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Basel police archives reveal lives of past city residents

Nazi sympathisers, a brothel owner, a political refugee and an independent young woman – these are just some of the cast of characters in Basel’s archive of immigration police files. Their stories reveal much about the history of those who settled in the Swiss city on the Rhine.

The State Archive of the Canton of Basel City is home to up to 500,000 immigration dossiers, all from the last century. Taking up more than one kilometre of shelf space, they form the largest collection of its kind in Switzerland. It’s testament to the fact that Basel, neighbour to both France and Germany, has seen many people come and go across its borders.

Some of the historical files are featured in a display in the Archive’s courtyard, as part of the Magnet Basel series of exhibitions on migration to the region. However, the exhibit does not include any entries past 1974 for data protection reasons.

“We realised that there is a lot more contained in these dossiers than names and numbers. There are whole life stories,” says head archivist Esther Baur.

Nazi sympathisers

Take the case of the married Lipp couple. Karl was German, and Maria was Austrian, as we learn from a storyboard cartoon of their lives. They had lived in Basel for a long time but were Nazi sympathisers, with Karl collecting funds for Adolf Hitler’s cause.

When the Second World War ended in June 1945, Karl’s colleagues denounced him to the authorities. Karl denied everything. The police asked around at the Lipps’ neighbours, who painted a different picture.

In August, Swiss authorities told the couple to leave the country.

“Nazi sympathisers were relatively rigorously expelled, it was the ‘Nazi Putzete’ policy of the time,” Baur explains.

Karl and Maria tried to contest the decision but to no avail: they had to leave Basel the following year. But Karl still dreamed of Switzerland, returning in secret to Basel. Twice he was caught, spending a short spell in prison.

Political refugee

The case of Vanda Kov