Marguerite Reut

Marguerite Reut (born June 15, 1924 in Villars-lès-Blamont , France ; † October 18, 2018 in Bern ) was a Swiss ethnologist , author, embassy employee and interpreter.

Live and act

Marguerite Reut grew up with her brother in Lomont, an area of the Doubs département near the Swiss border, where her parents ran a cheese dairy . After the occupation of France by German troops, the parents moved to the nearby village of Courtedoux in the Swiss Jura in 1940 , which loosened up the family. So Marguerite Reut first came to relatives in Fehraltorf and later to Küsnacht on Lake Zurich, from where she graduated in 1943 from the commercial school of the Zurich City Daughters School .

From 1943 to 1946 Ms. Reut worked as a secretary for French at the Pro Helvetia Foundation in Zurich. There Marguerite was recommended to apply for a position in the political department in Bern because of her good knowledge of French-German. (currently, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, FDFA). After the Second World War, the FDFA urgently needed competent staff for the various Swiss branches, both in the consular and diplomatic service. In May 1946, Reut's preparation began in Bern and in July 1946 she came to her first assignment at the consulate in Hamburg .

In April 1947 Reut was transferred to the badly damaged former Swiss embassy in Berlin , in the middle of the ruins near the Reichstag building (today's government district). The official representation in the British zone was now called the Swiss Repatriation Delegation. Their task was the repatriation of Swiss citizens from the former German eastern territories.

Reut was also used by the British occupation command as an assistant during the unloading and loading of the so-called raisin bombers during the Berlin blockade in 1948/49. Day and night and in all weathers, these planes (mostly DC3) flew non-stop from the west to the three occupation zones (US, UK, FR) and supplied the city with everything it needed for life there, from coal to food.

After her assignment in Berlin, Reut was transferred to the embassy in Tehran in November 1951 . Here she maintained contact with various Iranian experts from Switzerland who either taught Iranology at the University of Tehran or were interested in the Persian culture and language in Persia and Afghanistan, such as Georges Redard (1922-2005) who later published her Dissertation supported.

Reut stayed in Tehran for only one year and came back to Bern in 1952 to the FDFA, which was then headed by Federal Councilor Max Petitpierre (1945–1961). In January 1960 she began working abroad as a secretary for the Counselor Chavaz for social affairs at the Swiss Embassy in Paris , which was under Ambassador Pierre Micheli and later under Ambassador Agostino Soldati.

At the Swiss embassy, ​​Reut maintained many contacts a. a. on Bianca Braga Fritschi (Science Po, Ambassador in Moscow), Hedwig Brüngger (first female Swiss diplomat with knowledge of Chinese, Beijing) and Urs Roland Berger (Sciences économiques, Université de Paris Assas).

After 1961, Reut was no longer able to work in the FDFA for reasons of study, but found the job as private secretary of the ambassador's wife, Madame Agostino Soldati, until 1966. While she was still working at the embassy in Paris, she obtained her Matura. She then attended various universities in Paris, in particular from 1962 to 1965 she attended the Ecole Nationale des Langues et Civilizations Orientales (Langues'O), where she studied Persian and Arabic. The main interest was in Iran and Afghanistan . In addition, from 1965 to 1966 and from 1967 to 1970 he studied history , geography and ethnology at the Université de la Sorbonne and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Economiques et Sociales. Between 1966 and 1967, Reut studied at the University of Tehran .

Thanks to her knowledge and her network with ethnologists and research institutes, Reut received various commissions for research in both countries, which were published in detailed publications. Sometimes it must have been very arduous journeys, especially to the southern Persian Lut desert . The aim of a stay from 1968 to 1971 was to research the silk industry in Afghanistan, especially in the Herat area . This also gave rise to her dissertation, which led to her doctorate in 1976 at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III, Ethnology Iranienne) and was awarded the title “La Soie en Afghanistan” in 1983 at the Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag in Wiesbaden was published.

In addition to his research tasks, Reut worked for a long time at the Institut des Etudes Iraniennes, as a librarian under Professor Gilbert Lazard and the director Charles-Henri de Fouchécour. In addition, she gave lectures at the Ecole des Langues'O on the history and culture of Afghanistan . In January 1971 Reut was appointed "Attachée de Recherche" at the important French Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and in October 1977 was promoted to "Chargée de Recherche". In addition, Reut was President of the Groupe d'Etudes Helvétique de Paris for two years.

In 1978 Reut returned to Bern, where she applied for the vacancy in the secretariat of the Swiss National Commission for UNESCO , but in 1979 she was not officially considered due to overqualification.

In the Bernese years, Reut was a member and co-organizer of the BODS (Movement for an Open and Democratic Switzerland), which merged in 2000 with Asylhilfe Schweiz to form Sosf (Solidarités sans frontières). She was also involved in the board of the ASAA (Association Suisse des Amis de l'Afghanistan), where she inspired the project of training midwives in rural Afghanistan (Hazaradjat), which had to be discontinued in 2009 due to lack of funds.

Furthermore, Reut was active in the humanitarian organizations Madera (reconstruction aid in Afghanistan) and Afrane (Amitié franco-afghane), but also in the Institute for Islamic Studies and Modern Oriental Philology at the University of Bern .

More and more burdened by health problems, Reut lived in Bern, died in the Inselspital Bern on October 19, 2018 and was buried in the common grave at the Schosshalden cemetery in Bern.

Publications (selection)

Reports

• The Kurds in the 20th century. 1980 and the history of this troubled people, 1994.
• From the glass blowing workshop in Herat, glass manufacturing in Herat 1967.
• Study of the population in Lut, 1978.
• Article on pre-Islamic finds in Eastern Iran.
• Article on trade relations in the Herats silk industry.
• Study commissioned by the French archaeological delegation on the relationship between irrigation and population in the vicinity of the excavations of a Greek city on the Oxus (Afghanistan).
• Collaboration on the Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan.

Books

• Reut's dissertation (1976) was published in 1983 in the Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag in Wiesbaden published under the title: La soie en Afghanistan: L'élevage du ver à soie en Afghanistan et l'artisanat de la soie à Herat.

Translations

• From Persian / Dari in French: Qataghan et Badakshân by MBKKoshkaki. A chronicle about the population of northeast Afghanistan under the title: Description du pays d'après l'inspection d'un ministre afghanistan en 1922 , Editions CNRS 1979.

Donations in museums

• Afghanistan Museum Bubendorf BL (Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica Bubendorf, Paul Bruderer): Several typical Herat objects in blue glass. In 2007 the museum in Bubendorf was closed and all items were returned to Afghanistan.
• Museum of Cultures in Basel: various fabrics and articles in silk.

literature

• Marguerite Reutː La soie en Afghanistan: L'élevage du ver à soie en Afghanistan et l'artisanat de la soie à Herât (Contributions to Iranian Studies, Volume 11) December 1983
• Marguerite Reutː Dossier from the conference on December 7, 1991 in Bern “We must show our colors” for a Switzerland without racism , Verlag BODS Bern 1992 [Translator: Annette Scharfenberger; Marguerite Reut]
• Urs Roland Bergerː The life of Marguerite Reut 1924–2018 , self-published Basel 2019

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marguerite Reut's obituary notice
2. ↑ Tagesanzeiger Obituary notice Marguerite Reut