The past few days in Zürich have been busy and enlightening! We spent one entire day in the state archives searching for information on my Grosspapa Zweifel, whom of which we really don't know much about his life prior to emigrating to Canada from Switzerland. All we knew was his birth date, his parents' and brother's names and birth dates, and we had a newspaper clipping of his father's obituary that was printed in a newspaper in Switzerland. Once we got there, we realized that it was going to be a bit of a struggle to find out more because we didn't know the exact town that they were from. We thought Zürich, but as it turns out there is the city as well as a kanton, which is like a state so that made it tricky!
Case and I were very lucky to have had the assistance of one of the women who worked there named Verena. She translated and pulled all information for us that she thought would be relevant and let us comb through it. This information included original books that were hand-written records of the church, who at the time kept all the statistics of births, deaths, marriages, and families. We also went through rolls of film that had more "scanned" records on them; before the time of computers and PDFs this was how they transferred files. Finally at the end of our day (6 hrs later), Case found Grosspapa's name and his family! Verena was just as excited as we were after siphoning through so much and finding so little. The translations are underneath the photos below.
The next day we wandered around the city again and went to the Kunsthaus Art Gallery. Lucky for us it was free admission that day! We were able to see many great works, by very renowned artists. It was a good, laid back day. Next, we head to Feldkirch, Austria!
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| The city at night |
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| Old town was pretty quiet when the sun went down! |
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| The fateful record Case found that helped us discover the rest! |
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This is Grosspapa's birth certificate! It translates to:
The 22nd of February was born in Hittnau, in Isikon, Zweifel Richard, the legitimate son of Josef Richard Zweifel, baker and restaurant owner, from Unter-Wetzikon and Schänis, in Isikon-Hittnau, and from Anna Regula Oswald from Niederurnen.
Hittnau, where he was born and from, is a very small and poor village in the hills not far from Zurich, which could explain why they moved away and potentially could have spurred his desire to emigrate to the prairies of Canada in search of a better life. |
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| My research station and the cart they brought the archives in on |
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His brother Ernst's birth certificate:
On 25th of June, 1900 was born in Zurich, Hospital, Zweifel Ernst, legitimate son of Josef Richard Zweifel, baker and restaurant owner, from Unter-Wetzikon and Schänis, in Isikon-Hittnau, and from Anna Regula Oswald from Niederurnen, Glarus.
Verena explained to us that come 1900, a mere 2 years after Grosspapa was born, it became more fashionable to give birth in a hospital, and his mother would have went to the city of Zurich alone to have Ernst while his father stayed home with him. |
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| Piet Mondrian's Composition No. 1, part of the De Stijl movement. I was pretty excited to see all of these, but I think Case has permanently wiped from his memory asking me 600+ flash cards about who the artist, movement, and date of all these works were during my first year at U of T. |
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| Andy Warhol's Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster). Worth $105 million. |
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| Andy Warhol, Big Torn Campbell's Soup Can (Vegetable Beef); early pop art |
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| Pablo Picasso's Guitare sur un guéridon, 1915 |
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| Some close up details of I-don't-remember-what painting |
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| Admiring the artful nudity |
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| Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889 |
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| Van Gogh's self portrait, sans ear after that notorious run in with a razor |
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| MONET |
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I personally don't think Monet's paintings need a title, but he did and they were long (boring) and descriptive, such as this one:
London, the Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Opening in Fog |
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| I fell in love quite easily with Rudolf Koller's Cow in the Cabbage-Garden. I'm a sucker for cows in good lighting. |
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| Casey's favourite painting, titled Commander Death |
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| Close up of Commander Death himself |
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