Metadata: Estate of Philippe Schwed
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 Philippe Schwed
- Title:
- Estate of Philippe Schwed
- Title (official language):
- Einzelbestand Philippe Schwed
- Creator/accumulator:
- Schwed, Philippe; Brunschvig, Georges; Lifschitz, Boris; Jonak-von Freyenwald, Hans; Meyer, Oskar
- Date(s):
- 1886/1985
- Language:
- German
- French
- Extent:
- 0.63 shelf metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- The collection contains material on the trial of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG) and the Jewish Community of Bern (JGB) concerning ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ at the District Court of Bern in 1933 to 1935. It includes trial files, minutes of meetings, correspondence, reporting files of Oskar Meyer, an attorney from Basel, concerning the Basel trial 1933-1936 as well as the private criminal case of Jules Dreyfus-Brodsky, Marcus Cohn and Markus Ehrenpreis against Alfred Zander et al. for libel at the Basel District Court. It also contains personal files of Emile Colombi, Arthur Emsheimer, Adolphe (Adolf) Guggenbuehl (Guggenbühl) and Jacob Lorenz.
- Archival history:
- After the sudden death of Philippe Schwed, his daughters had to deal with the extensive holdins of their father, a large library and documentation on the history of the Jews in Switzerland. They offered a large part of the documents to various persons and institutions. Through the mediation of Jacques Picard, University of Basel, and Barbara Roth, Library Geneva, the Archives of Contemporary History (AfZ) was able to retrieve some of the files in 2008. The files originate from diverse provenances, including Georges Brunschvig, Boris Lifschitz, Hans Jonak-von Freyenwald and Oskar Meyer. How they came into the possession of Philippe Schwed is not documented. Supplementary files can be found in the IB SIG Bern Trial and Georges Brunschvig estate in the AfZ and in the Wiener Collection at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel and the Wiener Library in London.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Philippe Schwed was born in 1937 in Lausanne as the son of Léon (Leopold) Swede (1896-1967). His father moved in 1907 from Alsace to Switzerland and founded a small textile company and married Suzanne Schwed, née Lang (1908-1988) from Alsace. Both parents were Jewish. Schwed attended the Ecole primaire de Montriond, the Collège classique cantonal and the Gymnase de la Cité in Lausanne and Béthusy. Later he studied French, history, German, English and philosophy at the University of Lausanne. He started teaching German and history at the upper secondary school in Lausanne and Geneva, and French as a foreign language during the summer academies at the University of Geneva. He was also an author and translator of various books, including Alfred A Häsler's ‘Das Boot ist voll. Die Schweiz und die Flüchtlinge, 1933-1945’ as well as educational writings. In cooperation with Jacqueline Veuve he realised film projects of the TVCO on the history of Geneva. In 1962, he married Ginette Duvoisin, born 1934, with whom he had two daughters named Véronique and Florence. The couple divorced in 1976. Schwed died in Geneva in 2007.
- Access points: locations:
- Basel
- Subject terms:
- Antisemitism
- Legal records
- 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