Renée Schwarzenbach-wille

Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille (1883-1959) was the youngest daughter of General Ulrich Wille, the supreme commander of the Swiss army in World War I, and his wife Clara, née the Countess of Bismarck. In 1904 Renée Wille married Alfred Schwarzenbach, co-proprietor of the world's then largest silk company. The couple had five children, the third of which was the writer and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942). They lived in Zurich until 1912, and subsequently on the Bocken estate near Horgen, where Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille trained for riding competitions and ran a musical salon, which was frequented by high-calibre musicians. Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille died in Konstanz in 1959.
Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille started taking photographs at the age of fourteen and made her final picture six months before her death in 1959. From the very beginning, she developed and printed most of her photographs herself in her own darkroom. She filed her unfailingly carefully inscribed and dated photos, marked with a Roman figure and her monogram - thus the title of the exhibition "R.S." - in red, linen-bound albums of identical size.
Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille's photo albums, which numbered over a hundred, form the main part of the exhibition project. They are not only a historical document that is unique in Switzerland, they are also - and above all - the visual diary of an exceptional woman who photographed all the events and developments of her life that were important to her, including the negative ones. Her enthusiasm for Germany did not wane even during the Nazi era, and pictures of famous guests at the Bocken estate such as Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter and Pablo Casals were displayed side by side with numerous photographs documenting the sufferings of Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille's loved ones and herself.
Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille always expressed her personal views in her photographs. Since she was anything but impervious to persons or events, her pictures have not forfeited any of their power and expression to the present day. Pictures of her favourite daughter Annemarie clearly show the fascination that the lovely young girl exercised over her mother. Thus she photographed the teenager Annemarie as the Rosenkavalier and created an association between the world of her family with that of the opera, both of which she loved beyond all measure. When, later on, the relationship between the mother and daughter became severely strained, Renee's pictures of Annemarie also changed, and Annemarie avoided her mother's eyes which so mercilessly documented the rapid physical and psychological decline of her drug-addicted daughter.
In 1929 Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille also started making films, and she left over a hundred reels of 16-mm films with a total playing time of over ten hours when she died. The exhibition shows extracts from this unique film material, as well as framed photographs and pictures used as postcards in addition to Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille's photo albums, thus rounding off the overview of her visual work.