Annemarie Schwarzenbach: on desolate roads heading east
Annemarie Schwarzenbach (left) and Ella Maillart on their Ford Deluxe in May 1939, before their adventure. (Keystone/Photopress-Archiv)
Keystone/Photopress-Archiv
"Our last view of Switzerland. Why are we leaving this, the most beautiful country in the world? What's pushing us to drive over desolate roads heading east?" The Simplon Pass, 1939 (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
Haymaking in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv/Wikimedia Commons
Men washing their feet in front of the Imam reza Shrine in Mashhad, Iran. (Swiss Literary Archive)
CH-NB_-_Iran,_Meshed_(Mashhad)-_Imam-Reza-Schrein_-_Annemarie_Schwarzenbach_-_SLA-Schwarzenbach-A-5-19-110
Maillart in front of the British consulate in Mashhad. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
A minaret of the partially destroyed Musalla complex, a place of worship in Herat, Afghanistan. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
On the way to Shewaki, Afghanistan. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
Between Peshawar and Lahore, British India. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
Madhogarh, British India. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
At Massaua port, Italian East Africa. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
Waiting at Massaua. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
Back in Switzerland: Airolo, January 25, 1940. (Swiss Literary Archive)
Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv
Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Swiss author and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach travelled to the Middle East.
The plans for an Asian adventure took shape in Sils, southeast Switzerland. Schwarzenbach, weakened by various withdrawal treatments for her morphine addiction, was recovering in her Swiss residence.
With the Geneva travel writer Ella Maillart, she planned to jump into a Ford and head towards Afghanistan. The trip began in the summer of 1939, taking them from Bulgaria across Turkey and Iran into mountainous Afghanistan. After that, Schwarzenbach and Maillart made it to India, at the time still occupied by Britain.
Relations between the two were strained by Schwarzenbach’s drug problems, resulting in them going their separate ways in October 1939. Maillart stayed in India and waited for the end of the war, while Schwarzenbach joined some French archaeologists and went to Eritrea, then part of Italian East Africa.
At the Eritrean port of Massaua, she took a ship through the Suez Canal to Egypt and from there headed back to Switzerland. In January 1940, her Ford pulled into Airolo, in the Italian-speaking southern canton of Ticino.
Schwarzenbach died in November 1942 after falling off her bicycle. Seventy-five years later, the Swiss Literary Archive has released more than 3,000 digitalised photographs. In our series #swisshistorypics, we travel with Annemarie Schwarzenbach to the most diverse corners of the world – in black and white.
(Translated from German by Thomas Stephens)
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Swiss writer covered FDR re-election from New York
This content was published on
Eighty years ago, Americans were choosing between Roosevelt and Landon. Swiss journalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach was in New York on election day.
This content was published on
At once fragile – she suffered drug addiction – and courageous, she travelled to remote Afghanistan in the 1930s, Annemarie fascinated both men and women. Friday marked the 100th anniversary of her birth. An exhibition on her life is currently being held in the Strauhof Museum in Zurich, which is curated by the historian Alexis…
Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s extraordinary life, in pictures
This content was published on
On the 75th anniversary of the photographer's tragic death, more than 3,000 of her pictures are being made available to the public.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.