Emil Zopfi
Contribution to the panel discussion, International Writing Program
Iowa City, 11/11/98
Paradise
For my ancestors, America was the Promised Land. They left our poor mountain valley for good in search of a better life. They left the unhealthy and overcrowded factories and the shabby farms to settle in the wide plains under the bright sky of the Wild West. Many members of my own family were among the emigrants and wherever you open a phone book in the United States there's a chance you find my family name.
I live in the Glarus valley in Switzerland. Settlers from Glarus founded a town in Wisconsin in 1845 called New Glarus. The community of New Glarus still keeps alive the traditions of yodeling, alpenhorn blowing, Swiss sausages and pastry. And every Labor Day weekend the entire population is involved in playing Schiller's drama "William Tell". In summertime citizens of New Glarus as well as many other US tourists visit the Glarus valley in Switzerland in search of their roots.
Roots
The root of the relation of our two countries is the emigration due to the poverty following the early industrialization of Switzerland. Emigration to the United States is the topic of many novels of Swiss writers, among them Juerg Federspiel's "Ballad of Typhoid Mary" or Eveline Hasler's "Ibicaba". Her famous novel is subtitled "The Paradise in their Heads". That means: The emigrants set off with the image of the Paradise in their heads. Maybe a few of them reached it, but quite a few died of disease and starvation before getting off the ship in New York's Ellis Island. Some of them built their own Paradise like the Amish settlers in Iowa, many of them of Swiss origin, who live still nowadays with horses and buggies and religious sermons in German language.
The relation between our countries is a one way road. Only a few of the emigrants ever turned back. The Promised Land swallowed a part of our culture, mingled it with other cultures to the universal cake called the American Way of Life. It's something new, but many ingredients, like Puritanism, individualism and punctuality have their origins in our own culture. Do hard work, fear God and save money is the way on which the Puritan pastors lead their herd. For them America "was to be heaven itself" - as Joseph Roth writes in his novel "American Pastoral". The myth of the dishwasher becoming a millionaire on the other side of the Atlantic is still alive today, incarnated by winners like Microsoft's Bill Gates or Intel's Andrew Grove, a Hungarian emigrant.
Fritz Zwicky, a great scientist and in the fifties director of the Pasadena space labs, was an emigrant from my Glarus valley. One of his books is entitled: "Everybody is a genius."
The Myth
That's the American dream as we dream it. The dream of the poor and powerless who triumphs over the rich and powerful with his skills. It's the subconscious dream of my country which in history has always been surrounded and threatened by much bigger and powerful nations: ancient Rome, the Austrian monarchy, the great nation of France and, of course, Germany. Today we are surrounded by the European Union which we didn't join. The expression of this feeling is our national myth, the myth of the simple mountain peasant who kills the bailiff, the executor of power. It's the myth of William Tell. Many foreigners believe that William Tell was a historic figure but it's far from being true. William Tell is a literary character, set on stage by the German romantic writer Friedrich Schiller. Perhaps Switzerland is the only country in the world with a literary character as a national myth. Tell is the romantic version of the biblical myth of David and Goliath. David killed Goliath with the precise shot of a stone, Tell killed the bailiff Gessler with the precise shot of an arrow.
The Change
A typical character in Swiss literature has always been the powerless person, the weak one who stands against the powerful. Swiss literature in general has always been on the side of the powerless and has confronted the abuse of big power. And therefore the Image of America among the writers and intellectuals changed in the sixties and seventies when the US rose to be the biggest power in the world and the Vietnam war was going on.
In the Vietcong movement we recognized a powerless nation fighting for independence against the world's heaviest war machinery. Rice farmers on bicycles fighting tanks and bombers, that was like Tells arrow against the bailiff Gessler. Yet Switzerland's official policy was in accord with US policy and therefore a gap opened between political Switzerland and cultural Switzerland. The Swiss government invited the US General Westmoreland to an official visit while the most important writers signed manifestos against the US bombings in Vietnam.
In the center of Zurich you can find a monument with am engraved poem. It's by Max Frisch, who was one of the greatest Swiss writers of this century. The poem ends with the stanza:
This stone
which is silent
was erected during the time
of the war in
VIETNAM
The monument is the symbol of a dramatic change of the Image of America among Swiss intellectuals.
Literary Love
On the other hand, Max Frisch was also a great friend of America. He lived for many years in New York and many of his novels are set in the USA, e.g. "Montauk", an autobiographical novel set in Montauk on Long Island. It's a love story between the elderly writer and a young American woman. Despite being critical against US power policy for the Swiss cultural elite America still remained a main destination, a way out of the narrow mountain valleys and the small country. And recently many of the younger writers have set novels in the USA, especially in New York.
E.g. Daniel de Roulet, a former computer scientist who lived for many years in New York and writes fluently in English, French and German. I consider his novel "The blue line" about a Swiss leftist who recalls the major political events of the last 30 years while running the New York Marathon as one of the most interesting works of modern Swiss literature discussing our Image of America.
One Way Road
For literature, as for the emigrants, the way between the US and our country is a one way road. The first novel I ever heard about was Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" which was read out in Sunday school when I was 5. In elementary school we read Tom Sawyer's and Huckleberry Finns adventures on the Mississippi. Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer and John Updike became our great favorites. Most of our writers read and speak English and have a profound knowledge of the American literature. But only few books of Swiss writers get translated and published in English. I don't remember any American novel set in Switzerland with the exception of Mark Twain's adventure on the Rigi mountain or the end of Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms". In Philip Roth's novel "American pastoral" I found a few lines about a Swiss town called Zug. He writes Zug was a center of Simmenthal cows, but that's more than bullshit. Zug is a center of electronics industry and multinational companies. But who cares? We a small country, we are "quantity negligible" in the eyes of the Americans who often mistake Switzerland for Sweden.
The Shock
During the last two years US politicians lead by New York's Senator Alfonse D'Amato suddenly discovered Switzerland, Swiss history and especially the behavior of the Swiss Banks during World War II, the gold trade of our National Bank with the Nazis, the sealing of the Swiss borders against Jewish refugees, the collaboration of the Swiss industry with the German war machinery. Swiss writers had published many books about all these topics, but in the rest of the world, especially in the US, only a few people read these works. As long as Switzerland had been a reliable partner in the cold war against the Soviet block, questioning the role of Switzerland during World War II was almost like treason.
For the average Swiss, unaffected by intellectual and political discussions, since the end of World War II America had been the great friend on the other side of the Atlantic. I never forget my father weeping when President Kennedy was killed. With the drop of the Dollar the USA became also a major tourist destination. For the ordinary Swiss banker the Dow Jones index was more interesting than Swiss fiction and non-fiction. It was a shock for the average Swiss when Senator D'Amato set off his campaign against Swiss banks and government. The majority couldn't understand why our great friend and supporter in the cold war against communism suddenly behaved like an enemy, demanding reparations for a war which hadn't been ours and discussing a boycott against Swiss banks, chocolate and cheese. The average Swiss suddenly found himself in the role of William Tell confronted with a fierce foreign power. The Image of America dramatically changed in the head of the majority of the Swiss. The expression "bashing the Swiss" was reported to be in fashion in the US. Senator D'Amato became the incarnation of bailiff Gessler, bashing poor William Tell. But finally D'Amato was toppled.
The Mirror
But the enemy were not only Senator D'Amato and the American Jews. The enemy who wanted to destroy the nation was also to be found among the intellectuals and writers who had ever since the sixties proved to be anti-governmental. It was badly received when the Swiss writer and left wing politician Jean Ziegler was invited to the D'Amato hearings in Washington while the Swiss government decided to stay apart. Like him many other writers had a hard time being suspected of siding with America. Some of them were even blackmailed.
And so the Image of America among the Swiss has changed in history
many times. Sometimes it was heaven, sometimes the opposite. But
always it has been reflecting the relation between the big and
powerful and the small and weak. It was the mirror our national
myth, the drama of Gessler and Tell.