Swiss quality series “Peace”: The young Klara (Annina Walt) lived two lives in the summer of 1945. On the one hand, the wealthy factory owner’s daughter and trained teacher is getting married; on the other hand, she is exploring the horrors of the post-war period in a refugee home for young people from the Buchenwald concentration camp. (SRF / Sava Hlavacek)
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Switzerland, the politically neutral homeland of happy people. This is how the Federal Republic is mostly seen abroad, and that is how many Swiss still like to see themselves. The six-part miniseries “Peace”, produced by the state television broadcaster SRF, struck a solid wedge in the traditional image of the country in November 2020. And that although the action from a Switzerland in the summer of 1945 – shortly after the end of the Second World War – reports. The focus is on three young people: The trained teacher and factory owner’s daughter Klara (Annina Walt) takes care of young concentration camp survivors from Buchenwald in the refugee home. Her fiancé Johann (Max Hubacher) will soon become the new head of the cloth factory after Klara’s father (Urs Bosshardt) has withdrawn. Johann’s brother Egon (Dimitri Stapfer) is a police officer who hunts down Nazis who are hiding in Switzerland.
In the course of six 50 minutes – ARTE shows three episodes in a row this Thursday and the rest on Thursday, April 1, 8:15 p.m. – it becomes clear to the young Swiss at zero hour that their country is not a shining hero from the end of the Nazi regime emerges in the large neighboring country. Wealthy economic and political circles cover fleeing Nazis. And in the case of refugees, too, we look to see who could become more and who less “valuable” for their new home. In addition, a narrative thread is devoted to the entanglements between the Swiss and German economies during the war. “Peace”, a format that received very good reviews in Switzerland almost across the board, was written by Petra Volpe (“Heidi” film version from 2015, “The divine order”).
Hospitable Switzerland? The management of the refugee home welcomes the survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp to their new home. But not everyone is welcome … (SRF / Sava Hlavacek)
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“If you have money, you will always find friends here with you Swiss people”
Already at the start of the linear broadcast – in Switzerland, double episodes were broadcast on three prime time evenings – almost a third of all Swiss were watching. In addition, there was a much larger audience who enjoyed the mini-series via the broadcaster’s media library. In fact, the Swiss post-war epic takes a new, critical look at Switzerland’s role during and immediately after the Second World War. “If you have money, you will always find friends here with you Swiss,” a convicted German, who hid in Switzerland as a servant and pseudo-deserter, laid his finger in the wound of the Federal Society after his arrest.
Johann (Max Hubacher) tells his newly wedded wife Klara (Annina Walt) about the financial distress of the cloth factory. (SRF / Sava Hlavacek)
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It is sentences like these that make the work of director Michael Schaerer, whose graduation film “Warmth” won him the student Oscar and which was shown at the Venice Film Festival, interesting. In terms of narration and imagery, his film remains conventional, historical, but it appears precise in its figure drawing.
Swiss actors can be seen in the main roles. For German TV viewers, this offers a welcome change, as the usual suspects on the big history TV don’t explain the past to you here. Annina Walt, the 24-year-old leading actress in the series, has long been half a Berliner: Not only does the upcoming Swiss actor live in the German capital, she was also in 2020 in the senior class of the local, highly renowned drama school “Ernst Busch”.
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