Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women

Ellen Ernst was born on April 10, 1926, in Zurich in the car on the way to the Bethanien Hospital. “The doctors gave me little chance to survive. I was blue by the time my parents reached the hospital. I was transported to the Children’s Hospital. My heart was weak as well as my lungs. But I survived, and my parents handled me with kid gloves. I was never allowed to do gymnastics or to swim. I was always ‘wrapped in cotton’. Later in life I made up for it. Perhaps my adventurous life was my revenge; that is certainly possible. I always knew – since I was a child – that I was different; I just didn’t know how I was different.” Ellen was always sickly. “Often I would have a fever and bronchitis for weeks, bronchiectasis. Because of heart and lung problems my parents sent me several times to health resorts, to Adelboden and Ägeri. These days it is again bad with my cough at times.”

“I always knew that I was different; I just didn’t know how I was different.” (1928)

Ellen’s parents were never really settled. “Mother was a secretary, and my father came from a family of butchers. Father hated butchering, but mother thought she would always have enough to eat, blood and liver sausage. Father preferred to take pictures of guests in Swiss resorts. He developed the pictures over night, and mother had to deliver them the next day. One of my first childhood memories is from Engelberg where on ice people pushed around what looked like water bottles – playing curling. Perhaps I was about two years old. And I will never forget the woman in Wengen who had her leg in a cast on a chair and ate her lettuce with her hands. Besides living in resorts we also lived in Wollishofen, part of Zurich and in Winterthur where we had a movie theater.”