This mysterious parcel from the 1960s is part of the collection at Museum Grenchen.

Many museums have unsolved mysteries lurking in their collection stores ‒ unidentified objects that continue to puzzle staff to this day. This was the case with a large package held at the museum in Grenchen. It was tightly bound with string and secured with a seal bearing the Solothurn coat of arms. A bright red sticker affixed to the parcel read “To be opened on the date the war economy comes into force”. There was no inventory number or database entry providing information about the contents of the package or its provenance. Extensive research got under way.

The parcel was addressed to Kurt Staub, who was head of the housing office in Grenchen (which from 1942 to 1971 was situated very close to the site of the current museum). The package had apparently been sent by the Price Control Office of the Canton of Solothurn and had its weight ‒ 18.9 kg ‒ written on it by hand. In addition to the seal and the warning sticker, the underlined word ‘Confidential’ and the instruction ‘Not to be opened’ indicated the high level of secrecy incumbent on the recipient. The postmark of 6 March 1965 places the package within the time of the Cold War.

Preparedness in the 1960s: a parcel to be opened in the event of war.

As the museum places the highest priority on preserving the integrity of the objects in its collection, it decided not to open the package. Instead, it asked the local medical centre for help in x-raying the artefact. It was hoped that this imaging procedure would provide some insight into the contents. It took a few attempts to find the right settings for the x-ray machine, but ultimately the inside of the mysterious package was revealed for the first time. However, the black-and-white images of two large bundles of paper still left many questions unanswered.

But thanks to a social media post, news of the medical centre’s ‘special patient’ quickly spread in Grenchen. It then emerged that the local authorities were aware of further similar packages, and that these had already been opened. This enabled indirect conclusions to be drawn about what the contents of the mysterious parcel must be: bundles of unused certificates of entitlement to ration cards. The authorities were even able to provide a few specimen copies of such cards, which were issued by the Solothurn Cantonal War Economy Office in the mid-1960s and sent to the residents’ register office in Grenchen for distribution should war break out.

These x-ray pictures provided a glimpse inside the contents of the mysterious package.

So, the unopened parcel was part of the national economic supply system. The idea of the state coming to the aid of the population when harvests failed or food was otherwise in short supply was first established in the days of the Ancien Régime. A supply policy remains in place today, but the package marks one of its many turning points. The diverse approaches to ensuring national economic supply, which have swung back and forth between liberalism and state intervention, invariably reflect the underlying political thinking.

Unfortunately, the specific reason that prompted the sending of this package in March 1965 cannot be established with any great certainty. Nevertheless, the production of these certificates of entitlement proves that the measures designed to ensure the supply of essential goods were being expanded. From 1955, the looming threat of war was no longer seen as the only incentive for state intervention: perceived power-political threats and severe shortages were additional factors.

A Billet de besoin from 1817. This voucher was distributed to those in need, mainly by local authorities in the Vaud and Geneva regions, to enable them to acquire essential goods.

Up until the First World War, the federal government and the cantons largely refrained from actively implementing a supply policy. Despite increasingly vocal demands by the nascent working class for such measures, at the end of the 19th century the Confederation was not really stockpiling food or making any plans for rationing should the need arise. During the First World War, however, the repercussions of naval blockades and protectionism hit Switzerland hard and the country suddenly found itself cut off from important supply sources. And this is where national and local history converge ‒ it was in the canton of Solothurn that the Olten Action Committee made insistent calls for the government to set up a war food office in April 1918, and it was here that the army shot and killed three workers in Grenchen who were taking part in the general strike of November 1918; supply shortages were one of the reasons they had downed tools to join the protest.

According to historian Jakob Tanner, the general strike and the Great Depression of 1929 were traumatic experiences that caused the greatest social disintegration Switzerland had ever known. He believes this what was prompted a rethink of supply policy even before the outbreak of the Second World War. That policy was to become the key component in a “successful strategic synthesis of military and economic objectives”. The decision-makers‘ awareness of the interconnectivity between supply, labour and social peace was as crucial as the interventionist measures taken by the Delegate for the War Economy from 1937 onwards. Quotas and rationing, imposed on the population between May 1940 and July 1948 in the form of food ration cards, led to a distribution of basic foodstuffs with relatively little regard to spending power, but which was largely perceived as fair.

Food ration card for one person, November 1942.

The end of the Second World War did not put an end to food shortages. The proxy wars fought during the Cold War in the early 1950s led to a decision by the Federal Council (known as the ‘Korea decree’) allowing the state to make specific economic interventions in times of uncertainty and not just when faced with the immediate threat of war. The adoption of the Federal Act on the Preparation of the National Economic Defence in 1955 saw the creation of the first permanent, official institution devoted specifically to ensuring supply security in Switzerland, headed by the Delegate for the War Economy. Just one year later, in 1956, when the Hungarian Uprising was crushed by the Soviet army, this flexing of power-political muscle made the possibility of a supply emergency appear realistic. And when Switzerland experienced fuel shortages for the first time due to that year’s Suez crisis, and again in 1973 when the OPEC states reduced their oil production, severe shortages came to be accepted as a legitimate reason for the state to intervene in the economy.

This was the context, rife with hegemonic threats and potential international shortages, in which the package from Solothurn was sent in March 1965.

It was on the basis of the 1955 federal act that the Cantonal Council of Solothurn issued its own ordinance, setting out the organisation and tasks of the competent cantonal body, in September 1961. It created a hierarchical structure in which the cantonal War Economy Office was subordinate to the federal office of the same name, which in turn reported to the Department of Economic Affairs. The cantonal office was responsible, among other things, for the rationing of foodstuffs, textiles, shoes, soap and detergents, and liquid and solid fuels.

One of the first actions taken by the newly established office was to send out the certificates of entitlement to ration cards to the communes in the canton of Solothurn. Four of these parcels remain in existence in Grenchen. The 1965 certificates have been overlooked by researchers thus far. They appear to be a new iteration of the ration card system implemented during the Second World War. Initially, in October 1939, ration cards were sent by post to subscribing households. To prevent their increasing misuse and following the deterioration in the supply situation brought about by the Wehrmacht’s Western Campaign, the cards were subsequently sent out by registered post from May 1940. However, as this procedure was more costly, the number of postal deliveries fell and people had to go in person to their local office to collect the cards.

Certificate issued by the Canton of Solothurn, entitling the holder to use ration cards, 1960s.

Some 25 years later, the introduction of certificates of entitlement was meant to remedy the vulnerabilities of an otherwise tried-and-tested system. They documented the holder’s eligibility and had to be presented each time ration cards were acquired or exchanged.

The unused certificates in the package demonstrate how the supply measures of the Cold War era built on the experiences of past wars and how lessons were learned from past mistakes. In addition, the package provides material evidence of a further turning point in the history of supply policy measures – triggered in this case not by an ongoing or imminent war, but by the threat emanating from power politics in times of economic uncertainty.

With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the supply office was perceived to have lost two of its main raisons d’être – war and power politics. However, the corona pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine have placed supply security issues back on the agenda; making objects like the package sent in 1965 of topical interest again.

Anne Hasselmann

A package for a war that never happened