Titanic exhibition in Lausanne A ship, an iceberg and "the enormous diversity of 2200 fates"

An exhibition on the Titanic is opening at the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne: blue News talks to one of the founders of the Titanic Association Switzerland about his favorite exhibits and the eternal fascination of the famous ship.

About the person

Titanic-Verein Schweiz.

Günter Bäbler founded the Titanic Association Switzerland in Wald ZH in April 1992 together with Linda von Arx-Mooser and Martin Erni. He has not lost his interest in the luxury ship that sank in 1912. On the contrary.

The exhibition "Titanic - L'exposition" is now running in Lausanne : is the Titanic Association Switzerland involved?

Günter Bäbler: Not really, but of course we are always involved somewhere. The exhibition has had the same concept for 25 years. They tour around the world. In the first part of the exhibition, local references are usually made. We supplied data and photos when the exhibition was in Geneva ten years ago. This has now been partly adopted, but we have nothing to do with the concept in principle.

What are the Titanic's local references to Switzerland?

For the exhibition organizers, it's always primarily passengers and crew members who came from Switzerland.

There were 27 of them, weren't there?

Yes, the question of definition is not easy. The problem is that many Swiss people - especially those who worked on board - had been abroad for many years. One woman, for example, went to England and got married there. Conversely, there was also an American who had been in Switzerland for 20 years. The question is how you define Swiss, but 27 is a good order of magnitude.

Which exhibits are coming to Switzerland?

The problem is that about 5,000 items have been salvaged from the wreck. RMS Titanic Incorporated has about five traveling exhibitions going on, all with the same concept. The exhibits are interchangeable. I only know of a few things that are coming to Lausanne.

What are you most looking forward to?

For me, it's always exciting to see the personal items where you say: "I have that today too." It could be a toothbrush or a mug that very easily establishes a link between history and yourself. Parts of the ship are even more exciting, but their availability is limited.

What do you mean?

One example is a porthole. I think they even have two in Lausanne. You can see from them what enormous forces were at work during the sinking. You can't even remove a porthole like that from the wreck today. It must have been lying loose on the seabed.

Part of the concept is also to retrace personal stories.

Yes, there are very different levels of access to the Titanic. It can be the technology of the time, it can be expeditions or personal stories. They are a kind of microcosm that represents a cross-section of society. A few stories are told here as examples, such as the fate of an emigrant who did not survive. But it is also the story of the super-rich: even back then, the gap was already extremely wide.

Can you assign exhibits to these individuals?

There is the example of Adolf Saalfeld. He was a chemist who made perfume. He was on a business trip and had small ampoules with him: he originally wanted to present the samples in America. The ampoules were recovered and a few can be seen in the exhibition. This is one of the few cases where you have a link and can tell a personal story through an exhibit.

The Titanic Association Switzerland has existed for over 30 years: How was it founded?

That was in 1992, on the 80th anniversary of the sinking. There were two of us and articles were published about us. There were then letters to the editor - it was the time before the Internet. We realized that there were around 30 people in Switzerland who were interested. That's when we decided: We would set up an association. We then published a quarterly magazine in which we copied the pages individually, put them together by hand and stapled them.

How popular was it?

After a year, we already had 100 members, and that was only through word of mouth. As I said, it was the time before the Internet. The association has continued to develop. We were one of the first to go digital. Since then, you can download our magazine online and we have also digitized the old statements up to 1992, which you can now also read.

What impact have Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio had?

We were lucky that the Titanic film was released in 1998. That naturally attracted a lot of attention and suddenly we had hundreds of members. It just went on and on. We now have over 700 members in over 20 countries. Our digital magazine can also be read by members who don't know any German: They translate it with AI.

How many countries do your members come from?

I think there are 24 countries. I would say about 40 percent are Swiss, 40 percent German and 5 percent Austrian. The rest is a wild mix. There are small countries like Luxembourg, but they also come from Portugal, South America, Egypt, the USA, the UK, Ireland, Norway and Russia. Really diverse.

Is it also due to the digital magazine that membership is free?

Exactly. We never made any money from the association anyway: it was always just a passion. It was just the printer and the post that we had to finance. And then we said we'd go to zero. Then you don't have to chase after the members to collect a contribution.

The Titanic has been lying at the bottom of the sea for a good 110 years now: why is the fate of this ship still so fascinating?

I can tell them the Titanic story in 25 seconds, then they'll know what it's all about. But I can also dissect this story almost endlessly. Then we come to the individual people, the enormous diversity of 2200 fates. Somehow this is something that moves people: you can talk about hubris or the belief in technology at the time. Or you can simply highlight the simple story of the Titanic, the largest moving object of mankind at the time, colliding with the largest moving object of nature on our planet.

So stories without end?

It's a subject that, as a teenager, I thought I understood. But now it's like this: the more I read about it, the less I know. That's why I'm still working on it over 40 years later. Every day I find a topic that makes me say: you could write a book about that. And I already have over 5000 books about it at home.

The exhibition "Titanic - L'exposition" runs from September 27 to January 26, 2025 at the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne. Find out more here.