European History Commons^™

Bombing The Sister Republic: The United States And Switzerland During World War Ii, James H. Hutson

Swiss American Historical Society Review

At 11:10 A.M., April 1, 1944, American military authorities in London received the following "strike message" from aircraft attacking a target in Europe: "392 Group bombed Last Resort with poor results at 10:50 hours. " This terse communication described the "gravest violation " of Swiss neutrality during the Second World War--in fact, during the entire twentieth century: the bombing of the city of Schafthausen by planes of the 2nd Division of the American 8th Army Air Force.

Benjamin Franklin And Heinrich Zschokke, Donald H. Crosby

Swiss American Historical Society Review

History has not seen fit to couple the names of Benjamin Franklin and Heinrich Zschokke. To attempt to do so at this 1ate date, then, may well suggest dilettantism or even charlatanry. What can be said in defense of what might seem to be a whimsical coupling, one which flies in the face of time-tested historical judgment? To proceed logically: one begins, as an American, with a study of colonial history before, during, and after the Revolution, where one very quickly encounters the towering figure of Benjamin Franklin. Then, as a student of Swiss history and culture, one turns to …

O. H. Ammann's Return To New York, Othmar Ammann, Lilly Ammann, Rudolf Meyer

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Dear L.

Just returned from the snow-covered mountain heights of the St. Gotthard on a long ski ride. Am spending a few hours in this beautiful place, which, however, is at present quite desolate. The lake, the Pilatus look wonderful. If nothing intervenes I shall be home in 4 weeks. Shall go to Basel tonight and later to Kilchberg for a few days.

Othmar H. Ammann's Return To Switzerland, Othmar Ammann, Lilly Ammann

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Two beautiful and quiet days have already passed since we parted. The sea is so quiet and the sky so peacefully clear as to make one forget all dangers and sorrows. Besides, the pure air is so invigorating that I feel already much better and stronger than in New York, I am looking with confidence and pleasure to the future. I feel that my body and brain need a complete restoration and I will be the more vigorous and able to work afterwards. And how · about you? I still ·see the last looks from your dear eyes and the …

Letters From 1915 To The End Of The War, Othmar Ammann, Lilly Ammann

Swiss American Historical Society Review

My dear parents,

Tomorrow the last steamship that can bring you our Christmas greetings is leaving, so that means: hurry. Just a few words, but from the heart.

One is carried along here in the non-ending stream of business so much that one can hardly catch one's breath in order to appreciate the ideal side of life. However, with the approach of the holidays, spirits are lifted. With great excitement and wonderment, young and old await the festive days. What will Christmas bring, how will the New Year begin? This is what each one is asking himself and with thousands …

Othmar H. Ammann's Military Service, Lilly Ammann, Othmar Ammann, Gustav Lindenthal

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Finally I get to write you a few lines from duty. As Papa probably has already informed you, I went from Basel to Monthal, where I met Mama and Werner, as well as Rosa and Manja Labhart from Moscow. Werner was very happy. He is thin but looks strong and healthy. He did not want to answer my question of whether he would like to come back to America with me after the war. But I am decided about bringing him back with me. On the same evening I also visited Onkel Hermann and David in Zurich. I also met …

Hans Werner Debrunner, Schweizer Im Kolonialen Afrika, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Themes connected with Switzerland are often judged to be of only marginal significance. The Swiss nation as such certainly was no player in the European penetration and partition of the African continent. The involvement of Swiss people, furthermore, was numerically small and cannot compare with that of the Dutch or the Danes. Yet Hans Werner Debrunner's study of Swiss in colonial Africa is nevertheless of great value, especially since it is part of a set of other works he has devoted to African issues. It adds, first, much to our knowledge of Swiss migrations, understood not primarily as settlements overseas, …

Switzerland's Dialogue With The New Europe, H. Dwight Page

Swiss American Historical Society Review

In the midst of the extraordinary current political, economic and cultural changes transforming Europe, few nations find themselves in a greater dilemma than Great Britain and Switzerland. While they must participate to a degree in the process of European economic unification, both Britain and Switzerland risk in so doing jeopardizing their political and cultural identities to a greater extent than any other countries in Europe. No other European culture reveres political independence and sovereignty as much as these two. In addition, whereas the other nation states of Europe have been involved in larger supranational European empires until recent times, Britain …

Ii. The Lloyd's And Switzerland, Georgia Lloyd

Swiss American Historical Society Review

My mother had many reasons to be drawn to Switzerland. Her father-in-law, Henry D. Lloyd, had spent time there. Geneva was the international headquarters of the League of Nations, and also of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom of which, along with Jane Addams, she had been a founder. A member of the Board, she wanted to attend the 1926 Congress of the W.I.L.P.F. being held in Dublin. She believed spending time in other countries was part of a good education.

President's Report

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Over the past year, our on-going projects have progressed, although a bit slowly. While the publisher had promised to have the Frey Letters out last Spring, the book is only now coming off the press. Patience was also the word with regard to our proposals for the CH-91 exhibit since the US visit of a representative of the organizing committee was delayed from Spring to early Fall. Professor Erdmann Schmocker was, however, able to establish valuable contacts while in Switzerland during the summer.

Treasurer's Report

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The Swiss American Historical Society's Treasurer's Report from October 1, 1985 to September 30, 1986.

The Twenty-Third Annual Meeting Of The Swiss American Historical Society: Minutes Of The Business Meeting, Sylva Brunner

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The twenty-third annual meeting of the Swiss American Historical Society was held on Saturday, October 25, 1986, at the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, DC.

Women In Swiss Politics, Verena Grendelmeier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

You all know that Switzerland is that strange, little country in the centre of Europe. It is the place, where cheese has tremendous holes; where the snow-white Alps compete with dark brown mountains of chocolate; where every aborigine keeps his alphorn under the bed and every morning gets up - yodelling - and then, punctually, after a critical glance at his watches (and swatches that cover his left arm up to the elbow and beyond) hurries to his place of work - (you guessed it) - the bank, of course. Above all else it is the country that pretends being …

Media And Politics, Verena Grendelmeier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Who governs Switzerland? ls our country run by the politicians or is it run by the media? To make this clear right away: The answer is, neither by the one nor by the other, as I hope my expose, by assessing the relative roles of politics and politicians and of the media, will demonstrate.

Book Review: The Essence Of Swissness: A Special Issue Of The Times Literary Supplement, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The Friday, December 7, 1984, issue of the London Times Literary Supplement was devoted in good part to works about Switzerland and its unique literary and historical traditions. It opens with a challenging essay by George Steiner who raises the question "What is Swiss?" "The Writer may speak against the grain," he cautions, "even when he bears close witness. Ten years are, as I have found, too short a time in which to get to know the palimpsest of Genevan society, let alone those of Switzerland." Yet he offers courageously and with much insight his "impressions as to the nature …

Book Review: One Small Lifetime, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

To do justice to this moving memoir is less than easy. It presents the story of two intertwined lives, that of Amalia Thurkauf-Braun who was born in the 1880s and that of her son Ernst Albert, born in 1907 at Liestal, the capital of Canton Basel-Land, in Switzerland. The lives of Ernst's father Emil Thurkauf, in contrast, and of Ernst 's three siblings come only occasionally into view from the perspective of Amalia Thurkauf's reports or of her son's autobiographical reminiscences. Both records are touching documents that tell of unusual endurance, of sincere faith, and of incredible capacity for work. …

Iv. Maurice E. Perret's Les Colonies Tessinoises: A Summary View, H. F. Raup

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Recently a major contribution to the field of knowledge of California's diverse population was published in Switzerland by Dr. Maurice-Edmond Perret, with the title Les Colonies Tessinoises en Californie.¹ Unlike most studies of a similar nature, Perret had access to source materials in the Swiss archives as well as to those in California libraries.² But he went further: he conducted his study by means of actual field investigation both in Switzerland and in California, and it is this which gives his work particular interest to historical geographers.

Iii. Strangers Settling A Wild Land: Mari Sandoz' Writings About Swiss Settlers In Nebraska, Marianne Burkhard

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

On my first trip West, from the corn plains of Illinois to California and back, Nebraska was the first state with a physiognomy really distinct from the green fields I had come to know. Although there were many spectacular landscapes to be admired during the trip, the grassy hills of Western Nebraska, round and treeless, stayed in my memory. So did the sunflowers, lining the roads and swaying gently in the grass. Little did I know then that, years later, this rather bare, monotonous country would hold my imagination through literary works of women, Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz. With …

Review: Randall M. Miller, Ed., 'A Warm & Zealous Spirit': John J. Zubly And The American Revolution, A Selection Of His Writings. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1982. Xii, 211 Pp., Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This edition of the religio-political writings of Johann Joachim Zublin (1724-1781) is a valuable and welcome addition to Swiss Americana. John J. Zubly, as he came to be known in the American colonies, had grown up in St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he studied for the ministry. He was ordained in the German Reformed Church of London in 1744 and then moved to South Carolina. His writings which were published after 1760 touch upon vital questions of the years 1760 to 1780, years that saw the transformation of the thirteen continental North American British colonies into a nascent league of states …

Iv. Fond Memories Of Christmas At Home, Agnes F. Hostettler

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Dr. Agnes Hostettler, a member of our society, is professor of German at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. This article is reprinted by permission from Gardens for All, V, No. 12 (December 1982), 180 Flynn Avenue, Burlington, VT 05401.

Iii. Switzerland And The Era, Hanna Widrig

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

A little over a year ago the Swiss voters surprised the world with the acceptance of a referendum that added an equal rights amendment to the Swiss Federal Constitution. Is there an explanation for this sudden change of the rather conservative Swiss heart? Why was it that the Swiss equal rights amendment passed within the short span of ten years after Swiss women got the right to vote, when American women who have been enfranchised since 1921 were unsuccessful in the same pursuit? What was the Swiss strategy for this outcome, and what has been done in the past year …

Ii. Karl Herzog, The Historian As Activist: An Episode From The Time Of The Sonderbund, Sabine Jessner

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The Swiss historian Karl Herzog was one of the innumerable middle-class intellectuals who exercised an influential role on European liberal politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Many scholars have analyzed the participation of the bourgeoisie in political life, and they reach novel definitions concerning membership of this intellectual group within the middle class. Historians such as Robert R. Palmer, Alfred Cobban, L.C.B. Seaman and Lenore O'Boyle have devoted particular attention to this concern. For example, the British historian Seaman has cautioned his readers to substitute the expression "professional classes" or "liberal professions" wherever he encounters the word, …

Swiss American News Notes

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

This past summer Dr. Martin Steinmann, expert on Paleography and Director of the Manuscript Division of the University Library of Basel, Switzerland, directed the Third Summer Institute in the Archival Sciences at the Newberry Library of Chicago. Professor Steinmann is the Swiss representative of the International Committee on Paleography and is an internationally recognized expert on German handwriting of the Renaissance and early modern period, as well as the history of printing. His publications include the catalogue of manuscripts of the University of Basel (co-editor), the articles "Die humanistische Schrift und die Anfänge des Humanismus in Basel,"Archiv für Diplomatik …

Swiss Literature, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Switzerland has a rich literary tradition. In modern times both the German- and the French-speaking regions have produced important writers who left distinctive marks on the literature and culture of their time. The 18th century was a time of literary florescence in Switzerland. Important writers of that period include the Bernese patrician Albrecht von Haller (1708-77), whose long poem Die Alpen (1729; The Alps) extols the beauty and grandeur of nature; Johann Jokob Bodmer (1698-1783) and Johann Jakob Breitinger (1701-66) of Zurich, who helped free German literature from the confines of rigid rules; Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712- 78), "citizen of Geneva," …

Lucile Kathryn Delano Papers - Accession 28, Lucile Kathryn Delano

Manuscript Collection

The Lucile Kathryn Delano Papers consist of correspondence (1926-1966) relating to Delano’s research and retirement from Winthrop; travel diaries of trips to Spain during the early part of the Spanish Civil War (1936), to Switzerland (1950), and to Russia (1966); a draft of her book Oh Lovely Spain (1973); passports; an account of a trip to Europe in 1932-1933; her dissertation The Sonnet In Lope De Vega’s Comedias (1925); research notes; manuscript for her book Charles De Lannoy; Victor of Pavia; photographs; and newspaper clippings.

Emigration: New Beginning Or Premature End? A Book Review, Heinz K. Meier

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Why were certain experiments of planned emigrati.0n crowned with success while others ended in dismal failure? What went wrong in one case and turned out well in the other? What were the factors that determined the outcome of such experiments? These and similar questions arise in reading and comparing two small books, published last year in Switzerland, that deal with the history of two different emigration ventures from Switzerland to the United States of America

Letter From The President, Leo Schelbert

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

The Annual Meeting of the Swiss American Historical Society will be held this year at the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, D.C. Ambassador and Mrs. Dr. Raymond Probst have moreover most generously invited the participants to a luncheon at their residence. May I kindly urge you to attend this meeting which will enable you not only to shape the affairs of the Society, but also to meet with Ambassador and Mrs. Probst at their residence and to renew many personal contacts.

The Swiss In Hawaii, Niklaus R. Schweizer

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

SWITZERLAND AND HAWAII, at first glance, seem to have little to do with each other and any connection appears coincidental. A high government official in Honolulu recently was of that opinion and many would have readily corroborated his notions.

Major Sources Of Genealogical Information, Paul Anthon Nielson A. G.

Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter

Genealogical research in Switzerland is unique in many aspects because of several national characteristics. The physical terrain and political neutrality of Switzerland have virtually withstood the plagues of war which have ravaged the continent. Four offical languages - German, French, Italian, and Romansch - are spoken in many dialects by the Germanic and Latin peoples who are united through the Swiss Confederation. Caatholicism and the protestant Swiss Reformed Church are two predominant religions. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, Swiss rights of citzenship (Heimatberechtigung) are based on the medieval form jus sanguinis, the lineage of an individual.

History Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints In Switzerland, Dale Z. Kirby

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis gives an account of the establishment and development of the LDS Church in Switzerland without attempting to record a comprehensive chronological history. Instead, emphasis has been placed on beginnings and major historical developments.

In 1850, T. B. H. Stenhouse began teaching the "restored gospel" in French-Switzerland, at Geneva. Proselyting began in German-Switzerland in 1854. Despite mob violence and opposition from the clergy, press and civil authorities, some 9,846 joined the Church and 4,700 of these emigrated to "Zion." The discouragement of emigration, along with new emphasis on missionary work and improved proselyting methods, brought an unprecedented growth in …