Recently while researching an image of Arnold Heim with an Orang Utan I came across the first journal of Heim’s expedition to Sumatra in 1928. To my surprise in the journal there was a photograph showing a doppelganger of the Swiss pilot Walter Mittelholzer. Mere two years ago in 1926 Arnold Heim had been on a trip to
Travel
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.
In the land of pyramids and mosques. The Swiss civil engineer Charles Andreae in Egypt
After the Kingdom of Egypt had formally achieved independence in 1922, the Egyptian government tried to suppress British influence in the country. In 1928, as part of these efforts, in 1928 the government requested the Swiss Federal Council to send an ETH professor
Island with literary potential
The small island Isla Robinson Crusoe or formerly Mas a Tierra or Juan Fernandez is located in the Pacific Ocean, about 600 kilometers west of the Chilean mainland. It is part of an archipelago which was discovered in 1574 by the Spanish seafarer Juan Fernandez and later named after
Glow with the Flow: William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (Naples, 1776-1779)
As a British diplomat at the court of the Kingdom of Naples, Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803) had an ideal location to study the volcanoes of the region. Several times he climbed Mount Vesuvius and witnessed the violent and dangerous outbreaks of the time. To capture his observations of
Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia (Basel, 1544)
After 18 years in the making, Sebastian Münster (1488-1552), the German theologian and humanist, finally published Cosmographia in 1544, a monumental Renaissance work. He drew upon a wide variety of sources: on the one hand, Greek and Latin authors such as Herodotus,