Born in Russia, Ida Hoff became one of the first women to attend university in Switzerland around 1900. In addition to pursuing a career in medicine, she was a staunch advocate of women’s rights, guided by her feminist conscience and a penchant for irreverence. She found an outlet for the latter at the second Swiss Congress for Women’s Interests in 1921, where she wittily subjected Ferdinand Hodler’s painting “The Day” to a fresh new feminist interpretation.

In the last-but-one series of Swiss banknotes, the thousand-franc note depicted Auguste Forel as a wise researcher turning his alert gaze on the world, as an icon of science and Helvetic national symbol. But this stylised heroic image failed to stand up to closer investigation. A story illustrating the pitfalls of the culture of commemoration.

Over a century after her dramatic demise, the Titanic lingers omnipresent in the human imagination. The stories of the Titanic’s Swiss staff and passengers are a rich kaleidoscope of a maritime disaster and an era on the precipice of tremendous change.