Coming Out Swiss: In Search of Heidi, Chocolate, and My Other Life

by Anne Herrmann

Overview

Anne Herrmann, a dual citizen born in New York to Swiss parents, offers in Coming Out Swiss a witty, profound, and ultimately universal exploration of identity and community. “Swissness”—even on its native soil a loose confederacy, divided by multiple languages, nationalities, religion, and alpen geography—becomes in the diaspora both nowhere (except in the minds of immigrants and their children) and everywhere, reflected in pervasive clichés.
            In a work that is part memoir, part history and travelogue, Herrmann explores all our Swiss clichés (chocolate, secret bank accounts, Heidi, Nazi gold, neutrality, mountains, Swiss Family Robinson) and also scrutinizes topics that may surprise (the “invention” of the Alps, the English Colony in Davos, Switzerland’s role during World War II, women students at the University of Zurich in the 1870s). She ponders, as well, marks of Swissness that have lost their identity in the diaspora (Sutter Home, Helvetica, Dadaism) and the enduring Swiss American community of New Glarus, Wisconsin. Coming Out Swiss will appeal not just to the Swiss diaspora but also to those drawn to multi-genre writing that blurs boundaries between the personal and the historical.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299298432
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	04/15/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Anne Herrmann is professor emerita of English and women’s studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of four books, including The Dialogic and Difference: An/Other Woman in Virginia Woolf and Christa Wolf and Queering the Moderns: Poses/Portraits/Performances.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
 
Prologue: Open Secrets
 
Swissness: Keynotes
Chocolate
Gold
 
Swissness: Keywords
Heimweh, or Homesickness
Fernweh, or “Farsickness”
 
The Mountains
The Alp(s)
Davos, or “How the English Invented the Alps”
 
The City: Public Histories
“Athens on the Limmat”: “A True History That Never Happened”
Dada in Zurich, Continued
 
The City: Personal Histories
Freiestrasse 103, Zu¨rich
Basel
 
Swiss Colonies in America
Nueva Helvetia, California (1839): “An Area as Vast as the Little Canton of Basle”
New Glarus, Wisconsin (1845): “Switzerland’s Tiniest, Most Distant Canton”
 
Americanizing Swiss Stories
Swiss Family Robinson (1812); or, “The Most Famous Robinsonade”
Heidi (1880): “Switzerland’s Most Famous Girl”
 
Epilogue: “I’m Swiss”
 
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

04/01/2014
Herrmann (English & women's studies, emerita, Univ. of Michigan; Queering the Moderns) was born to Swiss parents in New York and has lived in both the States and Switzerland. She felt compelled to write a book that exposes the private discomfort and lack of belonging she experiences regarding her confused national identity as a Swiss outsider, neither native nor resident. Awkwardly using multiple genres, she reveals various biographical insights and offers some facts about Swissness to a world that she believes is generally clueless regarding the uniqueness of the country's history and ethos. She deposits snippets regarding clichés, forgotten facts, and popular misconceptions of Switzerland to explain such topics as the Alps, chocolate, Swiss neutrality, Swiss gold and banking, Dadaism, and The Swiss Family Robinson. Herrmann uses forced imaginary conversations to present the thoughts and histories of political and social activists, writers, and artists who sojourned in Switzerland and writes her musings about Heidi as brief letters to its author, Johanna Spyri. VERDICT Herrmann's attempt to come to terms with being Swiss results in an unusual book that will appeal to select readers—those curious about Swiss culture and history and those who likewise feel uncomfortable in their adopted countries.—Margaret Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

Library Journal

Many a reader will be inspired by Herrmann's wide-ranging journey, in geography as well as in language, in the trivial as well as in the remarkable. Coming Out Swiss is marvelous, mischievous, delightful, serious—a challenge.”—Leo Schelbert, University of Illinois at Chicago


“Herrmann writes with verve, passion, insight, and wisdom as she explores what it means to be Swiss in both a personal and national sense. Coming Out Swiss is at once a splendid and provocative feast of facts and a stunning personal revelation.”—Lisa Knopp, author of What the River Carries

From the Publisher