Rabat – Meet Jonas Lauwiner. Swiss citizen with Moroccan origins, pharmaceutical employee, city councillor, and self-proclaimed King of Switzerland.

A kingdom built on a legal footnote

It started on his 20th birthday, when his father handed him a modest agricultural plot as a gift. For Jonas Lauwiner, raised in Interlaken before settling in Bern and later Burgdorf, it was the fulfilment of a childhood dream. 

“Since I was eight years old, I always wanted my own land. My dream finally was fulfilled,” he told France 24.

But one plot was never going to be enough. When he discovered that the parcel next door had no registered owner, he did what Swiss law technically allows anyone to do: he claimed it. 

Under Article 658 of the Swiss Civil Code, land with no identifiable owner can be registered by any individual for a processing fee of just a few hundred francs. 

Most people had no idea this rule existed. Lauwiner built an empire on it.

The years nobody was watching

What followed was years of quiet, methodical searching through Swiss land registry records. 

Then, as he mentioned to France 24, the discoveries started multiplying. 

“Then I thought, this cannot be the only one: it would be too lucky if I just discovered the only plot in Switzerland. So, I started a big search, and I discovered another one, and another one, and another one.”

By the time anyone noticed what he was doing, it was effectively over. He had claimed around 150 plots totalling more than 117,000 square metres of Swiss territory, including fields, strategic corridors, and 83 roads, some of which see more than 5,000 vehicles pass over them every single day. 

“Over 5,000 people per day drive over my roads to their homes,” he said.

The coronation nobody expected

In 2019, Lauwiner decided his land empire deserved a crown to match. He staged a full coronation at Bern’s Nydegg Church, attended by members of the clergy, dressed in royal regalia and an 18-carat gold jewelled crown. 

He declared himself King Jonas I, symbolic monarch of Switzerland, a country with no royal family and no monarchy in its constitution.

“The role of king is very special in Switzerland because it’s not really accepted. It’s very controversial,” he emphasized.

And yet, he added: “I don’t have too many haters. Nobody has stopped me, that’s for sure, because it’s not possible.”

On the question of legitimacy, he is unambiguous. 

“I’m not a constitutional monarch. I’m a symbolic monarch. There is a king in Switzerland, and it’s me, King Jonas.”

Roads, rage & ransom offers

The comedy quickly turned into conflict when Swiss municipalities began realising that a 31-year-old pharmaceutical company employee legally owned their streets. 

In the village of Geuensee, local authorities sought to reclaim a road Lauwiner had acquired. 

His response: pay him 150,000 francs, or rename the street “Chemin Lauwiner.” They refused. A criminal complaint for abusive exploitation soon followed.

Local lawyer Loris Fabrizio Mainardi, who filed the complaint, did not mince words. 

“Mr. Lauwiner’s operetta-style drama doesn’t interest me as such. What drives me crazy is that he’s trying to pressure people who are in a vulnerable situation by imposing his own price demands on them,” he told local channel RTS.

Other villages face fees for using roads on his land. Local MP Josef Schuler said that “he is asking for money for something that doesn’t require a significant investment,” adding: “I think he’s kind of playing with us a bit.”

Lauwiner is unmoved. “The only thing that I charge is a fee for maintenance, I don’t make profit with these roads,” he said. 

“Sometimes I sell a road, and that’s how I make profit.” Managing it all, he added, is “a full-time job. It’s not easy to maintain 149 plots of land.”

Too late to stop him

Multiple Swiss cantons are now rushing to change their laws, aiming to give municipalities first refusal on unclaimed land. 

Lauwiner is not worried. He points out that truly valuable ownerless plots were rare to begin with, and he has already claimed virtually all of them. The door he walked through is closing, but he is already on the other side.

As for the officials now scrambling to contain the damage, he highlighted that he has a simple theory about their real motivation. 

“They are just jealous that they did not have the idea,” he said.

A king With political ambitions

In 2024, he won a seat on Burgdorf’s city council as an independent candidate, running under the name King Jonas Lauwiner and collecting nearly 700 votes. 

Now he has his eye on higher office. “I’m trying for the national council. I’m trying for the State Council. I’ll try for everything,” he noted.

And yet, for all the crowns and controversies, the self-proclaimed king says his ambitions are ultimately modest. 

“In the end, I really want to be at peace, on a beach somewhere, enjoying my life.”

The kingdom, it seems, is just the beginning.