Switzerland as a Refuge

US-born Tina Turner lived in Switzerland with her German-born husband from 1994 until her death at 83 in May 2023. Albert Einstein did the same with his wife in Bern and Zurich about a century earlier. Both Albert Einstein and Tina Turner also chose to become Swiss citizens, for similar but somewhat different reasons.

NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect Tina Turner’s death in May 2023.

Early Exiles in Zurich
What is it about Switzerland that attracts non-Swiss people, many of them famous, to live there and sometimes to become Swiss citizens? When they are exiles, such as the Germans Thomas Mann and Richard Wagner, it is easy to understand how the Alpine nation’s policies of democracy and neutrality might attract such people. Both Mann and Wagner were political exiles. Mann had run into trouble with Germany’s Nazi government in the early 1930s. The famous novelist was compelled to seek refuge in Zurich – twice. (The second time after getting kicked out of the USA.) Thomas Mann’s grave is also located in the Kilchberg Cemetery just south of Zurich, as he requested. Wagner had expressed sympathy with an uprising against the government of Saxony in 1849. The noted composer was forced to flee Dresden with a forged passport, ending up as a wanted man in exile in Zurich from 1849 until 1858. Wagner also lived in Lucerne for a time.

Tina Turner in Küsnacht

Tina Turner’s life in Küsnacht, a small but affluent community on the shores of Lake Zurich, was also a kind of exile, albeit self-imposed. To better understand why she chose to leave her US homeland behind, and even to renounce her US citizenship, I recommend viewing the 2021 HBO documentary titled “Tina,” which has been showing on Max in the US. The short version: She was sick and tired of (1) her abusive husband Ike Turner, and (2) fed up with being dismissed as a has-been after she left him. To relaunch her performing career she headed to Europe, first to the UK, and later to Switzerland. She was in Germany when she met her future husband and finally found real love in her life.

A view of Küsnacht and the Tobel hills seen from a boat on Lake Zurich. PHOTO: © Roland Fischer, Zürich (Wikimedia Commons)

In her 40s, with a lot of hard work and people who believed in her, Tina Turner restarted her career with one of the biggest comebacks in entertainment history. The new Tina started with a bang in 1984 with her multi-platinum album, Private Dancer and her hit song “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and became a massive success. It was a song she had at first disliked, considering it a weak pop song that wasn’t her style at all. But after some arm-twisting by her manager, the talented singer found a way to make it her own. Soon she had more hit albums and singles, was touring, appearing in motion pictures (Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, 1985), and enjoying greater success than she had ever imagined. In 1986 she met the Cologne-born record executive Erwin Bach at the Düsseldorf airport when Bach picked her up there as part of his job. They moved to Switzerland in 1994 when Bach was transferred there.

The cover of Tina Turner: That’s My Life (hardcover, illustrated, October, 2020). Get it from Amazon.com.

In 2013 Tina mastered Swiss German, studied Swiss history, and officially became a citizen of Canton Zurich and the town of Küsnacht, where she and her husband reside on Lake Zurich (Zürichsee) close to the city of Zurich. (Swiss citizenship is local. Applicants must apply to the city and canton in which they reside. German-born Einstein was a citizen of Zurich, and thus a Swiss citizen.) In June 2020 a wealthy buyer purchased the Villa Algonquin on what is known as the lake’s “Gold Coast” for a mid-two-figure sum in the millions of Swiss francs, but Turner and Bach still lived there – as renters – as they did for over two decades. They also had a nice little place in Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Côte d’Azur until they sold it.

Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock in 1939 in Brownsville, Tennessee) and Bach moved into their mansion in Küsnacht in 1994. (German author Thomas Mann also had a house in Küsnacht in the 1930s, just up the hill from where Turner lived.) Tina Turner had an estimated fortune of about $250 million. Bach is probably worth about $50 million. Following an earlier private ceremony, Turner and Bach married in July 2013 in a Buddhist ceremony at their lakeside mansion. Turner has been a practicing Buddhist since 1973, following an attempted suicide.

In her later years, Turner had some serious health problems, including cancer, a stroke, and kidney failure. In April 2017 her husband, 16 years younger than his wife, donated a kidney to her. In July 2018 she lost her 59-year-old son Craig to suicide. Turner had overcome a lot in her life, including childhood neglect and Ike Turner. She told her own story in several books: I, Tina: My Life Story (2010, 1986), Tina Turner: That’s My Life (2020), Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good (2020), and My Love Story (2018).

Her stroke briefly slowed her down a bit, but Turner flew to New York City for the 2019 Broadway premiere of the musical production “Tina” with Adrienne Warren in the lead role. The show had opened in London in April 2018, also starring Warren. Turner faced many obstacles and problems, but in her own words: “Switzerland makes me happy.”

Albert Einstein in Switzerland

Although he was born in Ulm, Swabia and grew up in the Bavarian capital of Munich, Albert Einstein lived primarily in Switzerland from 1895 until 1914. Young German-born Albert Einstein basically chose to go to Switzerland because he was a high school dropout. The Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich (now the ETH Zurich) was one of the few respected universities at the time that would consider admitting a student without an Abitur (the German high school diploma). But despite doing well on the mathematical and science parts of the entrance exam, Einstein failed to gain admittance on his first attempt in 1895 at 16, two years below the normal admittance age.

To make up for his deficiencies in the humanities, he was advised to attend the respected cantonal school in Aarau, a small rural community not very far from Zurich. He did so in 1895 and 1896, boarding with the family of professor Jost Winteler. There he had his first affair of the heart with one of Winteler’s daughters, Marie. (Albert’s sister Maja later married Winteler’s son Paul.) In January 1896, with his father’s approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Württemberg to avoid military service. He would remain a stateless person until obtaining Swiss citizenship in 1901.

I can personally recommend this excellent Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson: Einstein: His Life and Universe. Get it from Amazon.com.

After finishing second in his class in Aarau, Albert gained admission to the Polytechnic, arriving in Zurich on October 29, 1896. Einstein first lived at Unionsstrasse 4 in the Hottingen district. Today a plaque commemorates its former famous resident: “Hier wohnte von 1896-1900 der grosse Physiker und Friedensfreund Albert Einstein…” (“Here resided the great physicist and pacifist Albert Einstein from 1896-1900…”) In Zurich, before and after his time in Bern, Einstein lived in six different places in the districts of Hottingen and Fluntern. In all, Einstein resided for a total of just over seven years and eight months in Zurich.

It was in Zurich that Einstein met his future wife. Mileva Marić was a 20-year-old Serbian also enrolled at the Polytechnic. She was the only woman among the six students in the mathematics and physics section of the teaching diploma course. (The Zurich Polytechnic was then one of the few universities in Europe admitting women to science programs.) In 1900 Einstein passed the exams in math and physics, and was awarded the Federal teaching diploma, but Marić failed to get her diploma.

But even with his diploma, Einstein had difficulty finding a teaching position, despite gaining Swiss citizenship in 1901, which in theory should have helped. The main problem was that the “impudent Swabian” had alienated most if not all of his professors in Zurich by skipping classes and being impudent. He could not get a single one to recommend him or accept him as a teaching assistant. Even being a genius has its limits. He was only able finally to get a job with the help of one of his fellow students, but the job had nothing to do with teaching. In the long run it was a blessing in disguise.

Einstein in Bern
Einstein spent only about four years in Bern (1902-1905), but they were four crucial years. This period included 1905, Einstein’s annus mirabilis (miracle year) when he developed many of his key scientific theories, including the Theory of Relativity. He arrived in Bern in 1902 after securing a job in the patent office (Federal Office for Intellectual Property) there. Now able to support a wife, Albert Einstein married Mileva Marić in January 1903. Their first son, Hans Albert Einstein (1904-1973), was born in Bern in May 1904. But the marriage would not survive the Switzerland years.

Albert and Mileva shared a small apartment at Kramgasse 49, a short walk away from Bern’s landmark Zytglogge clock tower. Today the Einstein-Haus is a museum displaying their second-floor apartment as it may have looked in the early 1900s.

Bern’s famous Zytglogge clock tower stands just down the street from Einstein’s apartment building, now a museum. PHOTO: Hyde Flippo

Einstein’s patent office job required a modest amount of work that allowed him to work on his theoretical pursuits, and led to his miracle year of 1905. When he left the patent office in 1908, his colleagues were sad to see him leave. But Albert Einstein had at last found a job in academia. He was appointed lecturer at the University of Bern. The following year, he was recommended for a newly created professorship in theoretical physics at the University of Zurich. Einstein was appointed associate professor in 1909. He was going to return to Zurich.

In Zurich Again (1909-1914)
The Einsteins’ second son, Eduard, was born in Zürich in July 1910. Einstein was gaining recognition as a leading scientist in Europe and worldwide. In April 1911 Einstein would briefly leave Zurich to accept a better-paying position as a full professor at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He returned to Zurich in July 1912 with an even better position at his Polytechnic alma mater. From 1912 until 1914, he was a professor of theoretical physics at the ETH Zurich, where he taught analytical mechanics and thermodynamics.

With his growing fame and scientific reputation, he would soon be lured away from Switzerland by a prestigious post and membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin (July 1913). He was further enticed by a research professorship with no teaching duties at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Einstein was also made director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik. Einstein would remain in Berlin until 1933, when during a visit to California, he decided not to return to Nazi Germany. He eventually settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where he died in 1955.

Einstein never again reached the intellectual pinnacle he enjoyed in Switzerland, especially his miracle year of 1905. In 1919 Einstein’s divorce from Mileva Marić became final. (He had promised her his future Nobel Prize money, which happened in 1922 for the 1921 Nobel.) Later that year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, in Berlin. Also in 1919, British eclipse observations confirmed Einstein’s theoretical predictions about light and gravity. His fame grew even more.

– HF