Gabriel Heim

Gabriel Heim

Gabriel Heim is a book and film author and exhibition organiser. He is principally concerned with research into topics of modern and contemporary history and lives in Basel.

A tropical institute to tackle unemployment

Gabriel Heim 04.02.2025 The Swiss Tropical Institute was founded in 1943 out of a fear of post-war unemployment. It was designed to promote the emigration of young people to Africa and the world’s tropical regions.
Test involving insecticides in the garden of the Swiss Tropical Institute during a course on malaria, 1958.

Green gold from Dutch India

Gabriel Heim 15.10.2024 In the late 19th century, landlocked Switzerland was looking for ways to harness the immeasurable diversity of tropical botany. It found what it was looking for in Buitenzorg on the island of Java.
‘Buitenzorg, botanic garden, Sterculia with Pernod/buttress roots’. Stereograph taken by Carl Schröter, 1898.

A newspaper by refugees for refugees

Gabriel Heim 28.05.2024 Towards the end of the Second World War, a newspaper was published in Switzerland that was not intended for public distribution yet nevertheless circulated throughout the country. It was written by emigrants in the internment camps.
A newspaper by refugees for refugees was produced in Swiss internment camps from the end of November 1944.

Anne Frank and Switzerland

Gabriel Heim 24.07.2023 Anne Frank had close ties with Switzerland. Here she spent happy days with the family, some of whom had been living in Basel since 1929.
A picture from happy days: Anne Frank in the 1930s on summer holiday in Sils.

The theatre that stood up to fascism

Gabriel Heim 04.07.2023 Just a few months after Adolf Hitler came to power, Schauspielhaus Zurich theatre began to evolve into a bastion against racial fanaticism and antisemitism.
Schauspielhaus Zurich programme for the 1934/35 season.

Amusing travel journal reveals Switzerland of 1837

Gabriel Heim 09.02.2023 German theologian Carl August Wildenhahn documented his journey through 19th century Switzerland with humorous observations and comic strip-style pictures.
Carl August Wildenhahn immortalised Switzerland in his journal from 1837 – in the form of both text and illustration.

City on the Rhine as centre of the Zionist movement

Gabriel Heim 29.08.2022 The Stadtcasino Basel was the key location on the road to a Jewish state. The World Zionist Congress met ten times in the city at the elbow of the Rhine. 2022 marks the 125th anniversary of the founding Congress.
Theodor Herzl opens the first Zionist congress at the Basel Stadtcasino in 1897.

Finding sanctuary in Geneva

Gabriel Heim 08.07.2022 During World War II, hundreds of Jews fled from France into Switzerland via Geneva. After the border was closed in August 1942 this escape route became more difficult to navigate, but not impossible, as the stories of Lilian Blumenstein and Lili Reckendorf show.
Border between France and Switzerland in Geneva, September 1943.