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.
Gabriel Heim04.02.2025The 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.
Gabriel Heim15.10.2024In 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.
Gabriel Heim28.05.2024Towards 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.
Gabriel Heim24.07.2023Anne Frank had close ties with Switzerland. Here she spent happy days with the family, some of whom had been living in Basel since 1929.
Gabriel Heim04.07.2023Just a few months after Adolf Hitler came to power, Schauspielhaus Zurich theatre began to evolve into a bastion against racial fanaticism and antisemitism.
Gabriel Heim09.02.2023German theologian Carl August Wildenhahn documented his journey through 19th century Switzerland with humorous observations and comic strip-style pictures.
Gabriel Heim29.08.2022The 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.
Gabriel Heim08.07.2022During 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.