It is one of the darkest chapters in recent Swiss history: until the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of children were hired out and exploited as workers, both physically and mentally. One of these almost lawless children was Ernst Nüssli, the father of the artist Lika Nüssli. In “Strong thing” she describes his story in memorable black-and-white drawings from the child’s point of view, Ernst. It’s a kind of ideal, beautiful illusory world that gets a subversive touch from her, because details of violence are repeatedly contained early on in the book. Nüssli has just won the award for the best comic book of the year in Switzerland. With ntv.de she talks about father, pastor and Franconia.
ntv.de: On Easter Monday 1949 your father had to leave home. The eleven-year-old was sent by his parents to a farmer to work on his farm. How did he become the so-called contract boy?
Lika Nüssli: It was a deal between his father, that is my grandfather, and a farmer named Schweizer. For one franc a day, my father had to do 16 hours of hard physical labor every day. He was beaten, sent to bed with a growling stomach, and was only allowed to go to school when all his homework was done. This system of contracting out existed until the 1970s, and absurdly in many cases it was based on state welfare, where orphans, half-orphans and children of single parents were often placed.
In your comic, it becomes clear that basically no one was interested in how the children were doing, that there was no control authority: once the priest stopped by on behalf of the community and was fobbed off by the Schweizer farmer with a simple “The boy is fine”. He didn’t want to see her father or talk to him himself.
They were just workers who could be burned and exploited like slaves. The two men laugh together at the pastor’s sentence: “Others have an ox to pull the horn sleigh.”
How lively is the discussion on the subject in Switzerland today?
After Federal Councilor Simonetta Sommaruga asked the victims of this forced labor to forgive them for the injustice they had suffered on behalf of the government in 2013, compensation was awarded and investigations began. But nothing is taught about it in school to this day, and children and young people hardly know anything about this time. It would be necessary to create awareness of this in the present – for example in view of the fact that products made from child labor in other countries are sold in Switzerland.
Did your father receive financial compensation?
Yes, 25,000 francs. Childhood stolen for four and a half years. You had to report, and he had to see a psychologist twice and was questioned.
How was this conversation for him? Had he ever talked about what he had experienced in therapy?
It was not intended as therapy but as evidence for the official body. He also had to call witnesses. But I think the psychologist was good for him. I think that was the first time that he really talked a lot about that time.
In your book you also describe how your father Ernst grew up. His family was destitute.
Yes. Something that stuck in my mind was that he didn’t have any underwear, for example. Back then, nobody in the country had their own underpants.
At times, the mother looked after the seven children alone while her husband was doing military service. The children had to get involved in farming at a very early age. A drawing shows how your father looks after the animals on the pasture alone.
He and his siblings wanted to do their part and were proud of what they could already do. I think it was a strict but also warm atmosphere.
The images in the first third of the comic appear harmonious – almost Bullerbü-like: the siblings bring sandwiches to Ernst when he tends the cows. It’s a sworn gang of kids.
Yes, they held together very tightly. But it wasn’t always harmonious: their father would spank their butts if they didn’t move. At the time, that was just as normal as the practice of contracting out.
Which then also happens to your father when he comes to the farmer. This changes the tone and the visual language, everything becomes rawer, darker, more horrific, more grotesque – it is the new, cruel life of Ernst.
I wanted to capture the absurd, nightmarishness of the situation. In the end, he finds himself in a new reality far from the familiar, his homeland, his siblings.
At the same time, elements of Senntumsmalerei, a Swiss art form from the 19th century, also flowed into your drawings. What did you mean by that?
This naïve peasant painting is typical of the rural area around Toggenburg in eastern Switzerland where my father grew up. It is like a picture book, often the proportions are not correct, some figures are drawn oversized. I found the Senntumsmalerei well suited to telling the story from Ernst as a child. It’s a kind of perfect, beautiful illusory world that gets a subversive touch for me: There are repeated details of violence early on in the book.
Some images also make reference to the fact that one of your father’s sisters was likely sexually abused.
Yes, my father did not know that at all. I found out from someone in the family a few years ago. It was important to me that, in addition to my father’s fate, I also addressed the fate of the girls who were hired out at the time.
How did you decide to make this miserable time in your father’s life the subject of your latest work?
We knew in my family that my father was a contract child, it was not hushed up. But we didn’t often talk about it. I don’t think he wanted to burden me with it either. I’ve wanted to work through his story for a number of years and have repeatedly asked him to tell me more about it. In hindsight, I understood that you can’t just say to someone who has experienced something so unbelievable: “Tell me!” He didn’t know how, had no language for it. We then slipped into his memories via factual detailed questions. The first thing I asked him was if he remembered what he packed when he had to leave home. All he could remember was that his clothes were in a small trunk his father carried on his back – and that he had no underpants to take with him. Through many such questions, we then came up with other things that he could not have said at first.
Where did you talk to each other, how do you give space to such a topic?
Actually over the phone. I was in Belgrade two years ago and couldn’t leave my apartment for seven weeks during the Corona lockdown there. My father – now he is 85 – was in a retirement home in Switzerland and couldn’t get out either. Back then we started talking on the phone a lot and over the distance we developed a new closeness. I also felt the fragility of life and said to him, “Now I really want to do this story and if you agree, I’ll start asking you questions about your time as a hireling boy.” He sensed that I really cared and we basically talked about it for a period of two years. Even when I was able to visit him again in the retirement home.
What was particularly upsetting for you during the talks?
(silence for a long time) I’ve cried sometimes. I often asked him: Write it down. But he wasn’t very good at it – as a child he wasn’t always allowed to go to school and he never learned to write properly. After a few months he did it after all and wrote to me about the homesickness that had tormented him at the farm. When I read that, in this scrawled handwriting, it was very touching for me.
Many adults are unfamiliar with imagining their parents as children.
Yes, that’s exactly how I felt when I was developing my father’s character. I worked on it for a long time to make it abstract enough for a projection screen but also clearly recognizable as my father.
Little Ernst has very big ears, his hair sticks out in a stubborn tuft, he always goes barefoot. He has strong shoulders and can pack a punch.
When I found my father’s character, I also had to cry because I had the feeling: now I’m meeting him as a boy. I had never imagined him like this. He was always my big, strong father.
What do you think, what did your father suffer most from as a hireling boy?
He missed being separated from his siblings. He was terribly homesick.
Trauma research examines how mental wounds are inherited and not only shape the lives of those directly affected, but also have an impact across generations within a family. Did you ever have the impression that you felt something of your father’s suffering?
Very often even. The book was total mental hygiene for me. I think I picked up a lot of my father’s feelings. However, I could only explain certain behaviors with my current knowledge of his cruel contract period. For example, we both explode and become aggressive when we encounter injustice. My father blows up when he has to do with offices, state institutions, the church. Her failure in his case shaped him for life. And: As a child, for example, I always suffered from incredibly strong homesickness. My daughter felt the same way. I think we inherited that.
Your comic describes how badly your father suffered from nightmares. Did that get better over the course of his life?
No, he is still an incredibly strong dreamer to this day. He often says: “Now I’ve dreamed of the Schweizer Hof again.”
How do you think your father fought his way through it? What did he draw strength from?
Firstly, that his duties had to do with the animals on the farm; these were beings for whom he had a great love, who gave him warmth. And on the other hand, he saw his backbreaking job as a task that had to be done and developed a very strong sense of defiance. He wanted to prove that he could do it. Luckily he was physically strong and didn’t succumb to the work or die from it like some contract children did. He also enjoyed going to school when he could, and was always able to make friends.
Did he see the farmer again later?
Yes, when he was a young man he met him in a pub. They then drank together. A few years later the farmer committed suicide. Crazy, I know his grandson who is a well-known artist. At some point we noticed that my father was hired out to his grandfather. He’s almost the same age as my father and they used to play together sometimes when my father got some free time. The artist was also able to tell me a few things about the past. That his grandfather was a bad guy who hit him too.
At the age of 17, Ernst received permission from his father to work for the Swiss farmer. What happened then?
His father has found him a new job; he had to work as a servant for an uncle on the farm for a few years. He never did any training. He later drove through the villages in a sales van for a large Swiss supermarket chain. He liked it very much, he is a good salesman, charming. Until he met my mother; she had an inn that they ran together. He was a born host, the atmosphere was so nice. He had a great, fulfilling life.
So, despite his experiences, he hasn’t lost his love for people?
It’s ambivalent: on the one hand, I think he’s definitely traumatized. He sometimes finds it difficult to show empathy – probably because as a child he learned to protect himself by sealing off his feelings in order to survive. On the other hand, he is a cheerful person who has managed to be happy.
Frauke Rüth spoke to Lika Nüssli
