Swiss Social Archives

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The premises in the Haus zum Sonnenhof at Stadelhofen train station in Zurich

The Swiss Social Archives (SSA) in Zurich has existed since 1906 with a special library , documentation center and research fund for social, political and cultural change as well as social issues and movements . The archive and library of the Swiss Social Archives are part of the Swiss inventory of cultural assets of national importance .

Profile and stock

The Swiss Social Archive offers a historical archive, a special scientific library and current-related documentation. Documents are collected on relevant social issues. These include topics such as work , gender relations , generations and youth scenes , migration , social policy , welfare , social conditions and movements , the environment and traffic, as well as war and peace from the early 19th century to the present. The collection includes more than 175,000 books, approx. 1,400 current periodicals (many of which are also available electronically), archives, manuscripts, posters, badges, around 1.25 million newspaper clippings, over 160,000 brochures and pamphlets, audio and visual documents and access to a digital press documentation. The estates of over 700 corporations and around 130 personalities (for example Herman Greulich , Max Weber , James Schwarzenbach ) are also kept. These include, for example, the archives of the Swiss Charitable Society , Pro Juventute , Pro Senectute , the most important Swiss trade unions and employee associations, environmental associations, various political parties, women's and youth organizations and social movements, as well as special collections such as the Swiss gay archive , women / lesbians -Archive , Gretler's Panoptikum on Social History or the Russian- Swiss Archive. In 2020, the social archive will be significantly involved in the collection of digital documents on the corona crisis . Thus, the social archive is a national leader in securing socio-historical documents of non-governmental origin that are worthy of transmission.

The Swiss Social Archive sees itself as a link between science and the public. It promotes exchange through events of all kinds, through the publication of edited volumes on Swiss social history, bibliographical works and publications dealing with special collections, as well as through collaboration on topic-related websites (e.g. on the women's movement, sports history or the corona crisis). It is a place where historical and present-day disciplines meet. The social archive sees itself as part of the Swiss archive and library landscape and works with related institutions at home and abroad (including as a founding member of the International Association of Labor History Institutions ). It has been a research infrastructure institution recognized by the Swiss Confederation since 1974 and has its own research funding fund (Research Ellen Rifkin Hill).

organization

The social archive is run by a non-profit association . The president is Matthieu Leimgruber. The most important donors of the Swiss Confederation , the Canton of Zurich and the City of Zurich are represented on the board of the sponsoring association . There is also a scientific advisory board. In 2020, this consisted of Gianni d'Amato ( University of Neuchâtel ), Petra Hätscher ( University of Konstanz ), Damir Skenderovic ( University of Freiburg CH), Marcel van der Linden ( International Institute of Social History , Amsterdam) and Simone Walther-von Jena ( German Federal Archives , Berlin). The social archive employs around 20 archivists and librarians and is a training company for I + D specialists . Christian Koller has been the director since 2014 .

use

The use of the social archive is public and free of charge. The holdings are used intensively above all by researchers, students, teachers from the social sciences and humanities, but also by chroniclers of contemporary history such as journalists. With around 60,000 people entering the reading room each year, the social archive is used far more than institutions of comparable size. The holdings of the library department are listed in the NEBIS network catalog , the other holdings can be researched using the corresponding finding aids on the homepage.

history

The social archive was founded in 1906 on the initiative of the pastor and politician Paul Pflüger as the “Central Office for Social Literature in Switzerland”. The model was the “Musée social”, a socio-political think tank in Paris. The first reading room was opened in 1907 on Seilergraben in Zurich (in its place is now the administrative wing of the Zurich Central Library ). As early as 1919 it became necessary to move to larger rooms in the choir of the Predigerkirche . The institution, which has been known as the “Swiss Social Archives” since 1942, experienced particularly strong growth at the end of the Second World War. In 1957 they moved into a new building on Neumarkt. The social archive has been located at Zurich Stadelhofen train station since 1984 . Since 2005, additional magazines have been located in the “Werd” administrative center of the city of Zurich.

In the early days of the social archive, emigrants from Russia and Germany met in the reading room . Was also one of them Lenin . In the interwar period, the archive was heavily used by intellectuals who had fled the fascist dictatorships in Germany and Italy. After the Second World War, Eastern European refugees were often to be found in the social archive (including Nobel Prize for Literature Alexander Solzhenitsyn ). In the early 21st century, the social archive set up essential infrastructures for archiving audiovisual and digital cultural assets.

Head of the social archive

1906-1909 Gustav Büscher
1909-1929 Sigfried Bloch
1929-1941 Paul Kägi
1942-1966 Eugen Steinemann
1966-1968 Jakob Ragaz
1968-1987 Miroslav Tuček
1988-2014 Anita Ulrich
since 2014 Christian Koller

See also

literature

  • Jacqueline Häusler: 100 Years of Social Knowledge: Swiss Social Archives, 1906-2006. Edited by the Swiss Social Archives. Swiss Social Archives, Zurich 2006.
  • Everyday work and company life: on the history of industrial working and living conditions in Switzerland. Edited by the Swiss Social Archives on the anniversary of its 75th anniversary. Rüegger, Diessenhofen 1981, ISBN 3-7253-0140-9 . 2nd edition 1982.
  • Urs Kälin: Fixed movement? Social movements and their archives . In: Arbido 3 (2007). Pp. 74-77.
  • Urs Kälin, Kathryn Pfenniger, Margreth Stammbach: The Swiss Social Archives on the Internet . In: History and Computer Science 10 (1999). Pp. 147-153.
  • Christian Koller : Library history as histoire croisée: The Swiss Social Archives and the phenomenon of exile. In: Rafael Ball, Stefan Wiederkehr (Ed.): Networked Knowledge - Online - The library as a management task. De Gruyter, Berlin 2015. pp. 365–392
  • Christian Koller: Digitales Sozialarchiv: What happened so far . In: Sozialarchiv Info 1 (2018). Pp. 12-15.
  • Christian Koller: Neither censorship nor propaganda: How the Swiss Social Archives deal with right-wing extremist material . In: LIBREAS. Library Ideas 35 (2019).
  • Christian Koller / Raymond Naef: Chronicler of Social Switzerland: Photographs by Ernst Koehli 1933–1953 . Hier + Jetzt, Baden 2019, ISBN 978-3-03919-488-9 .
  • Christian Koller: La photographie ouvrière dans les Archives sociales suisses . In: Transbordeur: Photographie, histoire, société 4 (2020). Pp. 94-103.
  • Christian Koller: Social change as a collecting mandate: The Swiss Social Archives . In: Arbido 2 (2020).
  • Karl Lang: 75 years of the Swiss Social Archives. In: News VSB / SVD. 57, 1981, pp. 152-157.
  • Stefan Länzlinger: Swiss Social Archives - The Image + Sound Department. In: Newsletter photography. 19/3, 2012, pp. 17-21.
  • Stefan Länzlinger: Audiovisual private archives in the Swiss Social Archives . In: Memoriav Bulletin 25 (2018). Pp. 16-18.
  • Hanspeter Marti: Swiss Social Archives, Zurich. In: Urs B. Leu et al. (Ed.). Handbook of the historical book holdings in Switzerland , Vol. 3. Hildesheim 2011, pp. 317-325.
  • Fritz N. Platten, Miroslav Tucek: The Swiss Social Archives. Swiss Social Archives, Zurich 1971.
  • Kristina Schulz : Can social movement be squeezed between folders? Experiences from feminism research . In: Passim 21 (2018). P. 8f.
  • Eugen Steinemann, Eduard Eichholzer: 50 years of the Swiss Social Archives 1907–1957: Festschrift for the 50th anniversary and the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Swiss Social Archives in Zurich. Swiss Social Archives, Zurich 1958.
  • Anita Ulrich: The "Swiss Social Archive": Strategies for conservation and valorisation of the archives du mouvement ouvrier. In: Alda De Giorgi, Charles Heimberg, Charles Magnin (eds.): Archives, histoire et identité du mouvement ouvrier. Geneva 2006. pp. 92-101.
  • Anita Ulrich, Konrad J. Kuhn: Social movements and international solidarity: archive holdings and open research questions. In: Sara Elmer, Konrad J. Kuhn, Daniel Speich Chassé (eds.): Development field of action: Swiss expectations and experiences in the history of development work. Basel 2014, pp. 231–251.
  • Vassil Vassilev: The Swiss Social Archives in a new guise. In: BuB - Forum Library and Information 11/2016. Pp. 690-693.

Web links

Commons : Swiss Social Archives  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Swiss Social Archives Annual Report 2018 (PDF) Accessed October 29, 2019 .
  2. ↑ New Women's Movement 2.0
  3. ^ Swiss Sport History
  4. ↑ corona-memory.ch
  5. ↑ Swiss Social Archives Annual Report 2017 (PDF) Retrieved on October 29, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Christian Koller : 100 years ago: Lenin in the social archive . In: Sozialarchiv Info 1 (2016). Pp. 4-10.
  7. ↑ Christian Koller : Digitales Sozialarchiv: What happened so far . In: Sozialarchiv Info 1 (2018). Pp. 12-15.

Coordinates: 47 ° 22 '0.6 "  N , 8 ° 32' 51.1"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred and eighty-three thousand seven hundred and sixty  /  246812