Mitholz learns what a village costs when the state moves it

In Mitholz, the future has a habit of arriving early, and not in a pleasant form. Houses stand empty, associations are shrinking, familiar paths are disappearing, and the village in the Bernese Oberland is already living with the logic of departure. The federal government decided in 2018, after a new risk assessment, to clear the former ammunition depot completely. By 2032 at the latest, everyone whose home lies within the safety perimeter is supposed to move out.

That deadline is still years away, yet the social consequences are visible now. A sociological accompanying study by Astrid Wallner describes a community that is slowly dissolving under the pressure of an evacuation that has not even been completed. The study’s basic finding is hardly a surprise, though it is uncomfortable enough for anyone who prefers administrative language to human reality: when a village is told it must disappear, people do not simply pack boxes and carry on as if they were changing flats.

Wallner says the work on the clearance has hit quality of life hard. For residents, Mitholz is not an abstract location on a map, but home, land and social network all at once. When those ties begin to fray, the loss is correspondingly broad. The result is not just inconvenience. Many of those surveyed report sleepless nights, fear, anger and grief. Wallner refers to this as solastalgia, the pain of watching a place change while one is still forced to live in it.

The study also points to tensions inside the village, and they are of the sort that tend to flourish wherever fate is distributed by perimeter lines. Some envy those who may stay. Others envy those who can at least choose whether to leave. And some envy those who no longer have any choice at all. Such comparisons may sound petty from a distance. In a village under evacuation, they are part of the social weather.

The consequences, Wallner argues, cannot be solved with compensation alone. Residents need independent counselling and support services to help them deal with the loss of home. Independence matters, she stresses, which is a polite way of saying that people are unlikely to seek comfort from someone acting on behalf of the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport.

The study also suggests that trust in the authorities has not fully recovered since the 2018 reassessment of the danger. The federal government’s communication is now viewed more positively by most residents than before, but the deeper mistrust remains. That, too, is a familiar pattern: officials improve the messaging, while the underlying problem continues to sit there, stubborn as ever.

Wallner says the findings reach beyond Mitholz. After the landslide in Blatten VS, similar questions arose about what it means to lose one’s home, when a return is possible and what kind of support people need. In Mitholz, a return is not even envisaged before 2047. Many residents doubt they will ever come back themselves. What matters to them, Wallner says, is that the link to Mitholz is not broken entirely.

Some hope that one day their grandchildren will live there again. It is a modest hope, and perhaps that is the most telling part. The village may be scheduled for clearance, but memory is less obedient than bureaucracy. And unlike a federal timetable, it does not stop simply because an office has decided the matter is settled.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com