Swiss socialist who organised the Zimmerwald anti-war conference of 1915 and chaired the International Socialist Commission
In 1918 he founded and chaired the Olten Action Committee and led the general strike. A military tribunal sentenced him to six months in prison for urging soldiers to refuse orders to fire on strikers.
A printer who became a young leader of the Swiss Social Democratic left, he opposed the war. With the Italian Socialist Party he prepared an anti-war conference independent of the International Socialist Bureau, organised the Zimmerwald conference of September 1915 and chaired the movement’s International Socialist Commission from 1915 to 1917. He had to step down in 1917 over the Grimm–Hoffmann affair, an attempt to broker a German–Russian peace with the Swiss foreign minister. He led the Swiss general strike of November 1918, was jailed, and later served in the Bern cantonal government and the federal parliament.
Career timeline
- 1906–1909Worked as a local labour secretary in Basel.
- 1911–1955Served in the National Council, with a brief interruption in 1919–1920.
- 1915–1917Chaired the International Socialist Commission of the Zimmerwald movement.
- 1918–1938Served in the government of the city of Bern.
- 1938–1946Served in the cantonal government of Bern.
Swiss communist who organised Lenin’s sealed-train journey in 1917 and sat on the Comintern’s founding presidium
He organised Lenin’s party’s passage through Germany in 1917 and represented the Swiss communists at the Comintern’s founding congress in 1919.
From St. Gallen, he worked on the left of the Swiss Social Democrats and joined the Zimmerwald movement. After the February Revolution of 1917 he was the chief organiser of the sealed-train journey that took Lenin’s party from Switzerland across Germany back to Russia. At the Comintern’s founding congress in 1919 he represented the Swiss communists and sat on the presidium, and he helped found the Communist Party of Switzerland. A member of the National Council from 1917 to 1922, he later moved to the Soviet Union, was arrested in the purges in 1938 and was shot in a camp in 1942; he was rehabilitated in 1956.
Career timeline
- 1917Organised Lenin’s party’s return from Switzerland to Russia via Germany.
- 1919Represented the Swiss communists at the Comintern’s founding congress.
- 1923Began working for International Workers’ Aid and chaired an agricultural cooperative in the Soviet Volga region.
- 1938Arrested in the Soviet Union and sentenced to hard labour.
Swiss vice-consul in Budapest who saved tens of thousands of Jews with protective letters and safe houses
Born in Walzenhausen, Switzerland, he emigrated to the United States in 1913 and from 1920 worked in the Swiss consular service in the US and in Jaffa. Appointed Swiss vice-consul in Budapest in 1942, he cooperated with the Jewish Agency. In 1944 he negotiated with the Hungarian government and the Nazis for permission to issue 8,000 protective letters for emigration to Palestine, applied it to families rather than individuals, and issued tens of thousands more letters, all numbered between one and 8,000. He declared some 76 houses around Budapest annexes of the Swiss legation; about 3,000 people found refuge at the “Glass House”. Credited with saving over 62,000 Jews, he was criticised after the war for exceeding his authority and rehabilitated only in 1958; in 1965 Yad Vashem named him one of the Righteous Among the Nations.
Career timeline
- 1913Emigrated to the United States
- 1920Joined the Swiss Legation in Washington
- 1935–1942Swiss vice-consul in Jaffa
- 1942–1945Swiss vice-consul in Budapest
- 1952–1961Swiss consul general in Bregenz
- 1965Righteous Among the Nations
