How Zurich became the centre of Europe’s avant-garde

In a beautiful old bookshop in Zurich, a short walk from the lake, Doctor Michaela Unterdörfer is telling me about the Swiss couple who made this shop a beacon of intellectual liberty during the dark days of the Third Reich. It’s not a story of spectacular heroism but discreet and dogged resistance, and that’s what makes it such a potent tale for our troubled times.

Switzerland in 1933 was very different from Britain in 2020, but there was one striking similarity: across the border, 20 miles away, were countless refugees seeking sanctuary, yet the authorities said, “the lifeboat is full”.

Those authorities were Swiss and those refugees were German Jews, but the comparisons with Britain today are telling. Then, as now, these refugees were regarded as someone else’s problem. Then as now, the government reckoned they had enough headaches of their own. Only a few folk cared enough to reach out to persecuted people beyond their own borders, and two of the folk who cared were the young Swiss couple who ran this bookshop.