Metadata: Estate of Carl Lutz
Collection
- Country:
- Switzerland
- Holding institution:
- Archives of Contemporary History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich
- Postal address:
- Hirschengraben 62, CH-8092 Zurich
- Phone number:
- +41 44 632 40 03
- Web address:
- https://www.afz.ethz.ch/
- Email:
- afz@history.gess.ethz.ch
- Reference number:
- NL Carl Lutz
- Title:
- Estate of Carl Lutz
- Title (official language):
- Teilnachlass Carl Lutz
- Creator/accumulator:
- Lutz, Carl
- Date(s):
- 1906/1998
- Language:
- German
- Hungarian
- Extent:
- 5 shelf metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Audio
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- The collection mainly contains personal and official documents concerning Lutz’s time as a diplomat, photos and tape recordings as well as correspondence with Felix Adler, Ernst Feisst, Miklos Horthy (with photos), the Lutz family, Benjamin Sagalowitz, Willy Spühler and many others. The collection also includes approximately 1,200 photos, 85 numbered films and additional short films.
- Archival history:
- The estate of Carl Lutz is a reconstruction, which partly reassembles and completes parts of the estate from different owners that were thought to have been lost. The first documents were received by the AfZ in the 1980s and later from the possession of his first wife, Gertrud Lutz. Other materials were provided by Carl Lutz's sister as well as by the filmmakers Theo Rais, who mainly owned Lutz's photographic work, and Bernhard Frankfurter. In addition, there were documents that Lutz had given to Alexander Grossman who had been involved in the rescue operations in Budapest. Documents on Lutz from Hungarian archives, which were compiled for the AfZ by László Karsai, the estate of ICRC delegate Friedrich Born, the research documentation of Theo Tschuy, documents in the JUNA archive as well as in the microfilm holdings from the Joint Archive (including NL Saly Mayer) and from the Pinchas Lavon Archive in Tel Aviv (MF Nathan Schwalb Dror) complete the collection. A partial estate from the possession of Agnes Hirschi, the stepdaughter of Carl Lutz, is located in Yad Vashem.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Carl Lutz, a diplomat, was born in Walzenhausen on 30 March 1895 and died in Bern on 12 February 1975. He was a son of the stone merchant Johannes Lutz and finished his commercial apprenticeship in the textile industry in St. Margrethen. Lutz was a member of the Methodist Free Church and emigrated to Granite City, Missouri, in the USA in 1913. In 1918, he attended "Central Wesleyan College" in Warrenton, Montana, and obtained American citizenship. In 1920, Lutz became German and English correspondent and head of the press department at the Swiss Embassy in Washington. He joined the consular service and earned a Bachelor of Arts at George Washington University in 1924. In 1926, he was promoted to law firm secretary and transferred to Philadelphia. In 1933/34, he represented Switzerland in St. Louis, where he married Gertrud Fankhauser. It was the beginning of his intensive photographic activity with the idea of possibly becoming a professional photographer. In 1935, he became office secretary at the consulate in Jaffa where Switzerland had taken over the protection of German interests in Palestine vis-à-vis England at the outbreak of the Second World War. He returned to Switzerland in 1940 after the German representation of interests was ceded to Spain and in 1941 he served for six weeks in Berlin as representative of Yugoslavian interests. In 1942, Lutz became vice-consul in Budapest and head of the Protective-Power department of the Swiss legation. In 1944/45, he organised a rescue operation for thousands of persecuted Hungarian Jews. He returned to Switzerland in 1945 and became head of the German-Interests department in Zurich. In 1949, he divorced his first wife and married the Hungarian Maria Magdalena Grausz. In 1950, he held negotiations with the Israeli government on German mission property in Israel on behalf of the "Lutheran World Federation" in Geneva. From 1954 to 1961, Lutz was Swiss consul in Bregenz. Shortly before his retirement in 1961, he was awarded the title of Consul General. Lutz was awarded honours in Israel, Hungary and Switzerland.
- Access points: locations:
- Hungary
- Switzerland
- Subject terms:
- Holocaust
- Refugees
- World War II
- Finding aids:
- An online finding aid is available.
- Links to finding aids:
- http://onlinearchives.ethz.ch/
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Museum Hohenems
- Author of the description:
- Severin Holzknecht; Jewish Museum of Hohenems; 2020