The first “modern” national parks were founded in the USA: Yosemite (1864) and Yellowstone (1872). For centuries, however, efforts have been made to preserve nature and shield it from human influence. One such example is Bogd Read more
Tourism
Sustainable tourism for the Swiss alpine region?
Mass tourism in the Swiss Alps was already a grim prospect for Hans Magnus Enzensberger in 1958. In his famous and oft-criticised essay Vergebliche Brandung der Ferne, Eine Theorie des Tourismus, he writes: Read more
The Tourist, a Puzzle
Does an ideal type tourist exist at all? The manifestations of tourism are certainly as manifold as people themselves. Instead of an impossible definition, history, classification or typology we are presenting a few scattered impressions from the wide Read more
Walter Mittelholzer, tour operator
Commercial air travel for tourists began in Europe after the First World War in 1919. In Switzerland, Walter Mittelholzer and Alfred Comte, the driving forces behind the Swiss airline company Ad Astra Aero AG, started conducting tourist flights to the Alps in the early 1920s. As these ceased in the winter months, two tourist flights to Africa in 1929/30 and 1930/31 were just what the doctor ordered for Mittelholzer. Not only Read more
International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017
As early as 2002 the United Nations proclaimed the International Year of Ecotourism and was then heavily criticized for it. The year 2017 has now been proclaimed as “International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development”. The hope of the international year is Read more
From the trenches of the First World War to the university lecture halls: war invalids and POW students at ETH Zurich
Switzerland must have seemed like paradise to him. After one and a half years in POW camp in Germany, Jean Chopin, a twenty-five-year-old French infantryman, was allowed to leave for neutral Switzerland in the spring of 1916. Finally, after an interruption of almost three years, he was able to take up his academic studies again in the autumn of 1917. Read more