Lara Thurnherr

personal website

Personal Blog

  • Deliberate Remembrance and Deliberate Decisions

     Abstract values are so devastatingly easy to forget. And forgotten values are easy to ignore.  In the abstract, I think that democracy and free speech are great achievements and worth protecting. But superficial knowledge often just  isn’t very motivating or “action-guiding”.  It’s frequently trumped by more concrete and familiar experiences, ideas, “internalised” knowledge and the feelings Read more

  • Peter von Matt (20 May 1937 – 21 April 2025)

    Peter von Matt (20 May 1937 – 21 April 2025) Dear English-Speaking Friends.  Peter von Matt was a Swiss literary scholar, author, and essayist. He died last week. I only met him once. He gave a speech, on the 60th birthday of one of my professors at the time, about what makes historical research and Read more

  • (Rec.) Fritz Zwicky

    Fritz Zwicky was an interesting character. He is a fairly unknown figure in everyday Swiss jargon – as well as in historical research. This is somewhat comical given his many far-reaching and relatively diverse achievements. After studying and working as an assistant at the ETH, Fritz Zwicky became a Rockefeller Fellow and later an associate Read more

  • Herbert Lüthy on learning from history 

    Why should we care about history? How does historical science work? And what can we decidedly not learn from anything but the present? This seems like a valuable question for me after just having finished my BA in History. Swiss historian Herbert Lüthy talked about this in an Essay in 1961, titled: “Geschichte als Selbstbesinnung”. Read more

  • The Physicists -an English summary

    It seems like the play “die Physiker” (the physicists) isn’t nearly as popular as it should be, at least among English-speaking people. The play is about the moral responsibility of physicists, especially ones capable of developing (something like) the nuclear bomb. It was written in 1960 and contains some interesting perspectives on the ethics of Read more

  • Forecasting in 1900: Zurich in 2000

    What did people living in 1900 think Zurich would look like in 2000? An article, published on February 19, 1900. Translation: Zurich in the Year 2000 “Zurich, 19th D Zurich’s largest literary community, the Reading Circle Hottingen, which is best known for its brilliant festivities, organised a large future festival “Zurich in the year 2000” Read more