A Swiss Rebel: Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942)
Bonstein’s film documents the eventful and tragic life of an outspoken woman, but it also raises questions about the Swiss past. Since the mid-90s, Switzerland has become the subject of international debate because of its economic and political policies during the Nazi era, and it still fights the image of greedy bankers and financiers coldly profiting from war and genocide. In her day Schwarzenbach provided Swiss readers with a critical worldview–one honed on the sociopolitical realities she encountered in the Middle East, the U.S., and Africa–but her efforts brought her little reward in her lifetime.
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Her father, Alfred Schwarzenbach, was one of the biggest silk manufacturers in the world and one of the richest and most powerful men in Switzerland. Her grandfather was a general in the Great War, and her family embraced the Prussian military tradition; during the early years of National Socialism they were enthusiastic about its progressive potential. Annemarie’s love of morphine and women, not to mention her politics, estranged her from her family, and judging from her letters and opinions voiced by her friends Ella Maillart and Erika Mann, her rebellion against her family consumed a great part of her strength and energy. Frequently ill, weakened by drug and alcohol consumption, she was deemed “a hopeless case” by her mother, who barred her from home after a scandalous stay in New York that landed her in a straitjacket in Bellevue Hospital. In a letter to one of her best friends, Klaus Mann, she wrote that one of her brothers had done his utmost to get her out of confinement, but in A Swiss Rebel, Bonstein presents remarks from the same brother to the effect that his lesbian sister sickened him and wasn’t worth the money that would have been expended to break her morphine addiction for good.
Roger Perret, who edited and initiated the publication of Schwarzenbach’s complete works, points out that her physical and psychological breakdowns were directly related to political events. In December 1934, Erika Mann had written a satirical comedy about Hitler’s Germany, The Peppermil, that was banned in Swiss towns; Schwarzenbach, writing in the Zuercher Post, advocated free speech and blamed the banning on right-wing intruders. Throughout her life she was emotionally attached to Mann and to her own mother, whose political beliefs had made them archenemies. Mann even temporarily broke off the friendship because of the friction, which eventually led Schwarzenbach to attempt suicide. This was but one of the many crises caused by her intense emotional and intellectual involvement with the world catastrophe. Her most severe crisis, the one that led her to Bellevue, took place after France capitulated to Hitler.
