Otto Zollinger, the creator of the flame, dedicated his work to all who made sacrifices in World War I, not just the soldiers. Vain.
Tens of thousands drove to the Forch on September 24, 1922 for the inauguration of the military man monument.
As many visitors as on September 24, 1922, according to the NZZ “low estimate” 30,000, are hardly to be expected on the Forch this Saturday. Otherwise, the course of the commemoration is strongly reminiscent of the festival program for the inauguration of the military man monument exactly one hundred years ago. With Ernst Stocker and Mario Fehr, two government councilors took the floor this time. The head of the army chaplaincy speaks, senior officers lay a wreath.
100 years ago, the Federal President, Robert Haab, even gave a speech. Drum rolls and the flag march are missing this time, instead of choirs like in 1922, a military game provides the musical framework. At that time, those who had been discharged from military service were “appropriately invited” to gather in uniform with a kepi. Now the Cantonal Non-Commissioned Officers Association of Zurich and Schaffhausen “requests” military guests to appear in tenue B.
Soldiers who did active service in 1914-1918 are no longer alive. In any case, Switzerland, spared from the conflagration, had no casualties in combat. What is the significance of such a monument in the third decade of the 21st century? For most it is a destination with a view of the Alps. The organizers of the celebration pay homage to their predecessors: in 1920, when almost all other cantons already had a World War I memorial, the NCO Zurich gave the impetus for a Zurich memorial.
flu and general strike
The history of its origins is strongly influenced by two further developments a good hundred years ago. First the Spanish flu: in 1918/19 it killed around 25,000 people in Switzerland, and more than 2,000 members of the army also died on duty. The latter were already counted among the victims 100 years ago, who the “World War 1914-1918 demanded for the protection of the fatherland”, as it says in the gilded lettering on the base of the monument.
The other event was the general strike, which immediately following the end of the war led to internal unrest and divided society in the years to come. The idea for a Zurich monument came up in 1920, when bourgeois forces were once again firmly in control. But the memory of the clashes was still fresh.
Therefore, a memorial in the city of Zurich, where the army intervened against demonstrating workers, was not up for discussion. It should be in the green. Several municipalities applied as a location. The race finally made a hill on the Forch in the northernmost tip of the municipality of Küsnacht. Even then, the decisive factor was the good connection to public transport through the Forchbahn, which opened in 1912.
Several horses have pulled the lower part of the flame to the base on a bridge carriage.
Believe it or not, 95 entries were submitted to the jury, which was headed by the canton master builder Hermann Fietz. The architect Otto Zollinger (1886-1970) won the race with his design “The Sacrifice”: an almost 18 meter high flame made of copper sheet on a five meter high step pyramid.
In his explanations, Zollinger made it clear that he did not want to create a war memorial. Soldiers’ monument, soldiers’ monument, these are just melodious words: “People’s feelings are not formed in this way, it is not a popular idea, but a party idea.” It is about a single expression for common suffering and deprivation in the last years of the war.
“Everyone sacrificed”
Nevertheless, the inauguration on September 24, 1922 became a martial rally for the resurgent bourgeoisie. A contributing factor was that a colonel corps commander claimed that the memorial stood exactly on the spot where the Austrians attacked the French occupying Zurich in 1799.
The SP city councilors from Zurich stayed away from the celebration. The fact that the celebration, perhaps not coincidentally, took place on the day the Swiss people voted on the Lex Häberlin, named after the head of the Justice and Police Department at the time, played into this. The so-called “overthrow law” for tightening criminal law was a result of the state strike and was sunk at the ballot box.
The flame is lifted onto the base with cables.
This is how the monument presented itself in 1947.
In order to erect the monument, a high scaffolding had to be erected.
Appropriating his work was undoubtedly not what Otto Zollinger intended. In the dossier of the cantonal preservation of monuments there is a text from January 3, 1923, in which he vigorously defended his idea: “All of us, men, women, children, made sacrifices in terms of life, health, belongings, property and livelihood. Everyone, everyone sacrificed, not just the soldiers.”
Zollinger also commented on the shape of the memorial: “Didn’t the broad ridge almost challenge you to make it the bearer of the sacrificial altar? Didn’t this center point of a gigantic panorama demand a marking by a great vertical line, like the flame?»
In fact, the work itself is unusual. Among all the war memorials that were created in Europe after the First World War, it is one of the very few abstract representations. With the sacrificial flame, Zollinger may have created a new symbol on his own, as Kurt Scheibler wrote in a 2010 seminar paper at the University of Zurich on the military memorial. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was not provided with a flame until 1923.
With the construction site on the Forch one could obviously impress the wives.
At the same time, it was a bold idea to plastically fix the flame, the “absolutely intangible element”, as the 1997 report by the cantonal monument preservation agency put it. The vernacular had captured this impossibility by speaking vulgarly of the “frozen fart”.
bastion of the patriots
After the Second World War, Zollinger was supposed to add to the monument, but this was never realised. On the other hand, in 1951 the government council issued a building ban in which it placed the site under landscape protection. In 1990 the flame was completely renovated.
The monument remained a magnet for patriotic, bourgeois forces and those further to the right. On August 1, 1973, James Schwarzenbach’s Republicans and Valentin Oehen’s National Action gathered on the Forch. The day before, the base had been smeared with swastikas. In 1979, a few months before he was first elected to the National Council, Christoph Blocher started his national career at the monument in front of a good 2000 SVP supporters.
However, its inventor Otto Zollinger would certainly have agreed that his work today without any reference to “military men” is usually simply called the Forch monument.
The commemoration of the “100 year military memorial” begins on Saturday at 1.30 p.m. with a concert on the square. We kindly ask you to travel with the Forchbahn.