Page 52 - Bulletin, Vol.82 No.1, April 2023

It is only recently that I started to come to 1930s forced Emma Louise Zell to leave
the Cité Séniors, and right away was I the county. In 1933 with Max Aeschbach
impressed by the atmosphere and by the she moved to Switzerland, first to Luzern,
generosity of the staff, by the services; where the couple got officially married.
and in talking with the staff, I discovered Then they moved to Geneva. Three years
Emma Louise Zell. Thanks to the later, the couple divorced, and Emma
generosity of this Grande Dame, we can, Louise Zell remained in Switzerland.
for example, use many services In 1946, she met Charles Auguste Hirzel,
(especially computer services), that make from a family of Zurich nobility. In 1931
our daily life much easier. I was deeply Charles Auguste Hirzel moved to Geneva
touched by this gesture of generosity.
the capital of the protestant private bank.
Unfortunately, there is not much He got successful here in the private
information about this emblematic person banking sector, and as a director of four
of an extraordinary generosity and commercial and financial companies. He
destiny. This is what I was able to find is also known as a philatelist with a world
about this Grande Dame: reputation. The Museum of
Communication in Bern keeps his
Emma Louise Zell: The story of the collection of American stamps.
Grande Dame who bequeathed her
fortune to the City of Geneva for the Charles Auguste Hirzel died in 1966, after
benefit of the elderly and social actions twenty years of the joint living with Emma
Louise Zell, whom he had never married,
After checking the existing sources and but to whom he left a solid financial
the rare publications, this is the brief fortune and the real estate as to his
description of her biography: Emma companion.
Louise Zell was a Geneva philanthropist
born in Germany in Schwanheim am Main Later on, Emma Louise Zell isolated
(Frankfurt am Main) on December 18, herself at her villa Heimatstyle, in the
1903 to a well-to-do protestant family district of Champel in Geneva. Her
(some sources, such as the Tribune de relations with the other members of Zell
Genève in 2020, indicate that the family family were tensed. She established
was Jewish). strong ties with two friends who were
involved in social actions helping those in
Her father, Peter Zell (1872-1938), was an need and the elderly. She had no children.
engineer in the multinational firm IG In 1982, she wrote a will in favor of the
Farben, and her mother Augusta Rosa City of Geneva. On August 23, 1993, she
Sareika, born in Strasbourg (1875-1932), died at home, in isolation and after a
was an animal rights activist. She had a serious illness. According to her last will
sister Anne Marie, and two brothers and testament, her ashes were buried with
Ludwig and Karl Peter (Karl Peter was those of Max Aeschbach in the Thônex
killed at war on August 23, 1918). All the cemetery in Geneva.
children received a rigorous education.
The City of Geneva is the Emma Louise
In 1931, she met Max Aeschbach, a Swiss Zell Fund manager. The Preamble of the
citizen, with whom she lived in Berlin, Regulations for the Use of the Fund state
Germany. The situation in Germany in the
the following: "By will of August 14, 1982,

50 AAFI-AFICS BULLETIN, Vol. 82 No. 1, 2023-04

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