Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women

Linda Geiser’s childhood was marked less by religion than World War Two. “Even today I can hear Hitler and Göring yelling in the news broadcast of Radio Beromünster; this filled us with fear. In Switzerland we didn’t suffer from hunger, but we needed stamps to buy food. And even after the war had ended, we children wore each others’ clothes.”

Linda’s first day at school. (1942)

Linda’s enthusiasm for school was limited. “After the primary grades where I had been a good student, my parents decided that I should go to the Progymnasium, the first years of the college preparatory school, yet I was miserable there. I was no longer interested in the study material, which I found entirely unnecessary. I preferred to dream, to read books, to paint, and I wanted to have a career in theater. What I did take with me from those years is a stock of wonderful people whom I got to know there. I have an entire ‘clan of girls,’ as I call them, with whom I still have a close connection.

“When I had to repeat one class, Mani Matter and Jürg Wyttenbach were my classmates. Mani Matter later became the originator of the Bernese Troubadours, and Jürg Wyttenbach a famous musician and composer.