That was in 1930, and Hermann was celebrating his thirtieth birthday.
When the war broke out in Europe — yes, the Second World War, same starting lineup — profiles were drawn up. Who came in from which country, and how exactly do things stand with their attitude toward Canada? In itself it’s a good thing when a person can call a profile their own. Because without any profile at all, one is easily taken for a flat-nose and a nobody. Worst case, both at once — flat-nose and nobody. Well, with Hermann Boeschenstein a profile crystallized that would, at first, become his undoing. Hermann Boeschenstein was seen as the man in Canada whose home country had just launched a war.
Hermann was a respected professor in Canada, his chosen country. He was prominent and successful in his field, the German language. Part of his profile was that he carried a strong, German-sounding accent about with him. That too belonged to the furnishings of the person and the profile. Name, language, origin — for some officials, that was enough to raise alarm. The German in Toronto was arrested one day, in his own house in Toronto. And interrogated. Those doing the interrogating soon felt they must have misheard, when Hermann explained to them that he wasn’t German at all, but Swiss. From Stein am Rhein, in fact.
So he was released again from the internment camp.
So far, so happy ending in Toronto. But the story wasn’t finished being told yet. A few years later, Hermann Boeschenstein was contacted again by the Canadian government. This time, though, not with an arrest warrant, but with a request. No — a marching order. He was granted leave from his professorship from 1943 to 1946, because he had more important things to do. His job was to look after his original neighbours from the “German canton,” who were interned in Canada as prisoners of war. He helped the Germans in the camps get in touch with relatives. He brought books and advocated for these people before the authorities. The suspected German Boeschenstein had now become the neutral Swiss Boeschenstein. Very much in the spirit of the basic Swiss self-understanding currently up for a vote.
Hermann Boeschenstein helped thousands of German prisoners. He travelled to internment camps all across Canada and helped wherever he could.
The man once thought too German in the end became the most neutral Swiss one could possibly imagine.
