Hey dear Hive community, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you are all well and you had a weekend that has been full of positive experiences! In this post, I would like to talk a little about the history of a plant and describe how important it was in Switzerland.
Here you can see some pictures of crocus which is also the origin of the well-known spice saffron and especially the species Crocus sativus is best suited for obtaining this precious spice. During the Middle Ages, saffron came to Europe via traders from the Orient, where it quickly became more and more popular and it is suspected that it first came to Spain from where it spread via France to Switzerland. The people quickly realized what potential this spice had and the Swiss decided to cultivate it in some areas and an important center for cultivation was the canton of Valais where it is still traditionally grown today and some families have focused specifically on cultivation. In Switzerland, there was already an extremely high demand at that time and trade flourished strongly and particularly important trading centers were Basel or Lucerne at that time and in Europe Switzerland played one of the most important roles when it comes to trading this spice, which has also often been called red gold. In addition to the use as a spice, it also became more and more important as a medicine or as a dye and some guilds were also created which came to great power through cultivation, trade or processing and had political influence and more and more people realized the potential of it and decided to join the guild, which has been expanded more and more as a result. The strongest trading partners at the time were Spain, France as well as England and via Switzerland, which was an important trading point the spice came to other European countries and there were thousands of people who were employed in this industry.
Because of the preciousness, it often happened that some people tried to imitate the spice in order to create it artificially and it often happened that traders were attacked and this even led to some disputes such as a war which was also to go down in history as a saffron war. This war took place in the 14th century and resulted from the fact that the lord of the castle of Neu-Falkenstein intercepted a saffron delivery from Basel and the reason was probably debts at the time and this led to the fact that a huge war was instigated and troops from Bern, Basel and other parts of Switzerland besieged the castle for a few weeks to take revenge for this action and bring the saffron back. Many troops died at that time and a large part of the castle was destroyed and after the clashes there was peace between the lord Henmann and the city of Basel even decided to pay for the destroyed parts of the castle as well as compensation. After the renovation, there were disputes about the rule within the own family and the castle ended up in the possession of someone else and was until the 18th century possession of Solothurn and during the Helvetic Revolution the castle was destroyed. To this day, there is numerous historical evidence of the importance of saffron in Switzerland and for a long time the topic has almost been forgotten in some places and the canton Aargau, Grisons or the town Mund in the canton of Valais are particularly known for cultivation.
Thanks a lot for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about this interesting topic! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!