütsch, Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch Mundart,Because of the many different dialects, and because there is no defined orthography for any of them, many different spelling ...
speaking
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
have their own deck of
playing card
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...
s referred to as Swiss-suited playing cards or Swiss-suited cards. They are mostly used for
Jass
:Jass ''was also an early name for Jazz music. For other uses, see JASS.''
Jass ()David Parlett ''The Oxford guide to card games'', pg. 292-293, David Parlett (1990) is a family of trick taking, Ace-Ten card games and, in its key forms, a distin ...
, the "national card game" of Switzerland. The deck is related to the various
German playing cards
German-suited playing cards are a very common style of traditional playing card used in many parts of Central Europe characterised by 32- or 36-card packs with the suit (cards), suits of Acorns (suit), Acorns (''Eichel'' or ''Kreuz''), Leaves (s ...
. Within Switzerland, these decks are called German or Swiss German cards.
Distribution of the Swiss deck is roughly east of the
Brünig-Napf-Reuss line
The Brünig-Napf-Reuss line forms a geographical boundary in traditional Swiss culture ('' Kulturgrenze''). Running from the Brünig Pass along the Napf region to the Reuss (which joins the Aare at Brugg), it partly separates western (Bernese Germa ...
, in
Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen (; gsw, Schafuuse; french: Schaffhouse; it, Sciaffusa; rm, Schaffusa; en, Shaffhouse) is a list of towns in Switzerland, town with historic roots, a municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in northern Switzerland, and the ...
,
St. Gallen
, neighboring_municipalities = Eggersriet, Gaiserwald, Gossau, Herisau (AR), Mörschwil, Speicher (AR), Stein (AR), Teufen (AR), Untereggen, Wittenbach
, twintowns = Liberec (Czech Republic)
, website ...
(and in adjacent
Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy ...
),
Appenzell
Appenzell is a historic canton in the northeast of Switzerland, and entirely surrounded by the canton of St. Gallen.
Appenzell became independent of the Abbey of Saint Gall in 1403 and entered a league with the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1411, ...
,
Thurgau
Thurgau (; french: Thurgovie; it, Turgovia), anglicized as Thurgovia, more formally the Canton of Thurgau, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of five districts and its capital is Frauenfeld.
Thurgau is part ...
,
Glarus
, neighboring_municipalities= Glarus Nord, Glarus Süd, Muotathal (SZ), Innerthal (SZ)
, twintowns= Wiesbaden-Biebrich (Germany)
}
Glarus (; gsw, Glaris; french: Glaris; it, Glarona; rm, Glaruna) is the capital of the canton of Glarus in S ...
,
Zürich
Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...
, all of
Central Switzerland
Central Switzerland is the region of the Alpine Foothills geographically the heart and historically the origin of Switzerland, with the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Lucerne and Zug.
Central Switzerland is one of the NUTS 2 Statist ...
and the eastern part of
Aargau
Aargau, more formally the Canton of Aargau (german: Kanton Aargau; rm, Chantun Argovia; french: Canton d'Argovie; it, Canton Argovia), is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eleven districts and its capita ...
.
Cards
![Kaiserspiel](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Kaiserspiel.png)
The
suits are as follows:
The most common deck has 36 cards, nine of each suit. The card values are, in ascending order,
:six, seven, eight, nine, ''
Banner
A banner can be a flag or another piece of cloth bearing a symbol, logo, slogan or another message. A flag whose design is the same as the shield in a coat of arms (but usually in a square or rectangular shape) is called a banner of arms. Also, ...
'' (ten), ''
Under
Under may refer to:
* "Under" (Alex Hepburn song), 2013
* "Under" (Pleasure P song), 2009
*Bülent Ünder (born 1949), Turkish footballer
*Cengiz Ünder (born 1997), Turkish footballer
*Marie Under
Marie Under ( – 25 September 1980) was one o ...
'', ''
Ober'', ''
König
König (; ) is the German word for "king". In German and other languages applying the umlaut, the transliterations ''Koenig'' and ''Kœnig'', when referring to a surname, also occur. As a surname in English, the use of ''Koenig'' is usual, and som ...
'', ''
As''.
For the purposes of ''Jass'', the numbered cards (six to nine) have no point value, the banner has a value of ten points, the picture-cards Under, Ober, König have values of two, three and four points, respectively, and the As has eleven points.
The reduction to 36 cards (eliminating card values two to five) and the use of a male ''Ober'' instead of the "
Queen
Queen or QUEEN may refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom
** List of queens regnant
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
* Queen dowager, the widow of a king
* Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
" (perhaps related to the "
Knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
") is not unique to the Swiss deck but also found in a variety of German decks. Both "acorn" and "bells" are suits also found in German decks, while "shields" and "roses" seem to be unique to Switzerland.
A less common deck is the 48 card set containing the 3s, 4s, and 5s and is used to play the
Karnöffel
Karnöffel is a trick-taking card game which probably came from the upper-German language area in Europe in the first quarter of the 15th century. It first appeared listed in a municipal ordinance of Nördlingen, Bavaria, in 1426 among the games ...
variant
Kaiserspiel
Kaiserspiel, also called Kaisern or Cheisärä, is a card game, usually for 4 or 6 players, that is played in parts of Switzerland using a variant of the standard Swiss playing cards with 40 or 48 cards. It is a descendant of Karnöffel, one of t ...
.
Face cards
The ''Under'' corresponds to the
Jack or Knave. The ''Under'' of trumps becoming the highest card in the game can be traced to the 15th-century game
Karnöffel
Karnöffel is a trick-taking card game which probably came from the upper-German language area in Europe in the first quarter of the 15th century. It first appeared listed in a municipal ordinance of Nördlingen, Bavaria, in 1426 among the games ...
.
The face cards in the 1920s Müller design show twelve individual characters, which have remained unchanged since.
The sequence ''Under, Ober, König'' depicts
social stratification
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...
, the ''Under'' characters are working class, depicted as a fool or jester (''Schellen''), a messenger or scribe (''Schilten''), a peasant (''Rosen'') and a soldier or page/servant, while the ''Ober'' characters are shown as clerks or overseers/officers, while the kings are crowned monarchs (three of them seated, the king of ''Rosen'' is shown standing).
The four ''Under'' characters hold their suit symbol facing downward, the ''Ober'' and ''König'' characters hold it facing upward (with the exception of ''Eicheln Ober'' and ''Schilten König'', whose suit symbols are hovering in the top left corner without their holding it as they are holding a pipe and a cup instead, respectively).
Five characters are shown as smoking. All but three characters are shown with "blonde" (yellow) hair, the exceptions being ''Schilten Under'', ''Schellen Ober'' (both with "grey" hair) and ''Schellen Under'' (hair not visible due to his fool's cap).
History of production
The earliest references for playing cards in Switzerland date back to the late 1370s when they were sweeping through Western Europe. In 1377, the Dominican friar
John of Rheinfelden John of Rheinfelden (german: Johannes von Rheinfelden), also Johannes Teuto and John of Basle (born c. 1340), was a Dominican friar and writer who published the oldest known description in Europe of playing cards.
Life and works
Brother John was ...
wrote the earliest description of playing cards in Europe. He described the most common deck as consisting of four suits each with 13 ranks with the top three depicting a seated king, an upper-marshal who holds his suit symbol up, and an under-marshal who held it down which corresponds to the current court cards. Aces must have disappeared very early since there are no surviving aces with Swiss suit marks. It was far easier to print a 48-card deck with two woodblocks than one with 52 cards. The Deuce was promoted above the king around the late 15th-century to become the new ace. The current suit-system emerged during the 15th-century around the same time as the German suit-system after much experimentation such as feathers and hats instead of acorns and roses. Unlike the Germans, the Swiss have maintained the Banner 10 after the mid-16th century. During the 17-century, ranks 3 to 5 disappeared from most decks save for those used to play Kaiserspiel.
Basel was an early center for manufacturing packs. Two identical decks from around 1530 were independently discovered in 1998 and 2011. This predecessor went through various stages of evolution during the following centuries. Johannes I Müller of Diessenhofen printed an early such deck in 1840. His successor Johannes II Müller was the owner of the Müller company in Schaffhausen which printed a "single image" variant of the deck in c. 1880, from which it derived the "double image" design which is now standard in c. 1920.
Since the introduction of this deck, the various manufacturers of this deck can only be distinguished in minor design details, and in some cases by the company name printed on the aces of ''Schellen'' and ''Schilten''. In this design, a central rectangle on the aces of ''Schellen'' and ''Schilten'' were used for the text "
Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen (; gsw, Schafuuse; french: Schaffhouse; it, Sciaffusa; rm, Schaffusa; en, Shaffhouse) is a list of towns in Switzerland, town with historic roots, a municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in northern Switzerland, and the ...
&
Hasle" (the location of the presses) and "Spielkartenfabrik", respectively. Also in the 1920s, a nearly identical design was produced by ''Hächler und Söhne'' of Zürich, indicated as "HASO" on the ace of ''Schellen''. In designs derived from the 1920s Schaffhausen one, the ace of ''Schellen'' is still used to attribute the design to the original design, while the ace of ''Schilten'' is used to indicate the present manufacturer.
The "single image" version survived into the 1950s, but became increasingly rare after 1920.
From the 1930s onward, the number of manufacturers increased. There was Walter Scharff Co. ("WASCO", Ennetbaden), 1930; "Bernina, Dauer-Jasskarten" (Otto Hauser-Steiger, 1939-1946), and others. The Swiss discounter
Migros
Migros () is Switzerland's largest retail company, its largest supermarket chain and largest employer. It is also one of the forty largest retailers in the world. It is structured in the form of a cooperative federation (the Federation of Mig ...
began selling playing cards in the 1940s. Their cards were only identified by an image of a crossbow on the ace of ''Schellen''. Since they are otherwise identical to the ''Hächler Söhne'' ones, it is likely that this company produced for Migros.
More recently, cards were produced by Fotorotar (1985), Grolimund (Coloroffset R. Grolimund, Bern. M. Rhyn, Laupen), SwissCard (
Toffen
Toffen is a municipality in the Bern-Mittelland administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. It lies approximately 10 km south of the city of Bern.
The palace situated there, Toffen Castle, is a heritage site of nation ...
near Berne, 1997), Carlit (Carlit + Ravensburger AG, Würenlos, 2000s), Grob Druck AG (Amriswil, "www.jasskarten.com"), among others. Swiss AGMüller, the company continuing the original "J. Müller Cie" which came up with the 1920s design, was acquired by Belgian company
Cartamundi
Cartamundi Group is a company based in Turnhout, Belgium, that manufactures, produces, and sells board games, card games, collectible card games, packages, and playing cards through its manufacturing and sales subsidiaries. The name of the company ...
in 1999. A number of German producers also made Swiss German decks for the Swiss market (Berliner Spielkarten, Nürnberger Spielkarten, VASS Leinfelden), as did the Italian company
Dal Negro
Dal Negro is an Italian company that produces playing cards, tarot cards, divination cards, chess, backgammon, roulette wheels, and toys for children.
The company has its registered office, from 2002, in Carbonera in the Treviso area.
Its origi ...
of Treviso.
There have repeatedly been novelty designs of the traditional deck, but all of these were short-lived, and intended as humorous or designed for a special purpose. There have been "feminist" designs which show all the face cards as women (''Frauezogg'', designs by Elsi Jegen and Susan Csomor), and there have been numerous novelty decks made for marketing purposes where certain cards had an altered design showing a logo or mascot of the company in question; an early "special edition" of the Swiss deck was a "military" version printed in 1915 on the occasion of the
World War I mobilization; the suits became "cavalry, artillery, infantry, engineers". Swiss cartoonist
Fredy Sigg Fredy Sigg (1923–1998) was a Swiss designer and cartoonist. He was known nationwide for his caricatures during the 1960s to 1980s. He was active as a free-lance graphicist and illustrator from 1947. From 1958 he worked as a caricaturist for th ...
designed a "cartoon" variant of the deck in 1978. In the 2000s, Austrian and German card producers also came up with "face-lifted", modernized designs for the Swiss deck, but these were not widely sold in Switzerland. AG Müller since its acquisition by Cartamundi in 2000 also came up with various "modernized" variants, sold under the name "Jass Plus". "Playing Cards R Us, Inc" of Orlando, Florida produced a "non-smoking" deck with 52 cards and two
Jokers (copied from the Csomor's feminist deck) in a very limited run of 50 decks in 2006. Since 2007, AG Müller has been selling Swiss suited
poker
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
sets with 52 cards plus three Jokers. These cards are wider than Jass ones and the pip cards are different; roses and acorns are no longer connected by vines and the shields are uniformly the same. They also use English corner indices for the face cards which meant giving the Queen index "Q" for the male Obers.
Standard decks for Jass
/ref>
"William Tell" set
There is also a "Swiss themed" deck of cards, in which each of the eight ''Ober'' and ''Under'' cards represents a character from Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...
's ''Wilhelm Tell
William Tell (german: Wilhelm Tell, ; french: Guillaume Tell; it, Guglielmo Tell; rm, Guglielm Tell) is a folk hero of Switzerland.
According to the legend, Tell was an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow who assassinated Alb ...
'' (William Tell
William Tell (german: Wilhelm Tell, ; french: Guillaume Tell; it, Guglielmo Tell; rm, Guglielm Tell) is a folk hero of Switzerland.
According to the legend, Tell was an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow who assassinated Albr ...
himself is ''Eichel-Ober''). This deck was designed in Hungary in 1835 as a means to express resentment against Habsburg Austrian rule since the play was also about a revolt against the Habsburgs. This deck is today known throughout the former Austro-Hungarian empire
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
but it is not in use in Switzerland.
References
*Detlef Hoffmann (ed.), ''Schweizer Spielkarten'' vol. 1, "Die Anfänge im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert" (1998).
*Max Ruhetal (ed.), ''Schweizer Spielkarten'', vol. 2, "Das Tarockspiel in der Schweiz. Tarocke des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts im Museum Allerheiligen Schaffhausen" (2004).
* ''Alte Schweizer Spielkarten'', Berichthaus (1973).
*Peter F. Kopp, ''Einige Streiflichter auf die Geschichte der Schweizer Spielkarten'' (1975)
External links
*Ralph Scotoni
Spielkarten mit Schweizer Farbzeichen
''AltaCarta'' (2007
http://www.altacarta.com/deutsch/research/switzerland-wasco-ennetbaden.html]
{{Playing card decks
Swiss culture
Playing card suit systems
!
Swiss inventions
de:Spielkarte#Schweizer_Blatt