Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Many Swiss who move abroad have a thirst for travel and adventure, but few as much as Johann “Pineapple King” Dähler, who died recently.
Learn more about Dähler – and other news and stories from Switzerland – below.
In the news: Multiplying wolves, asylum-seeking children, and hard-to-achieve sustainability goals.
- Wolves have recently been multiplying by about 30% a year in Switzerland – 32 wolf packs had been identified in the country, according to Environment Minister Albert Rösti. He said the government’s objective was to protect the population and livestock and, at the same time, to preserve the wolf species.
- In the future Switzerland will have to apologise for its treatment of children seeking asylum – as it has already done in the case of children in care – warned the president of the Federal Commission for Migration. The needs of children are not taken into account in the asylum procedure and “provisional admission is an obsolete concept”, said Walter Leimgruber.
- In order to achieve the United Nation’s sustainability goals by 2030, politics, science and the private sector must work together better, Swiss President Alain Berset said in his speech at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development in New York. “We need partnerships and a strong multilateral system,” he said.
Johann Dähler’s life was a series of ups and downs. In 1972, shortly after completing Swiss army training, he realised he had a thirst for adventure.
He left Thurgau, northeastern Switzerland, for Africa, more precisely Ivory Coast, where he discovered pineapples and worked in a cannery. Returning home, he realised that Swiss supermarkets didn’t stock fresh pineapples, presenting an ideal business opportunity. Dähler slowly built up his business, exporting fresh pineapples to Switzerland via Swissair. He went on to buy the largest pineapple plantation in Ivory Coast, which employed 1,500 people.
But at the turn of the millennium things went downhill and he lost all of his land overnight. Unable to get loans to finance his business, his plantations in Africa went bankrupt. He fled Ivory Coast to escape his debtors and returned to Switzerland penniless. Later his wife and their three small children, who had stayed in Abidjan, had to flee a military coup in a secret operation.
Back in Switzerland, Dähler continued to work obsessively and successfully built a new pineapple plantation in 2004, this time in Costa Rica. But he still dreamed of Africa. He eventually returned to Ivory Coast for the first time in over ten years with a plan to buy back the old plantations. This time his target was the rubber trees that he had planted shortly before his business went bankrupt.
But as he got older, Dähler suffered in the difficult West African climate. After a heart attack he decided to move his main residence back to Switzerland. Following his death in Bern earlier this month, at the age of 70, Dähler’s last wish will be fulfilled: to be buried on the Ivorian plantation next to the chapel he built for local workers.
The Swiss military bunker network, which was originally dug deep into the Alps to fend off foreign invasion, is no longer up for sale.
In 2010 the remaining bunkers in military hands were declared unfit for purpose and were being sold off to create data centres, artistic projects, hotels and bitcoin storage facilities. But now the head of the Swiss army says bunkers will play a key role in the defence of the realm in the face of renewed Russian military aggression and other geopolitical threats.
In this article, Matthew Allen answers the key questions on this issue: Why the change of heart about military bunkers? How big is the Swiss military bunker network? What uses did civilian buyers have for military bunkers?
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