A fateful journey: Swiss dialect poet Helene Bossert being greeted by locals in Armenia in 1953.

On 28 November 1953, two members of the cantonal police force spent an afternoon sitting in their car conducting a discreet surveillance operation in Sissach near Basel. The small house in front of which they were parked was the home of dialect poet Helene Bossert (1907–1999), her husband, trade union activist Ulrich Fausch, and their eight-year-old son Johann Ulrich, otherwise known as Hansueli. The two police officers had been tasked by the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland with ascertaining whether Helene Bossert would leave her home to go to a reception at the Soviet embassy in Bern. However, their report revealed that she and her husband had simply whiled away the afternoon doing housework and gardening.

Helene Bossert with her husband Ulrich Fausch and son Johann Ulrich (Hansueli), 1945/46.

Despite its impressive bulk, the secret file kept on Bossert is full of documents and reports that, without exception, proved inconclusive. Because the poet, whose movements were closely observed by the Swiss authorities for many years, was never politically active. During the period in which she was under surveillance, she had already withdrawn from the public sphere as a result of the witch-hunt against her and was leaving the confines of her house and garden much less frequently than before. She no longer even had a job to go to, her freelance contract with the radio studio in Basel having been terminated at the behest of the Attorney General’s Office.

A political, media-fuelled witch-hunt with interpersonal implications

However, Helene Bossert would not find out until much later that this particular authority had been instrumental in her dismissal and in the de facto ban on her appearing or publishing work as a poet. Like all other Swiss citizens who had been spied on by the state, she was shocked when the secret files scandal came to light in November 1989. However, following her trip to the Soviet Union, it was clear to Bossert that most of the press and the people in the region where she lived viewed her as a communist whose ‘spiritual home’ lay in the East. The papers Bossert left behind contain a large number of newspaper articles on that very topic. There are also letters and diary entries in which she documents a series of wild rumours circulating about her. Quite often, these were spread by former friends and acquaintances. For example, it was speculated that she was collecting the names of people who had made fun of her during the Carnival celebrations, with plans to pass them on to the Soviet powers that be. Were war to break out, these ‘blacklisted’ individuals would supposedly be the first to be shot. On one occasion, her son came home in tears after classmates told him that his mother had been tied to a tree during her trip and forced to reveal where Switzerland kept its supplies of ammunition. As if she would have been able to answer that question.

The fact that the whole family was deemed guilty by association weighed heavily on Bossert. Only her symbolic burning proved harder to bear. On 11 March 1954, at the traditional burning of the ‘Chluri’ effigy during Carnival (similar to the burning of the ‘Böögg’ in Zurich), a stuffed figure that was meant to represent Bossert was burned on a bonfire on Sissach’s main square, together with her books. Parallels with the era of witch-hunts did not escape Bossert, who gave vent to her feelings in her powerful poem ‘Vogelfrei!’ [Outlawed].

Vogelfrei!
Z Russland gsi,
Z Russland gsi,
So, die mache mer jetz hi!

Vogelfrei,
Vogelfrei,
Bänglet numme uf se Stei!

Hoppla druuf,
Hoppla druuf,
Bis zu ihrim letschte Schnuuf!

Aber breicht,
Aber breicht,
Settig Häxe sy halt geicht.

Z Russland gsi,
Z Russland gsi,
So, die mache mehr jetz hi!

A fateful journey

Up until autumn 1953 Helene Bossert had been well liked in Sissach, where she had played a full part in everyday and cultural life. Although raised in humble circumstances, she had worked her way up in the world through her own efforts. She had published her first volume of poetry ‘Blüemli am Wäg’ [Flowers by the wayside] in 1942, was well connected in the literature scene in and around Basel, popular in her neighbourhood and known throughout the German-speaking part of the country as a radio presenter. Having run one of the ‘Soldatenstuben’, establishments set up during the Second World War to provide soldiers on active duty with meals and recreational opportunities, there could be no denying her patriotic leanings. However, like many other Swiss, she lived in fear of further military conflict, especially as this time it could turn into a nuclear war.

Bossert preparing for Christmas celebrations at the soldiers’ canteen in Waldenburg, 1941.

She addressed this fear in a handful of fervently pacifist poems. In ‘Rottet ech zäme’ [Band together], for example, she called on mothers around the world to unite in opposition to war. Her recital of this particular poem at the Basel-Landschaft cantonal parliament garnered a great deal of applause and drew the attention of a Basel women’s association devoted to promoting peace and progress. Bossert was then invited to join the association’s members on a trip behind the Iron Curtain ‒ a trip that would have grave consequences for the poet. The Anti-Fascist Committee of Soviet Women had arranged a free three-week study trip to the Soviet Union for the women’s association, with plans for a subsequent reciprocal visit to Switzerland.

Helene Bossert gave the invitation a lot of thought before accepting it. In the end, she decided that understanding among nations could not possibly be reached without actually getting to know one another. And the temptation of flying off to distant foreign climes must have been irresistible for a poet who, although open to the world, had barely been further than neighbouring Germany, just across the border, and who had certainly never set foot in an airplane.

Propaganda

Thanks to the archive of documents Bossert left behind, which her son gifted to the Staatsarchiv Basel-Landschaft in 2022, more is finally known about the events on this trip, which took place from 5 to 26 September 1953. The hosts had drawn up a rather intensive programme for their visitors, based entirely on prevailing ideas about women’s interests at the time, including visits to a new gynaecological clinic, factories with progressive hiring practices, children’s nurseries and much more ‒ all intended to convince the Swiss of the advantages of the communist system. The propaganda strategies ranged from subjecting the visitors to constant sensory overload to very carefully selecting what they were shown right through to evenings at the opera or ballet, which barely left sufficient time to sleep. A diary in which Bossert recorded her unfiltered impressions clearly reveals that the poet was not entirely immune to these strategies – during the trip, she noticeably failed to maintain a critical distance to what she was being told.

However, the accusation made after the trip that she herself was spreading propaganda had no basis in truth whatsoever. At no point in any of her utterances, whether made in private or intended for publication, did Bossert ever advocate for communism or place it above the Western system. But she did steadfastly refuse to speak out against the Soviet Union or to apologise for having gone on the trip. She did not feel she had done anything wrong, claiming she would happily have accepted an invitation to take part in a similar trip to the USA, had one been organised. She repeatedly pointed out that a three-week stay was not long enough to come to a truly informed opinion, and that it was only natural that the hosts would wish to show off their country in the best light.

Bossert paid a high price for her refusal to budge. For years, she and her family were forced to live a reclusive life, surrounded by a hostile social atmosphere and under great financial pressure. Whenever she was invited to give a reading, the Attorney General’s Office would intervene behind the scenes. Opportunities for this gifted speaker to make public appearances all but dried up.

Helene Bossert in the garden of her home at Bützenenweg in Sissach, where she lived for almost half a century. She spent the last years of her life in the Jakobushaus care home in Thürnen.

Not an isolated case

Bossert was not the only person to have their life turned upside down by the anti-communist sentiment in Switzerland during the Cold War. The most famous example is undoubtedly the communist writer and art historian Konrad Farner (1903–1974). After the NZZ newspaper published his address, he and his family were practically terrorised in their own home by an outraged mob. But the machinations of the Office of the Attorney General also had adverse consequences for numerous unnamed Swiss men and women, hampering their careers and way of life.

Helene Bossert may not have been a communist like Konrad Farner, but they did have one thing in common: both were slowly (and only partly) rehabilitated in the wake of the 1968 protests.

Rea Köppel

A Cold War witch-hunt