Real estate king and messieur "I prefer Bruno Stefanini to a billionaire who buys private jets"

Real estate king Bruno Stefanini was a messie. He was accused of letting his more than 2000 apartments fall into disrepair. Thomas Haemmerli made a film about the son of Italian immigrants from Winterthur.

Thomas Haemmerli, while I was watching your documentary "The Legacy of Bruno Stefanini", I asked myself at some point: Why does Haemmerli like to deal with terrible people?

Hahaha - although my last film "Gentrification is me" was subtitled "Confession of a Darkling". That was meant rather ironically. I'm not at odds with myself, and I don't dislike Bruno Stefanini either. Otherwise I wouldn't have spent so much time on him.

Sure, he had unpleasant sides. And he's irritating because he's so ambivalent and contradictory. That fascinates me, along with the themes of building, collecting and being a hoarder, which can be found in his biography.

Bruno Stefanini, the son of immigrants, was considered sociable and humorous in his private life. Did you know him personally?

No. But after reading hundreds of pages of private letters and diaries and talking to people close to him, it's almost as if I knew him. He was so extreme in many ways that there are heaps of bizarre anecdotes, which allowed me to make a funny and entertaining movie.

About the person: Thomas Haemmerli

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Thomas Haemmerli is a director and author. He used to squat houses and fight against real estate entrepreneurs and senior officers such as Bruno Stefanini. Now he has dedicated the film "The Legacy of Bruno Stefanini" to the Winterthur immigrant's son, building contractor and hoarder, which humorously traces Stefanini's career against the backdrop of Swiss social history. And he preaches that we need to densify our cities in order to tackle the housing problem.

I lived in Winterthur at the end of the 1990s and know Bruno Stefanini as a real estate king who lets buildings fall into disrepair, treats tenants badly and doesn't keep his promises.

Bruno Stefanini had over 2,000 apartments and certainly didn't know about every single case. It is true that he never renovated. This is typical of a hoarder, i.e. someone who pathologically accumulates things.

You acquire properties - in his case, real estate - but then you don't do anything with them, you just get more. The positive thing for the tenants was that the apartments were so extremely cheap.

Stefanini also stood up to his management when they wanted to increase the rents. I met people who appreciated that. And people who, like you, didn't like living with him.

People who lived in a Stefanini apartment often felt sorry for him. In 2007, the "Landbote", the daily newspaper in Winterthur, ran the following story about him: "Last year, a woman who moved out of a Stefanini apartment after 42 years experienced the following: The management sent her a bill for two dental glasses that were supposedly missing. The cost: 53.60 francs. In the decades before, Stefanini had hardly invested a penny in the apartment." A typical Stefanini story, isn't it?

The rags-to-riches aspect is typical. The comedian Viktor Giacobbo, who lived in a Stefanini apartment, tells in my film how he had to pay 1 franc 95 for a sealing ring.

The pity, on the other hand, is typical of an attitude in the media: people used to feel sorry for people who lived in Göhner blocks or high-rise buildings. That's pure projection: because most people know well enough themselves where they want to live with their means ...

... that is an assertion that has not been substantiated.

There are studies, including the "Return of the Housing Machines", which show that people who live very cheaply often suffer more from the paternalistic attributions of the media, who moan about social ghettos and the like, than from their actual homes.

For many Winterthur residents, the case was clear: Bruno Stefanini hunts for yield. He deliberately lets houses in the middle of the old town fall into disrepair.

That's nonsense. I live in Zurich-Wiedikon, where there used to be a busy road, the houses were poorly maintained and many foreigners and outsiders lived here. Today, everything is spick and span, the people who used to live here have been pushed out by people like me and gentrification. If Stefanini had wanted to make a profit, he would have renovated and targeted a different clientele.

Many Winterthur residents also got the wrong idea that Bruno Stefanini hardly paid any taxes despite the high returns...

Once again: it is wrong that Stefanini achieved high returns with his properties. What is true is that his properties were owned by a foundation that wanted to build a museum for the people, which is why the taxes were waived.

Incidentally, this didn't cause a stir; hardly anyone in Winterthur knew about it. But it seems to me a serious omission that the foundation supervisory authority never took action.

The famous Sulzer high-rise in Winterthur was also part of Stefanini's portfolio. It was once occupied for a short time. The real estate king was repeatedly said to have sympathies for the squatter scene. True or not?

Politically, he once positioned himself somewhere between a capitalist and a chaotic person. His parents were anti-fascist and he had a strong social streak throughout his life. And at times he tolerated occupations, one for almost 30 years until the end of his life.

Bruno Stefanini ran his company as a patriarch. He checked every single invoice. Even when he was hospitalized, his secretary and partner of many years, Dora Bösiger, brought the bills to his bedside.

I wouldn't describe Dora Bösiger simply as his life partner. The relationship was complex. In any case, like all hoarders, Stefanini was obsessive in many ways, including with the bills. That contributed to his wealth. At the end of his life, however, he was completely overwhelmed by trying to check all the bills by hand.

In the movie, you repeatedly quote from Bruno Stefanini's diaries. In them, the real estate tycoon meticulously wrote down what he experienced and what he thought.

Even as a child, he drew up contracts and was happy about the "nice deals" he had made. At the end of his life, he writes about someone who is stingy with himself and, as a billionaire, drinks Coop wine for 1.90 francs a bottle and goes bargain hunting in the Caritas store every day.

Stefanini is a prisoner of his tics and compulsions. All of this is idiosyncratic and sometimes bizarre, but I like it more than normal billionaires who blow their money on private jets and big yachts.

You seem to have a soft spot for messies: You already dealt with the littering syndrome in your autobiographical film "Seven Troughs and a Corpse".

My mother left us a messy apartment full of rubbish, and I still get letters today about my film "Sieben Mulden und eine Leiche", which divided opinion at the time. The subject has preoccupied me ever since.

With Bruno Stefanini, I was interested in the case of a hoarder with unlimited money and space. Tragically, his apartment looked no different to my mother's at the end of her life.

What do you think is special about the collector Bruno Stefanini?

That his collection was so poorly stored - and that he collected so widely. Most people who collect focus on one area. Bruno Stefanini amassed weapons, art, castles, clothes, furniture and objects belonging to historical figures.

You have to know this: Messies or hoarders don't just have clutter, they usually have sensible reasons for collecting and keeping things.

At some point, however, it becomes so much that they fail to manage their possessions. They find themselves back in a littered dwelling, which they always see as a makeshift solution that will one day be tidied up. Or, in Stefanini's case, would have been arranged in the collection of a museum.

Bruno Stefanini founded the Foundation for Art, Culture and History (SKKG) in 1980. Its collection comprises around 100,000 items: These range from the uniform of US Gulf War general Norman Schwarzkopf to the fur hat of Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And all stored in bunkers, safe from nuclear attack.

In the 1980s, fears of nuclear war were rife. Bruno Stefanini was comforted by the idea that even in the event of a nuclear war, his collection would remain for the survivors.

The irony of history: In his most important bunkers, which he had dug near Lake Hallwil, mold put a spanner in the works. The bunker offers protection against atomic mushrooms, but not against dog-eating mold.

The collection is Bruno Stefanini's life's work. However, his vision of a museum failed. Why?

For one thing, he was not particularly good at delegating. He usually handled all the transportation himself. On the other hand, there was also a small-mindedness on the part of the authorities and many objections to his projects, so that he said several times out of spite: "I'm throwing in the towel. I'll do the museum somewhere else.

Bruno Stefanini passed away in 2018, leaving behind quite a mess - because he hadn't inventoried his collection. What has happened to it since then?

The SKKG Foundation is cleaning, documenting and cataloging the collection. As there are more than 1000 museums in Switzerland, no further museums are to be added, but objects and art are lent to other museums.

If Bruno Stefanini were still alive today: Would you like to be friends with him?

I like quirky people. And I'm interested in contemporary witnesses whose life experience spans many decades. But Bruno Stefanini's greatest achievement is that he built so many cheap apartments thanks to efficient, lean construction methods.

I have been preaching for a long time that the housing problem is not primarily caused by greedy real estate companies, but by the fact that we are growing but building far too little. I'm sure I could have had a great conversation with him about that. And we would also have had a sense of humor.

The film "The Legacy of Bruno Stefanini" will be shown in cinemas from March 20.

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