ever played together. Irène didn’t play with dolls or with children’s toys. At most, she’d play outside with friends, riding a scooter or bicycle. Of course, we played jass [a popular card game in Switzerland]; almost everyone plays that here. And Irène still likes to play that game, and Monopoly, she liked that kind of game. But she never really played with toys, not even as a small child. Lotte was five years older than me. She had dolls, but she also never really played like a child. She was always pretty serious.” Unlike Margrit, who sometimes waited tables in her free time, Irène never really enjoyed helping in the restaurant, says Margrit. “She didn’t like the world of the restaurant at all.”
Rhine: Rhybadi
Like their father, according to Margrit, Irène felt very at home in the water. Even in their looks, she sees great similarities between Irène and their father, “especially around the eyes. Her personality is also very similar to our father’s. In the summer, we went to the Rhine public swimming pool, the Rhybadi, almost every day. My father liked that. He often went swimming after cooking. He really enjoyed the water. He taught our sister Lotte to swim. There was a kind of belt, a rope, you could tie it around yourself, and then you could walk above, and below she would swim, and he was walking, and at some point he just dropped the rope and said, ‘now you can swim.’ In the Rhybadi you can see fish when the river is calm. In the early part of the year, when the snow melts in the mountains, a lot of water comes down, and then the river is fast and wild. But in the summer it’s quite calm. Outside Schaffhausen, there was a meadow, the Spitzwiese. We went ice skating there in the winter; we had blades that you could tie to your shoes.”
1951, Father’s Death: “Closed Today Due to a Death in the Family”
On Tuesday, February 27, 1951, the Landhaus restaurant in Schaffhausen was closed for the day due to a death in the family: Irène Schweizer’s father died unexpectedly at the age of 49. Irène was nine years old. On February 23, the Schaffhausen newspaper reported:
It is with great sorrow that we inform our relatives, friends, and acquaintances that our dear, unforgettable husband, son, father, brother, brother-in-law, and uncle, Karl Schweizer, chef and innkeeper of the Landhaus in Schaffhausen, was taken from us this morning at 10:00. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 49. We ask you to keep the memory of our dear Karl in your thoughts and in your hearts. In deep mourning: his wife, Frieda Schweizer; mother, Hermione Schweizer-Surbeck; children, Lotti, Irène, and Margrit; brother, Alfred Schweizer and family, Wallisellen, and other relatives. The funeral service will take place on Tuesday, February 27, 1951, at 1:30 PM at the Waldfriedhof in Schaffhausen.
The Agricultural Association of the canton of Schaffhausen wrote: “For fifteen years, he put all of his energy into the service of the job he had taken on, and he successfully developed his business. We will always remember him with gratitude and honor.” The Schaffhausen men’s choir wrote in their obituary: “It is our sad duty to report the sudden departure of our dear member Karl Schweizer, innkeeper at the Landhaus. The memorial service will take place on Tuesday, February 27, at 1:30 PM in the Waldfriedhof. We hope that as many singers as possible will give our dear departed colleague his funeral cortege. Meeting at 1:15 in the Waldfriedhof.”
The Innkeepers’ Association of the canton of Schaffhausen also paid their respects: “With great sorrow, we inform our colleagues of the departure of our esteemed actuary and colleague Karl Schweizer, chef of the restaurant at the Landhaus in Schaffhausen. Our friend Karl was taken suddenly by a heart attack. We offer our deepest condolences to his widow and children. Our colleague Karl Schweizer is now at rest, but his spirit lives on with us.”
“It was a terrible blow, very sad,” Schweizer remembers. “It was very difficult for my mother. With the help of relatives and some others, she kept the Landhaus going until it was no longer possible.”
Safety and Distance: Her Own World of Music
Margrit recalls that Irène distanced herself at an early age. “I don’t know why she didn’t want to have anything to do with the family for a while. Maybe, as a child, she missed the feeling of security, or that someone had time for her. She just withdrew into music, it really brought her joy.” The experience of lack of parental attention and quality time with the family had a lasting effect on Schweizer. Later, she often said that the career of an improvising musician is incompatible with the decision to become a mother.
School Days: No Shrinking Violet
Schweizer says that she was brought up in the Swiss Reformed tradition: “In school, I had religion classes, and sometimes I went to church on Sundays. My mother was Catholic, but she had a Swiss Reformed wedding, because my father wanted it. But none of us was really religious. In elementary school I was always a good student, but after my father died I didn’t do as well in school, and I failed the secondary school entrance exam. My teacher let me slide, though, because he understood that it was related to my father’s death. In secondary school, girls and boys were separated; we only saw each other during breaks. I had a very good teacher, Ortrud Gehrig. She had a warm personality, she was clever, and even at that time she was emancipated—she was no shrinking violet.” (In: Heinz Nigg, Wir sind wenige, aber wir sind alle [We Are Few, but We Are All], Limmat 2008, pp. 56–66).
“At the young age of 12 I fell in love with my teacher, and later with classmates. But there was no discussion of this then—it was taboo. I already knew at the time that same-sex love existed, and I had read a little about it in gossip magazines. Being gay was stigmatized, and what talk there was, was mostly about gay men; there were no lesbians in these gossip rags. It was painful for me already then. But I knew: I have music, it will get me through, I get so much from it!” (In: Nigg, pp. 56–66).
As a child, Schweizer spent a lot of time listening to the radio. “My favorite was a jazz program that was on Saturday afternoons at five, on the French station in Sottens. By the time I went to secondary school, we had a record player in the restaurant office. My sister and I often listened to Dixieland there.” (In: Nigg, pp. 56–66).
Margrit describes Irène as “pretty quiet. In school she did her homework and was very conscientious and punctual. She was a very good student and didn’t cause any problems. She did an extra year. Eight years of school are obligatory—five years of elementary school and three years of secondary school—but in Schaffhausen, it’s also possible to add a fourth and fifth year. Those are more like vocational training, and after the fourth year she went to Lucens, to a girls’ institute. After that, she attended the Raeber School, a trade school in Zürich. The girls at Lucens were mostly from wealthy families, but my mother thought that would be good for Irène. Probably also because they taught a little home economics, and Irène hated that kind of thing—cooking, cleaning, all that. I don’t think she was unhappy at all in Lucens. She got along well with others there and played piano a lot. In Schaffhausen, in the secondary school, her teacher already noticed that she didn’t like household work. So the teacher told her that she could go play piano in the auditorium. And after that Irène realized she could always find a way to the piano.”
The students went to school on foot, or by bicycle. Everything was close by, says Schweizer: “I probably walked to elementary school, and then rode my bike to secondary school. I was in primary school for five years, and after that I was in the first secondary level. Actually, I should have gone for eight years, but I wanted to take another year because I didn’t know what to do. So all together I was in school for nine years. I didn’t have a plan, I felt much too young to decide on a career, but then my mother sent me to the French-speaking part of the country. After my father’s death, she didn’t have any time for me. All the well-to-do families sent their daughters to French-speaking Switzerland to learn French and home economics. It was a boarding school, all our classes were in French, and there was a lot of emphasis on good behavior. The Swiss have a reputation for knowing languages: Italian, French, German, Swiss German. There was an emphasis on language, because we are a country of languages. We learned French in school, but after school was done, no one could speak French. After that I spent a year in England, because I wanted to learn English more than French anyway.”
Jazz in the Festival Hall: First Contact with Jazz
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