Kurt Messmer16.05.2024We humans are predisposed to brood over the changing nature of luck. The wheel of fortune has been turning since ancient times, and remains popular today. Around 1220, a rose window at Basel Cathedral was designed to resemble a wheel of fortune, homage was paid to the goddess Fortuna in a Bavarian monastery in the form of the Carmina Burana. Yet, undeserved luck plays no part in the Christian world view. Heavenly salvation is something that has to be earned.
Barbara Basting14.05.2024Children love pictures teeming with animals, even in the 21st century. Roelant Savery was an expert in painting wildlife, and he used his skills to impress the Habsburg emperor over 400 years ago as well as inspiring many of his contemporaries, including Swiss artists.
Michael van Orsouw08.05.2024Aarmühle was a place in the Bernese Oberland. As a name it was rather uninspiring and thus unlikely to appeal to potential visitors from all over the world. Hence the renaming of Aarmühle as Interlaken in 1891, which turned the town into a tourist destination of international renown.
James Blake Wiener06.05.2024The sinking of the British passenger ship RMS "Lusitania" on 7 May 1915 by a German submarine is one of the worst maritime disasters in recent history. 1193 men, women and children lost their lives off the Irish coast. The stories of the "Lusitania's" Swiss voyagers afford unique perspectives into the Edwardian Age as it came to a conclusion.
Mämä Sykora02.05.2024In the early days, Swiss football had to contend with some unusual challenges. Stakes in the middle of the pitch, a lack of opponents and mockery and derision in the daily press. A look back at the difficult start of the sport on grass.
Thomas Bürgisser30.04.2024In spring 1967, Stalin’s daughter travelled to Switzerland. In the middle of the Cold War. The story of a diplomatic high-wire act.
Mattia Mahon25.04.2024In April 1974, one of Europe's oldest dictatorships collapsed in Portugal. In Switzerland, people were worried about the future of Portugal. Not least because of the fragile political balance in southern Europe.
Franziska Rogger23.04.2024Born in Russia, Ida Hoff became one of the first women to attend university in Switzerland around 1900. In addition to pursuing a career in medicine, she was a staunch advocate of women’s rights, guided by her feminist conscience and a penchant for irreverence. She found an outlet for the latter at the second Swiss Congress for Women's Interests in 1921, where she wittily subjected Ferdinand Hodler’s painting “The Day” to a fresh new feminist interpretation.