(MENAFN- Swissinfo)
Deutsch
(de)
plan für ein museum der schweizer spuren im ausland (original) Italiano
(it)
un museo digitale delle tracce svizzere all'estero? Português
(pt)
suíço quer museu para vestígios dos suíços no exterior Français
(fr)
un musée numérique de la culture suisse dans le monde Switzerland was once a country of emigration. Between 1850 and 1914, some 400,000 Swiss citizens left their homeland. Most did so in the hope of a better life, to escape poverty in Switzerland. They founded colonies in South America, made wine in Russia and served as mercenaries in foreign wars.
Many Swiss still emigrate each year, whether in search of adventure, for financial reasons, or for love. Today, there are over 800,000 Swiss citizens living abroad, including the descendants of former emigrants.
And they have left their mark in many of the places where they settled. This heritage is however in danger of being lost; often it was never even known about in the first place. Johann Roduit, who represents Western Canada on the Council of the Swiss Abroad, wants to change this.
At the Congress of the Swiss Abroad in St Gallen this weekend, he is thus presenting an initiative to safeguard the cultural legacy of the Swiss diaspora.
Lack of colonial legacyRoduit is convinced that Switzerland's historical heritage does not stop at the country's borders.“Wherever there are Swiss people, they create Swiss culture,” he says. He believes that preserving and promoting this cultural heritage will enrich Swiss identity.
If you look for traces of Swiss presence abroad, you can find them in place names such as Bern, Lucerne and New Glarus – all villages in the US that were founded by Swiss emigrants. Or in Sri Lanka, where the Swiss building of the Baurs company still stands proud in the middle of the capital, Colombo – a legacy of Alfred Baur, who laid the foundations of his fortune with a coconut plantation in what was then Ceylon. Or in Golden, a town of chalets in the Canadian Rockies, where the famous Swiss mountain guides once lived.
Why does this heritage draw so little interest in Switzerland itself?“Perhaps we never thought there could be such a legacy, as we don't have a colonial past,” says Roduit. But this is just a hunch, he says. For concrete answers,“you would have to ask the experts”: that is, from groups such as the Swiss Heritage Society, Pro Helvetia and the Federal Office of Culture.
Roduit is concerned about preserving not just material heritage, but also the intangible traces left by Swiss in the world, for instance in the area of mountaineering.“Unfortunately, we don't know enough about our history and influence abroad,” laments the Canadian delegate, who recently coordinated a successful operation to rescue a relic of Swiss cultural heritage (see below).