Exhibition Bernisches Historisches Museum shows the fate of Verdingkindern
With the traveling exhibition "Forgotten by Happiness", the museum wants to help ensure that a dark chapter in Swiss history is not forgotten.
Image: Keystone
Up until the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of children in Switzerland were forced into servitude, incapacitated and cared for.
Image: Keystone
With the traveling exhibition "Forgotten by Happiness", the museum wants to help ensure that a dark chapter in Swiss history is not forgotten.
Image: Keystone
Up until the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of children in Switzerland were forced into servitude, incapacitated and cared for.
Image: Keystone
The Bernisches Historisches Museum is shedding light on the fate of those affected by compulsory welfare measures. The touring exhibition "Forgotten by Happiness" aims to ensure that this dark chapter in Swiss history is not forgotten.
19.02.2025, 10:45
SDA
Up until the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of people in Switzerland suffered the same fate as the five protagonists in the exhibition. They were hired out, incapacitated and cared for, as the museum wrote in a press release on Wednesday.
People with low incomes were particularly affected, very often single mothers and their children. Their poverty or their way of life that deviated from bourgeois norms were reason enough for massive state intervention and repressive measures.
Walk-through spatial images invite you to empathize with five stories that are exemplary for hundreds of thousands of others. Audio dramas bring the moving fates to life. "Forgotten by happiness. Forced welfare measures in Bern and Switzerland" runs from February 20 to January 11, 2026.
https://www.bhm.ch/de/ausstellungen/kommende-ausstellungen/vom-glueck-vergessen
