![Auguste Forel depicted on the thousand-franc note (front) that came into circulation in 1978.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/forel-titel-300x225.jpg)
Knocked off his pedestal
In the last-but-one series of Swiss banknotes, the thousand-franc note depicted Auguste Forel as a wise researcher turning his alert gaze on the world, as an icon of science and Helvetic national symbol. But this stylised heroic image failed to stand up to closer investigation. A story illustrating the pitfalls of the culture of commemoration.
![Auguste Forel, fourth director of the Burghölzli clinic and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Zurich.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/forel-alt-portrat-232x300.jpg)
![Auguste Forel on a special stamp issued by the PTT in 1971.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/briefmarke-forel-300x183.jpg)
![Homage to the great myrmecologist and the objects of his life-long passion for collecting: the back of the ‘ant’ note with Formica rufa and Strongylonathus Huberi (both Swiss) and Polyrhachis caulomna (New Guinea).](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/Tausendernote-neu-300x134.jpg)
The Social Darwinist
![From the collection of the Schweiz. Volksbibliothek: Auguste Forel’s social utopia, in which people lived peacefully “like one giant human ant colony covering the entire Earth”.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/Buch-Ameisen-Forel-205x300.jpg)
Race hygiene, eugenics, euthanasia
![Forel’s place of work for many years. 1890 engraving of the Burghölzli clinic.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/burgholzli-300x139.jpg)
Sinister side – long ignored and hushed up
“From memorial to historical bind”
![The Neue Zürcher Nachrichten newspaper reported the bust’s disappearance on 31 May 1986. However, the "signalling" was inaccurate...](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/nzz-artikel-1-108x300.jpg)
![Quietly vanished into thin air: the bust of Forel by sculptor Walter Späny, gifted to Zurich University by the Government Council of Zurich.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/buste-august-forel-300x259.jpg)