Josef “Schäfli-Sepp” Koller (67) from Alt St. Johann SG has an alpine hut on Alp Flis. In January 2019, an avalanche destroyed most of it. Koller invested over 500,000 francs – and now the alpine hut in Toggenburg is suddenly no longer his.
The reason for this is that the canton is suddenly implementing a law that is actually more than a hundred years old and which it has not consistently applied until now. The Civil Code states that a building belongs to whoever owns the land. On the Alp Flis, however, the land does not belong to Koller and the other Älplern, but to the Alp Corporation. In practice, Koller and the other people affected have been treated as owners.
Alpkorporation received 47 letters in one fell swoop
Koller took over the alpine hut that once belonged to his grandfather from his uncle. Because he runs a restaurant himself and does not work in agriculture, he leases it to a farmer who keeps cattle there in the summer. Koller took a good look at the alpine hut and invested a lot of heart and soul in addition to all the money. “I always paid the building insurance bills, and I also paid the fees for the building permits.”
Two years ago, the letters from the St. Gallen building insurance company (GVA) suddenly all went to the alp corporation – and no longer to the alp hut owners, like the alp president explained to SRF. He was never informed regarding the changed practice. All of a sudden he just got 47 letters from the GVA in one fell swoop.
Only grazing rights in the land register excerpt
Koller also says that the authorities simply went through with the change in practice without talking to those affected. «We were not informed. We were all expropriated,” he says to Blick.
Koller can show an old excerpt from the land register entry, which shows that as heir to his grandfather he enjoys “independent share rights” in the alpine hut and the buildings belonging to it. But now everything is different. Koller demanded a new extract from the land register for his share in the Flis Alp Corporation and was flabbergasted: “The buildings have simply disappeared”. In addition, there is only talk of “pasture use rights”.
Around 800 buildings affected
Koller does not want to put up with the “expropriation” by the canton. He has lodged a supervisory complaint with the Interior Department of the Canton of St. Gallen.
Around 800 buildings are affected by the changed practice. Last Wednesday, the canton took a stand for the first time at an information evening in Wildhaus. Alexander Gulde, head of the Office for Municipalities and Civil Rights in the canton of St. Gallen, is convinced that the canton has done nothing wrong: “In our opinion, these alpine buildings have belonged to the alpine corporations for decades – since the introduction of the Civil Code in Switzerland. »
The canton wants to offer a hand for solutions, it said. But the ball is now in the hands of the Alpine corporations. It is unclear how the matter will ultimately be settled. Possible solutions would be individual contracts between alpine farmers and the alp corporations or building rights contracts. In the canton of Uri, for example, there is a “building right on Allmend” specifically for the Alps. In the canton of Bern, building rights can be entered in the land register, and under certain circumstances traditional building rights can be asserted.
