Famous Zürich Residents
Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531)
In the Middle Ages, violence was the order of the day. The City Council tried to establish order by enforcing moral obligations, but the people repeatedly disregarded any attempts of this kind to reform their behavior. However, in 1519, Huldrych Zwingli was appointed the first priest of the Grossmünster church. He achieved that which the Council had failed to do; he reformed Zürich by focusing on the Word of God, prohibiting the sale of indulgences and abolishing the mercenary army. He did away with everything that did not comply with the teachings of the Bible, and banned images and orgies from the churches. Zwingli filled people’s souls with new moral values. He had a real fighting spirit and was killed in a battle against the Catholic cantons near to Kappel am Albis. His work was completed by his successor, Heinrich Bullinger, a silent thinker and planner.
A monument in honor of Zwingli is to be found by the Wasserkirche (Water Church). To this day, Zürich is constantly referred to as "Zwingli’s city".
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Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827)
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was an educational reformer and a father of orphans. His dream was to provide education for everyone, both rich and poor, and he devoted his life to achieving this goal. His motto was “Learning with the head, hand and heart” – and everyone knows that it is much easier to take in things through emotions than by simply learning them off by heart. The inscription on his grave is “Everything for others, nothing for oneself”, a maxim that he himself lived by and that has become famous all over the world. Even today, many schools, from Buenos Aires to Germany, are named after this great man.
In 1899, the Lucerne sculptor, Hans Siegwart, erected a monument to Pestalozzi on the only green area along the Bahnhofstrasse, in front of the present-day Globus department store. It stands – it could hardly be more fitting – on what used to be a schoolyard.
Other memorials: :
- Hirschengraben 18a; plaque with the inscription, "In a house in Hirschengraben, not far from this spot, the educator of the people,
J.H. Pestalozzi, was born on January 12, 1746”.
- Münstergasse 23; "zum roten Gatter" house where Pestalozzi lived during his studies.
- Wettingertobel 38 (vicarage in Höngg); plaque with the inscription, “J.H. Pestalozzi gained his love for the youth and the people from his grandfather, Dean Andreas Pestalozzi.”
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Georg Büchner (1813–1837)
Georg Büchner spent the last years of his life in Zürich. In 1834, Büchner founded the ‘Society For Human Rights’ in Giessen, a secret society of students and craftsmen. When his texts were published in the revolutionary socialist pamphlet ‘Hessischer Landbote’ under the slogan ‘Wage war on the palaces, peace to the shacks’, some people were arrested. In order to avoid arrest, he fled into exile and arrived in Zürich on 24 October 1836 after several detours. He lived in Spiegelgasse right next to Lenin’s former apartment in exile and worked as a private lecturer at the University of Zürich. That is where he began giving lectures on comparative anatomy. He simultaneously worked on the drama ‘Woyzeck’, which he left behind in Zürich as a fragment, for he died of typhoid on 19 February 1837.
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Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
Following the May uprising in Dresden, Richard Wagner and his friend Gottfried Semper fled to Switzerland with fake passports. Among other works, Wagner wrote ‘Art and Revolution’, ‘The Artwork of the Future’ and ‘Opera and Drama’ in Zürich. He fell in love with Mathilde Wesendonck. He gave his first public reading of his complete Ring poem in the Hotel Baur au Lac. He lived next to the Villa Wesendonck and worked on ‘Tristan and Isolde’ as well as setting the 5 poems by Mathilde Wesendonck to music. When Wagner’s wife Minna discovered his affair with the married Mathilde Wesendonck, he and Minna separated. He then moved to Italy.
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Gottfried Keller(1819-1890)
Gottfried Keller was a tragic figure. He grew up in poverty and attended a school for paupers, but was expelled for playing a childish prank. His desire was to become an artist, but he was not talented enough. Nowadays, we know Gottfried Keller for his works as a writer, such as the novel, “Der Grüne Heinrich“ (Green Henry), and “Die Leute von Seldwyla” (People of Seldwyla). From 1861 to 1876, Gottfried Keller was employed at the Town Hall as a town clerk. One of his favorite haunts was Zürich’s oldest tavern, the “Öpfelkammer”, from whose wall he still looks down on guests with a stern expression. In 1876/77, Keller presented to the public his so-called Zürich Novels, his first works as a freelance writer after relinquishing his post at the town hall. This series of five short stories were a homage to the canton and city of Zürich, and told about life in Zürich in an expressive and poetic manner.
Zürich’s Central Library houses the literary estate that Gottfried Keller left in his will to what was then the Zürich City Library in 1890.
Institutions:
Gottfried Keller Society
Gottfried Keller Center, Glattfelden
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Johanna Spyri (1827-1901)
Johanna Spyri’s story of Heidi, written in 1880, is famous the whole world over. Who is not familiar with Heidi, Peter, Grandfather, Klara and the beautiful alpine world from this classic work of children’s literature? The book has been translated into some 50 languages, sold just as many millions of copies, and filmed in several versions, and is as successful today as ever before. The author, who was born in 1827as the daughter of a country doctor, grew up in Hirzel, a village in the canton of Zürich, and taught her younger sisters at home, where she carried out autodidactic literary studies. After she married, she moved to the city of Zürich, where she later started to write children’s books. The little orphan girl from the Alps, who was brought up by her grandfather, was created in 1880. Spyri died in 1901 in Zürich, and was buried in the cemetery in Sihlfeld.
Johanna-Spyri-Museum
im Alten Schulhaus bei der Kirche
Opening hours: Sun 2pm-4pm (except for religious holidays and between Christmas and New Year)
Dorfstrasse 48
8816 Hirzel
Tel: +41 44 729 95 66
Johanna Spyri Museum (german)
Free entry
Portraits, furniture, documents and books are on display.
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Conrad Röntgen (1845–1923)
Conrad Röntgen was excused from taking the entrance examination for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) because of late registration. In 1865, he was awarded a Degree in Mechanical Engineering and he married Berta in 1872, the daughter of the landlord of the guild house ‘zum Grünen Glas’. The X-ray of Berta’s hand was seen all around the world and in 1901, Conrad Röntgen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing X-rays.
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Lenin oder Wladimir Iljitsch Uljanow (1870–1924)
Lenin lived with his wife Nadeshda Krupskaja at Spiegelgasse 14 in Zürich for about a year – a commemorative plate on the house serves as a reminder. He finished the work ‘Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ in Zürich. He spent a lot of his time in Zürich’s libraries. However, in his free time, he and his wife are said to have loved driving up to the top of the Zürichberg hill, lying in the grass and eating Swiss chocolate.After the revolution in February 1917, Lenin returned to Russia in a railway carriage which was declared an extraterritorial area.
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Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
Thomas Mann visited Zürich for the first time in 1905, while on honeymoon with his wife, Katia. He stayed at the Baur au Lac, which at that time was the only hotel by the lake with a view of the snow-covered Alps on the horizon. Whenever the couple returned to the Baur au Lac, they always tried to stay in the same room and dine at the same table in good bourgeois fashion. When Katia was diagnosed with tuberculosis, they traveled to Davos, where Katia stayed for some time at the sanatorium. Mann’s novel, “Der Zauberberg” (The Magic Mountain), is closely associated with this stay. In 1929, Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Four years later, the Manns left Germany and spent several periods living in Zürich and the surrounding area. After his death in 1955, Thomas Mann was buried at the cemetery in Kilchberg. Shortly before, the Swiss Federal College of Technology (ETH) had bestowed on him the title of honorary doctor. What did Thomas Mann’s study look like? This and much more is revealed in the Thomas-Mann-Archive at the ETH Zürich.
Opening hours
Museum: Wed+Sat 2pm-4pm
Library: Mon-Fri 9am-noon / 1.30pm-5pm
Free entry
(Registration essential, except public holidays)
Thomas-Mann-Archive at the ETH Zürich
Schönberggasse 15
CH-8001 Zürich
Tel: +41 44 632 40 45
Fax: +41 44 632 12 54
E-mail: tma@tma.gess.ethz.ch
www.tma.ethz.ch
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Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961)
C. G. Jung worked as a psychiatrist at the Burghölzli in Zürich from 1900 to 1909, and in cooperation with Eugen Bleuler he introduced Freudian psychoanalysis into psychiatry. After 1912, Jung created his own analytical psychology. In 1935, he became a Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich). Jung married Emma Rauschenbach and had 5 children with her. He lived and worked in Küsnacht on Lake Zürich.
C.G. Jung-Institute Zürich
In 1948, Jung founded the C.G. Jung Institute Zürich as an education and research facility for analytical psychology and psychotherapy. To this day, special emphasis is placed on educating Jungian analysts and psychotherapists. Jung’s theory is further developed and supplemented with relevant findings from current research. Moreover, the institute has become an international meeting place for students, researchers and lecturers, an inviting place for reflective peace and quiet, the exchange of experiences, and public events.
C.G. Jung-Institut Zürich
Hornweg 28
CH-8700 Küsnacht
Tel: +41 44 914 10 40
Email: cg@junginstitut.ch
1.30pm-5pm
closed on mondays
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Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
Albert Einstein studied at the polytechnic, which is now called the Swiss Federal Institute Of Technology (ETH Zürich), from 1896 to 1900. He graduated with a Degree in Mathematics and Natural Sciences. From 1909, he was an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Zürich, and from 1912 to 1914 he worked as a Professor of Theoretical Physics at ETH Zürich. In Berlin, where from 1914 he had a professorship which relieved him of all teaching obligations, he made a breakthrough in the general theory of relativity in 1915. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his 1905 work on the photoelectrical effect.
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James Joyce (1882-1941)
James Joyce, the famous Irish writer, is reputed to have once said that Zürich’s Bahnhofstrasse was so clean that one could drink minestrone soup off it. Joyce lived in neutral Switzerland during the two World Wars. He is considered to be one of the most influential writers of 20th century literature, among other things due to the novels that he wrote in Zürich, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, ”Ulysses” und “Exiles”. A memorial plaque adorns the wall at Universitätsstrasse 38, one of the addresses where Joyce lived. He was buried at the Zürich-Fluntern cemetery, grave no. 1449.
James Joyce foundation
Dir. Dr. Senn Fritz
Augustinergasse 9
8001 Zürich
Tel: +41 44 211 83 01
www.joycefoundation.ch
Opening hours of the foundation: Mon–Fri 9am–6pm and also by arrangement.
Free entry.
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Max Bill (1908-1994)
In 1983, Max Bill created his Pavilion Sculpture, a construction comprising clear, straight lines, which today enjoys a prime position in front of the head office of the UBS bank on the Bahnhofstrasse. Max Bill was the prominent Zürich protagonist of the Bauhaus style; a degree in Architecture from the Bauhaus in Dessau, co-founder of the Hochschule für Gestaltung (University of Design), member of the Zürcher Konkreten art group are just three of the key stages in his career as an artist.
Max, Binia + Jakob Bill foundation
Limmattalstr. 383
8049 Zürich
Tel: +41 44 341 25 67
www.bill-stiftung.ch
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Max Frisch (1911–1991)
Swiss citizen Max Frisch studied German Language and Literature at the University of Zürich. He had to abandon his studies prematurely for financial reasons following the death of his father, and he started working as a freelance reporter for the ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’. He later studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and completed his studies with a dissertation. The place where the executioner once performed his job is where Frisch built an airy outdoor pool – on the site where the ‘Letzigraben Outdoor Pool’ is today. He achieved a literary breakthrough with the publication of the novel ‘Stiller’. Both in this novel, in ‘Homo Faber’ and ‘Mein Name sei Gantenbein’, Frisch focused on the problem of personal identity and the difficulty of accepting who you are.He left his estate to the Max Frisch Archive at ETH Zürich.
Max Frisch - Archive ETH Zürich
ETH-Library Lesesaal Spezialsammlungen
ETH Zentrum HG H 26
Rämistrasse 101
8092 Zürich
Tel: +41 44 632 40 35
Fax: +41 44 632 10 41
E-Mail: mfa@library.ethz.ch
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm
Registration required.
Group tours can also be arranged on Saturdays and evenings.
Accessible by tram (ETH/Universitätsspital stop)
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Dadaisten
Hugo Ball, the German friend and biographer of Hermann Hesse, and his girlfriend Emmy Hennings, a German writer and revue performer, founded the Cabaret Voltaire on 5 February 1916: at Spiegelgasse 1 near Lenin’s apartment in exile. They justified the genre of Dada – rejection of conventional art and art forms as a protest against the madness of the time.
The Romanian poet Tristan Tzara joined them and recited poems. Other people to join them were the German painter, sculptor and poet Hans Arp and his wife, the Swiss artist, painter and sculptor Sophie Taeuber-Arp as well as the German writer, lyric poet, storyteller, essayist, dramatist, doctor and psychoanalyst Richard Huelsenbeck: they created paper cuts and woodcuts which had an anti-art character. Finally, the Romanian Marcel Janco also joined the group.
The Cabaret Voltaire with exhibitions, events, a bar and a small library is now open to the general public; this lively cultural establishment is where bridges are built from Dada to contemporary societal and cultural movements.
further information
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