A depressed person being tormented by sinister spectres. Print from 1788.
A history of the melancholic mind

Melancholy was everywhere in the early modern period: in letters, reports and biographies, but also in medical tracts and theological discourse. A diagnosis is speculative, but in some of the descriptions we can recognise what today is referred to as depression.

The fly agaric, depicted by Swiss artist and researcher Hans Walty, 1917.
Mushroom mania

Foraging for mushrooms has become a popular pastime throughout Switzerland. And fungi hold immense promise in science and industry. Yet these fascinating organisms were once seen as harmful. How has this fundamental change in their image come about?

The dream of getting rich quick is almost as old as humanity itself. Illustration by Marco Heer.
Of greed and ghosts

In the early modern period, many people sought to ‘get rich quick’ by digging for treasure. But they often encountered fraudsters and spirits along the way, leading quite a few of them to end up in court.

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Death at the border

Adriano Bazzocco 29.10.2026 Border guard Ovidio Maggi was shot dead by Italian smugglers in late October 1945. After the Second World War, the spiral of violence at Switzerland’s southern border escalated. With fatal consequences.
Shootouts at the Italian border: attempts to clampdown on smuggling in Ticino claimed the lives of several people shortly after the Second World War. Illustration by Marco Heer.

Switzerland’s first time at the helm of the world’s largest regional security body

Thomas Bürgisser 27.10.2026 In 1996, a Swiss foreign minister was Chairman-in-Office of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for the first time. Switzerland, which was not a member of the UN, NATO or the EU, was therefore able to make its presence felt on the international stage.
Flavio Cotti, OSCE Chairman-in-Office, in Vienna explaining his decision to hold general elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina in September 1996.

From combat uniform to style statement

Christoph Kummer 22.10.2026 When Switzerland realigned its defence strategy during the Cold War, it produced a camouflage pattern that refused to blend into the background. The Alpenflage became the most visible attempt at reinventing invisibility.

The Basel prison breakout of 1876

Patrik Süess 20.10.2026 In July 1876, two inmates broke out of Basel’s ‘Schällemätteli’ prison, killing three guards in the process. Their escape attempt was prompted in part by the dire living conditions in the penitentiary.
On 20 July 1876, Emil Bienz managed to escape from Basel’s Schällemätteli prison. However, he did not get far and subsequently had to stand trial for a triple murder. Illustration by Marco Heer.
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Popular posts

When ‘Schweizer’ meant more than Swiss

Gabriel Heim 01.10.2026 Milkers and dairy workers from Switzerland were so in demand on German farming estates from the mid-19th century that the term ‘Schweizerei’ came to mean dairy farm, while milkers were known as ‘Schweizer’ or ‘Stallschweizer’.
Professional ‘Schweizer’ posing for a photograph in Königsberg, East Prussia.

When football clubs included a rowing section

Michael Jucker 24.09.2026 In the past, many sports clubs encompassed more than one discipline. One example was FC Zurich, whose former rowing section had a particularly eventful and successful history.

Forgotten war

Jelica Popović 06.10.2026 The Swiss public seem to have forgotten the war that broke out in Yugoslavia in 1991. Nonetheless, it did (and still does) affect people living in Switzerland who came from the war zone. They were stigmatised during and after the war, while the influx of people from ex-Yugoslavia has left a mark on Swiss culture and everyday life.

“As the world was drowning in a sea of hatred,” Switzerland interned the liberators

Jürg Flückiger 29.09.2026 During the Second World War, 166 stricken US bombers landed in Swiss fields and meadows. The story of the more than 1,500 airmen who were subsequently interned in the mountains has been largely forgotten today.
In August 1943, an Allied bomber was forced to make an emergency landing in a potato field near Utzenstorf in the canton of Bern. It was just one of many aircraft that ended up in Swiss territory during the Second World War.

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