Metadata: Estate of Hans Weyermann
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 Hans Weyermann
- Title:
- Estate of Hans Weyermann
- Title (official language):
- Nachlass Hans Weyermann
- Creator/accumulator:
- Weyermann, Hans
- Date(s):
- 1917/1987
- Language:
- German
- Extent:
- 0.5 shelf metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- The collection contains information about Weyermann's deployment in Budapest at a time when Consul Carl Lutz had to leave Hungary. Further material refers to the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Hungary. Weyermann stayed in Budapest also during the early period of the Russian occupation and was one of the few who had seen Wallenberg in Budapest in 1945. The collection includes official documents such as identity cards, powers of attorney and a biographical sketch. It also contains correspondence on the appointment as a member of the ICRC delegation and on the rescue of children in Hungary between September and December 1944 as well as with the Russians on relief operations in Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia between January and June 1945. It also holds correspondence concerning lawsuits against Weyermann from 1948 to 1954 and on the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg in 1945. It also includes literature on the ICRC assistance in Hungary 1945/46 and photos of the ICRC mission.
- Archival history:
- The collection was transferred to the AfZ (Archives of Contemporary History) in 1986.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Hans Weyermann, a businessman and ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) delegate, was born in Zurich on 12 January 1912 and died on 1 February 1985. He attended schools in Lichtensteig and began a chemist’s apprenticeship in Chur. From 1927 to 1932, he attended a commercial school in Neuchâtel and had professional stays in Paris and Brussels. He became managing director of various Basel chemical companies in Budapest for ten years before serving in the Swiss army as a corporal in 1939. In 1941, he left Switzerland for Hungary, but returned after the occupation of Budapest by the Germans in 1944. In 1944/1945, Weyermann returned once more to Hungary as an ICRC delegate. Here he was committed to around 100,000 Budapest Jews who lived in a confined space in the ghetto built by the Germans. He helped prevent the removal of 20,000 children to the extermination camps, which Eichmann had already ordered. From 1945 to 1979, he became again a representative of chemical companies mainly in Eastern Europe, including the German precious metals company Degussa. From the 1950s he resided in Walchwil (ZG).
- Access points: locations:
- Budapest
- Switzerland
- Subject terms:
- Holocaust
- 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