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Historical sources for the biographical profiles

The biographical profiles contain information on senior officials at the Swiss National Bank (SNB) – their education, professional careers, memberships in associations, non-parliamentary commissions, additional offices held etc., and on their political posts and Board memberships. The following sources were used:

  • Information on offices held at the SNB is derived from the SNB archives.
  • Information on education, professional careers, memberships in associations, additional offices held etc. is largely based on obituaries in newspapers and entries in encyclopaedias.
  • Details on memberships in permanent commissions of the National Council and the Council of States have been derived from a publication entitled "Résumé des délibérations de l’assemblée fédérale" in French and "Übersicht über die Verhandlungen der Bundesversammlung" in German.
  • The sources for the non-parliamentary commissions were, for the period to 1984, the annual federal gazette ("l’annuaire federal"/"eidgenössische Staatskalender"), and for the years thereafter, a brochure entitled "Commissions extra-parlementaires, autorités et représentants de la Confédération" in French and "Ausserparlamentarische Kommissionen, Behörden und Vertretungen des Bundes" in German, which was published by the Federal Chancellery in 1985, 1987, 1990, 1993 and 1997. There are a number of gaps in the information provided by these publications, and some (but unfortunately not all) of them have been filled with the generous support of the Swiss federal archives. Neither the annual gazette nor the Federal Chancellery publication lists all of the non-parliamentary commissions. This is a gap that we were unable to fill in our biographical profiles.
  • For Board memberships, the annual reports of individual companies held by the Swiss economic archives ("Wirtschaftsarchiv") in Basel were consulted.
  • In addition, we received valuable information from many archives and historians, and would like to take this opportunity of extending our sincere thanks to them.