Thomas Bürgisser03.10.2023At the end of the Cold War, the concept of neutrality lost something of its relevance. This in turn led, at the beginning of the 1990s, to the breakup of the grouping that had brought together Europe’s four neutral nations: Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Finland.
Rachel Huber21.09.2023Armed with a steely resolve and tape recorder, Hanny Christen from Basel-Landschaft preserved folk music during the 1950s, just as it was in danger of dying out.
Dominik Landwehr07.09.2023In 1960 an unusual camera came onto the market: the Tessina, made in Grenchen. It was the world’s smallest 35mm camera at the time. Although never a bestseller, it proved popular with some of the intelligence services.
Felix Frey29.08.2023In 1915, land surveyors realised that the summit of the Rosablanche mountain in the canton of Valais had moved several metres in the space of just a few years. Today, the cause of the movement is more relevant than ever.
Michael van Orsouw24.08.2023Sisi, the famous Empress Elisabeth, was a much more frequent visitor to Switzerland than previously known. She visited the Bernese Oberland in 1892, where she very much enjoyed a local product normally used as pig feed...
Noëmi Crain Merz19.08.2023In 1960, feminist Iris von Roten drove all the way to Turkey on her own. It was a trip that would straddle the boundaries between conservative role models and an exotic sense of freedom.
Adi Kälin03.08.2023Over 180 years ago, Switzerland’s first photographer, Johann Baptist Isenring, wowed the public and newspapers with his picture and took the oldest existing photograph of Zurich. Although Isenring was one of the best-known and most prolific photographers of his time, very few of his pictures still exist today.
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.
