Zurich People and their Money

Zurich People and Their Money

By Ursula Kampmann, © MoneyMuseum How do the people of Zurich cope with their money? Even if the typical Zurich attitude does not exist, the people of this city often understood how to take advantage of crises.

A picture tour on the exhibition of the MoneyMuseum and the Swiss National Museum in Zurich at the Bärengasse Museum from 2006 to 2007.

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Too rich ...?

Coming by train into the Zurich main station, one passes a house with a graffiti on one wall, where the name of Zürich has been changed into "Zureich" (too rich). Indeed, the wealth of Zurich is omnipresent: on Paradeplatz the shining halls of the big banking houses impress an international clientele. And right next to them, luxuriantly dressed people admire shop windows with jewelry on whose value people in other parts of the world could live for decades. Yet despite all this obvious riches, one can meet many people in Zurich who are constantly worried about their money. We think it is time to ask the question of why?

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Do the people from Zurich have a special relation to their money?

To answer that question right away: they do not, in any event not a relation that would be in any kind characteristic. The people from Zurich and their money – their relation is as diverse, as the people from Zurich are themselves. To illustrate this, the exhibition comprised 20 stories that gave an idea about how certain citizens from Zurich handled their money in a special historic situation. For the following tour, we have selected some of them.

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The wages of Pavia, 1512

Politics attract the most various people. Among them are always some who use their position to make as much money as possible for themselves. Jakob Stapfer from Zurich was one of those. In 1512 he commanded over a troop of soldiers in the service of the pope. It was a well-paid job, especially for Stapfer, who diverted a large part of the pay of his soldiers into his own pockets. This was nothing unusual during that time, but Stapfer overdid it. As a result his men cornered him in public in Zurich; they would probably have lynched him, if the abbess of the Fraumünster had not hid Stapfer in her private chamber.

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The "robbery" of the church silver, 1526

Somebody accusing his enemies of lacking moral should morally be incontrovertible himself – something that is difficult to realize for a politician. This was a lesson even the Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli had to learn. He accused the Catholic Church of using the charitable donations of her adherents for her own good, instead of giving them to the poor. For this reason Zwingli persuaded the city council of Zurich to confiscate all the possessions of the Catholic Church. However, in the end he used those financial means not to help the poor, but to cover the deficits in the city's treasure.

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The calumniated mayor, 1665

Not all politicians were bribable, however. The Zurich mayor Johann Heinrich Waser, for instance, fearing the envy of his co-citizens, kept an accurate account of everything he received, and of how he allocated it with the city council. Yet despite his impeccable bookkeeping, Waser's fellow citizens chased him with mischievous allegations. Being a realistic politician, Waser had supported an alliance with France that had caused heavy financial losses to some influential inhabitants of Zurich. These people now accused Waser of being corrupt. And even though the innocent man won one lawsuit after the other, he could do nothing against the accusation of his fellow citizens who claimed that he had been bought by the French king.

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The troublemaker, 1773

They existed at all times: people who like nothing better than to harass their fellow citizens in the name of order and justice. An especially displeasing moralizer of the 18th century was the priest Johann Heinrich Waser. He provoked the city fathers of Zurich so much with his taunts and allegations that they eventually had him executed without any sound reason. The politicians of Zurich may have been relieved when Waser was beheaded, yet for historians it was a severe loss. The finicky private scholar was a valuable informer, because he checked the city's bookkeeping for its accuracy, and always found – and publicly denounced – mistakes, thus enraging the members of the city council. With his records, Waser became the first statistician of modern times.

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Ziegler, the soldier millionaire, 1826

In the city of Zurich there lived also black sheep. Some of them even had to leave their hometown and find their outcome abroad. One was the bankrupt Leonard Ziegler, who went to India and made a fortune there. Ziegler was lucky, hardworking, and unscrupulous. His letters are an excellent example for the double morale standards of a typical 19th century European: while being helpful, decent and generous within his own family, he treated his Indian fellow men as second-class people. Ziegler repaid his debts in Zurich down to the last rappen and supported his brother in Zurich over decades, but punished his Indian workers personally with a horsewhip and put his only daughter, who was half Indian, off with a pittance from his huge possessions.

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And do not lead us into temptation, 1869

The directors of the Swiss Confederate Bank agreed upon the foundation of the bank in 1864 on the introduction of the then very modern French bookkeeping system. Unfortunately, not many people in Switzerland knew how that system worked. In the Zurich branch of the bank, there was only one young man who was schooled in it: the bank teller Emil Schärr. Over years he advised the bookkeeper, and explained to the director and the revisors of the bank how the numbers had to be interpreted. Because Schärr was at the same time the one to check the bank's cash, he was able to embezzle some 3.2 million francs over the years. In his closing argument, Schärr's lawyer accused his employers of complicity: "They exposed this young, inexperienced man to temptation; do not judge too hard, because he yielded."

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The financial venue of Zurich

Leaving Zurich main station toward the lake along Bahhofstrasse, one passes the monument of Alfred Escher. He was to become the father of Zurich as an international financial market. The great politician was a champion of technical progress, and as such was significantly involved in the development of the Swiss railroad network. Being a foundation member of the Nordostbahn (Northeast Railway), Escher realized that the railroad marked the beginning of a new era also financially: the technical large-scale projects of the 19th century required financial means of hitherto unknown heights. Hence Alfred Escher founded a banking house, the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, that would in 1997 become the Credit Swiss Group.

Escher's importance for Zurich cannot be overestimated. Many Swiss towns of the 19th century had the potential of becoming an economic center – yet it was Zurich that did it.

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Free money for free citizens, 1934

The Great Depression of the 1930s disrupted trade also in Switzerland. One of the reasons was the stubborn adherence of the Swiss government to the gold standard. Hence on the one hand, Switzerland did not suffer from inflation; yet on the other hand, trade came to an almost absolute close because there was no more money in circulation. A group of idealistic supporters of the free economy movement tried to counteract that development with the foundation of the WIR Wirtschaftsring Genossenschaft (Swiss Economic Circle) and the introduction of a complementary currency for its members. The WIR initiative was such a success, that the Swiss National Bank saw its monopoly in danger and tried with all means – ethical as well as unethical – to stop it. The free economy movement thus has its martyrs; and yet today, a time of recession, it experiences an unexpected revival.

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The gnomes of Zurich

The sculpture group Drei Gnomen (The Three Gnomes) was created by the artist Imre Mesterhàzy from Zurich on the occasion of the exhibition Zurich People and Their Money. It shows three exponents of that species.

The term "gnomes" became widely known in 1964, when the British foreign minister George Brown called the Zurich private bankers by that name in a flash of anger about the devaluation of the pound. In Switzerland, the expression has become a title of honor in the meantime. But justifiably so?

Mesterhàzy refers in his sculpture to the ambivalent character of the gnomes, quite in the way Goethe described them in his Faust II: in the play gnomes supply their emperor with a highly dubious paper currency that is covered by the gold treasures which can allegedly be found in the earth of the empire.

Mesterhàzy sees his gnomes in that tradition. The first of them elucidates about the economical principles of grounding, the second practices the announcement of mass dismissals in front of the mirror, and the third listens to the whisper of insider information.

But what is it that makes the private bankers from Zurich to gnomes? Well, gnomes are mysterious creatures, living and working in concealment and obscurity. Hence it makes sense to associate their actions with the Swiss banking secrecy, and thus with Swiss bankers.

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"Money is Security"

The exhibition Zurich People and Their Money not only wanted to illustrate the past and mirror the present, but also tried to encourage people to reflect on their own behavior towards money. The graffito

by Rodja Galli, produced especially for the exhibition, was to deliver the sociocritical background.

In addition one could find out about one's own money personality, or listen to video installations with their 30 statements about money, that sound reasonable at first hearing, but that can be proven wrong with a few words – as for instance "money is security."

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