Umberto Eco would also have participated in the inauguration, had it not been for the current traffic problems in crossing the Alps. The celebrated linguist and novelist from Bologna erected a literary memorial to the library as an instit¬ution with his modern classic “The Name of the Rose”. The fact that the opening of the Werner Oechslin Library in Einsiedeln was not an everyday event was also emphasised by the presence of other eminent personalities such as the Minister of the Interior and Minister for the Arts and Culture Pascal Couchepin, who was accompanied by the Head of the Cultural Affairs Office Jean-Frédéric Jauslin, and of course by the Library’s architect, Mario Botta.

A platform for interdisciplinary exchange

In his address, Pascal Couchepin said that the theory and practice of architecture had found a novel kind of unity in the personality of Werner Oechslin, ETH Professor for the History of Art and Architecture since 1985. In the first place, through his conscious decision to found the Library in Einsiedeln as a “Satellite in the Background”, Oechslin set his work in the great intellectual tradition of the monastery village. In the second place, according to Couchepin, it voiced a strong counterpoint to the current opinion that books are fighting a losing battle in the digital age. He said that an important basis for the development was the link that had been forged between ETH Zurich and the Library. He now hoped that the building would become a platform for an exchange of ideas between the disciplines.

The building’s client and the architect: the Library building came into being in ten years of intense debate between Werner Oechslin and Mario Botta (r.). large

ETH-President Ernst Hafen also regards this as an important task for the library, which was now complete and to which his spontaneous reaction had been one of fascination and admiration. “It will become increasingly important for the Natural Sciences and Technologies to be embedded in a cultural and social context, and for bridges to be built between the two spheres,” explained Hafen. He said many institutions that facilitate and nourish this dialogue had come into being at ETH during its 150-year history: for example the Cabinet of Prints and Drawings, the Archives of Contemporary History and of course ETH’s own library together with its archives and special collections. “An additional attractive venue for this exchange has now arrived in the shape of the Werner Oechslin Library.”

Dialogue competence as an advantage of the location

These special communication and dialogue competencies are, among other things, what make ETH Zurich stand out in the global competition among the best institutes. The ETH President said: “I am convinced that these special characteristics will develop into a decisive advantage for the location in a few years.” Hafen added that he himself regarded Werner Oechslin as an enormously inspiring scholar “From whose wide cultural horizon one can only profit.” This was why he was arguing in favour of making an introduction to the intellectual richness of this Library a constituent of every ETH course of study.

The planning of the building intended to house the volumes, as numerous as they are valuable, and which Werner Oechslin has gathered together in the course of his years of research work, started 14 years ago (see box). Mario Botta committed his first sketches to paper in 1996. The transition to the “Werner Oechslin Library Foundation” then brought with it the hope that the realisation of the project would go ahead quickly. However, although as already mentioned it was possible to reach an agreement with ETH in 1999 that the Institute would contribute 400,000 Swiss francs per year to the project for ten years and in return ETH members would have the right to use the Library, unfortunately after a prompt start and with contributions from the political world, foundations and sponsors, financial worries forced repeated interruptions. Botta’s building began below ground, with a labyrinth-like rotunda in the basement. Today it stands complete, in spite of everything. A slim building of reddish Verona stone, ending in a convex curve facing the mountain and with straight lines towards the valley, and which incidentally stands exactly on the old pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela.

Momentum and reduction: Mario Botta’s manuscript gives the exterior of the Library a timelessly tranquil character (Photo: Robert Rosenberg). large

Oechslin designed the building to accommodate it with the same meticulous care with which he had gathered his collection. For example the presentation of the volumes shows a striking resemblance to a monastery library – not surprising on a site that is directly in line with the façade of the Einsiedeln monastery. In addition to the books, a multitude of allusions from the history of civilisation – images, busts and quotations – describe what the Library attempts to be: a place that aims to promote thought and discussion.

Ideas: forgotten readings

In his celebratory lecture, the Mainz philosopher Kurt Flasch shed light in an astute and amusing way on the fact that book-lovers were certainly never undisputed intellectuals. His panoramic view from Plato to Heidegger via Montaigne revealed that intellectual history had been a hard struggle between the advocates of thinking and those of reading. Nevertheless, Flasch’s synthesis yokes the intellect and books together in a mutually dependent team, and like Musil he concludes: “How does one reach one’s own ideas? By forgetting where one read them.”

The interior with its mobile spiral staircase for the books on the upper floor has an almost sacred gracefulness. In the centre of the room at the back: the dying Laocoon from Homer’s Trojan Wars. It represents the risks associated with the search for truth. (Photo: Robert Rosenberg). large

An anticyclical vision

Werner Oechslin himself was visibly moved and grateful that it had now been possible to make his unorthodox vision a reality, i.e. to create an emphatically public place at a time when the trend towards privatisation is part of good taste. A place, moreover, that imposes on itself “economy of thought” with civilised moderation and orderliness while everywhere else strives towards the (virtual) accessibility of the “entire” totality of knowledge. Finally it is a place that portrays the book as an object to be understood with the senses, by creating through architecture a stage for the book.