Basel
The writer Rolf Hochhuth stated: “British understatement, measured against that of Basel, is a delusion of grandeur.”
“What is a Basler?” Rudolf Moosbrugger asked and illustrated in his book of the same name. “A Basler is special and is well aware of it, which at the same time demands a kind of reserve. It does not mean that the Basler understands being special as necessarily being better, but as something qualitatively different. (…) The direct link to the three great of Gaul, Germany and Italy meant, and still means, that these cultures are more than just historical strata in Basel. They have remained active and continually been refreshed. This has inevitably left traces on the inhabitants. It marks the character. (…) Observed with the eyes of an outsider …, the Basler is indeed something out of the ordinary. His sharp tongue is to be feared. What’s been said is already over by the time we have registered it. And if we persist, we find the comment’s sting is not so much in the words as in the undertone. A delicate twist of the accent, a crazy inversion of words into their opposite, from sense to nonsense or the other way around. The Basler has no difficulty being an excited Celt, an apparently civilized Roman or a single-minded Alemanne. Everthing is a bit more acute, for in an exposed siuation on the margins, one is more aware of one’s own peculiarity than when safely surrounded by those of like mind. (…) The contradictions he unites within himself are grounded in his awareness of history. Although he confuses those around him, he depends on their understanding.” (Buchverlag Basler Zeitung, 1988)