Georges Wüthrich André Häfliger
DÖLF
OGI
d n a n a m s State n a m s t r o p S WEBERVERLAG.CH
DĂ–LF
OGI
and Statesman an Sportsm
Georges Wüthrich · André Häfliger
DÖLF
OGI
d n a n a Statesm an m s t r o p S Edited by Oswald Sigg and Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg With a foreword by Kofi A. Annan
WEBERVERLAG.CH
For Mathias
This work is the fruit of collaboration between Ringier AG (Schweizer Illustrierte), Weltbild Verlag GmbH, Olten, and Weber Verlag AG, Thun – Original editions – © 2012 Weltbild Verlag GmbH, Industriestrasse 78, CH-4609 Olten – Licensed english edition – © 2014 Weber Verlag AG, Gwattstrasse 125, CH-3645 Thun/Gwatt Edited by Oswald Sigg and Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg Idea: Lukas Heim, Rita Graf Editorial input: David Winiger, Brigitte Wisler, Antoine Tardy, Elisabeth Oehrli, Isabelle Spengler English translation: Julia Slater Assistance: Anton Thalmann Copy editor: John Richardson Coordination: Linda Malzacher Cover photo: Marco Grob Illustrations: Ted Scapa Cover design and layout: Thomas Uhlig/www.coverdesign.net Composition: Evelyne Guanter, Cornelia Wyssen, Alexandra Marti ISBN 978-3-906033-97-6
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CONTENTS
Foreword by Kofi A. Annan
8
Prologue
12
Not in the least tired
18
Peace rules the day!
30
Appreciated by some – and not by others
42
With the great and the good
54
What’s it all for?
70
His colleague Ruth Dreifuss
84
Our boss
96
My party, the Swiss People’s Party 112 Citizen ans soldier 124 Sapporo, here we come 138 The family 150 Growing up 164 Adolf Ogi – his career 174 The authors 174 Acknowledgements and picture credits 176
Foreword KOFI A. ANNAN
I first met Dolfi Ogi when he was serving in the Swiss Government as Minister of Defence and I was Under-Secretary-General for the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. I immediately liked Dolfi’s spirit and his attitude of wanting to make things happen and to achieve results. I could see he was a very warm person, open, honest and with a sense of humour. Later, when Dolfi was President of Switzerland and I was Secretary-General of the United Nations, we went for a long walk in Kandersteg. Dolfi is a good walker; he is a natural and easy guide who clearly knows his region and his mountains and his enjoyment is contagious. Every now and then he would stop and say “Look, how wonderful, how beautiful! Where else can you get this?” I share that appreciation of nature; I love the mountains and the sense of space that comes from standing next to a huge mountain and realising how small we human beings are. When you are with Dolfi in that environment, you realise that he is a man of nature.
It wasn’t long after that meeting that I called Dolfi and asked him to serve as my Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace. I selected him for several reasons. He has great leadership skills, of course, but also a genuine interest in people and an ability to bring them together. When you travel and walk with him you see how people instinctively respond to Dolfi, he has the type of personality that effortlessly reaches out. He makes easy contact with people and treats everyone the same way; whether a chairman of a company or a driver. This ability to treat all human beings with respect and dignity is such an important quality in a leader and one which Ogi has in abundance. What I also liked about him was his ability to communicate in a way that people can easily understand. Sometimes he delivered very serious messages in a light-hearted way. But the messages always got through. Above all, Dolfi is a sportsman. He genuinely likes sport, he understands it and he passionately believes in the power of sport to transform lives. During his seven years as the first United Nations
Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace, Dolfi achieved a great deal. He was, in many ways, a true pioneer, setting a precedent and establishing the parameters for this new position, and he was the first to take on the challenge of bridging the United Nations and the world of sport. Sport can be a universal language to bring people together, no matter what their origin, background, religious beliefs or economic status. When young people participate in sports, they develop emotionally and have great fun, even as they learn the ideals of teamwork and tolerance. This is why it was crucial for the United Nations to make use of the convening power of sport in its work for peace and its efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Dolfi led these efforts with great passion and success.
mer child soldiers in Sierra Leone, tackled gang violence in Colombia, and encouraged what is called the “new cricket diplomacy” between India and Pakistan. In fact, when I travelled as Secretary-General, many people talked to me about “your Special Envoy for sport”. Even today, people remember, and I was certainly very pleased with his support and the contribution he made. He created a lasting impression.
But Dolfi also has a private side. He is a true family man and devoted to his wife Katrin, daughter Caroline and to his friends. I know how deep the pain was when his son Mathias fell sick and I know what a terrible shock and blow it was for him and his family when he lost his son. Normally parents expect their children to bury them, not the other way around. Dolfi used sport creatively all over the world. He When I was Secretary-General, my wife and I used brought together Israeli and Palestinian children to say that when one operates in the public arena on the football pitch, helped to reintegrate for- one must never forget that one lives in two worlds
and this was also true for Dolfi. There is the larger public world of a Federal Councillor, or a Secretary-General and the smaller world of family and friends. And these two worlds have to be in equilibrium. If one is destabilised, the other is affected, and they are both equally important. Sometimes one has the tendency to ignore the smaller world, which is a mistake. I think Dolfi found the right balance in both his worlds. With this book, I would like to congratulate him for his many achievements, wish him good health, many joyful times with his family, friends, and many happy moments embracing the wonders of nature. I am looking forward to our next walk in the mountains. Kofi A. Annan
Prologue
2010 The mountains are big and Ogi is small. Dรถlf Ogi hiking above Kandersteg.
The scene is the Grosse Schanze in Bern, the site of the university. It is 4,284 days since Dölf stepped down from his government position. It is 5 o’clock on 23 September 2011. A powerful high pressure system over Germany has produced a warm late summer evening in Switzerland. The MeteoSwiss weather service will note later in its monthly climate report that September 2011 was again one of the warmest on record. It is weather of interest to geographers, and the opening ceremony marking the celebrations of the 125th anniversary of the Institute of Geography of the University of Bern is about to start. It’s nearly 11 years since the farewell ceremony at the Château d’Oron when Dölf said goodbye to the top army officers and the directors of the offices in his Ministry. Now he is sitting in the front row of the lecture hall in the University of Bern, as if he were still in office, as if the 4284 days that have passed since
his resignation had never been. He is wearing a dark blue suit with a violet blue tie. He is the main speaker at the celebrations of the world-famous institute. The director of the institute, Professor Rolf Weingartner, makes the customary brief introductory speech – but as he says, there is really no need for it. “I presume, indeed I am 100% sure, that that is true. Everyone in this hall knows him.” When he gets up to speak, he feels as he did on the Dies academicus at the university of Bern in 2005 that he is the only non-academic in the room. 3 December 2005 was the day the Faculty of Humanities awarded him an honorary PhD.
As the Latin laudatio put it, that honorary doctorate was being awarded to a man “qui vir peritus regendae civitatis charismaticus in singulis helvetiae partibus tota in helvetia toto in orbe terrarium que societati profutura esse perspexerat perpetranda curavit.” Or in English: “This man was experienced in the governing of a state, he exercised his charisma in the different parts of Switzerland, in the whole of Switzerland and throughout the world. When he saw that something would be useful for society, he made sure that it was implemented.”
Today, almost six years later, in the neo-Baroque lecture theatre of Bern University, he looks out from the lectern into huge temple of science, where not a seat remains empty. He eyes travel to the “16 richly decorated pairs of half-columns”, to quote the booklet issued to commemorate the “Centenary of the University of Bern’s Main Building” in October 2003. The writer was particularly taken with the capitals that crown the columns: “This time it is the Corinthian capitals which are particularly suited to the solemn atmosphere.” The elementary school kid from Kandersteg – how will he manage the task of addressing all these academics? At the end of his fourth year he didn’t even pass the entrance exam to the secondary school in nearby Frutigen, even though his school reports show him scoring top marks – 6 out of 6 – in practically every subject. It still hurts even now. On 23 November 1987, some two weeks before he was voted into the government, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper commented rather cruelly on his selection by the Swiss People’s Party parliamentary group as its official candidate: “His good showing cannot hide the fact that the widespread concerns that he lacks the intellectual wherewithal for this extremely demanding office have not been allayed.” Any concerns have long been allayed now. The hurt is still there, but now he can even make light of those old insults to his intellectual ability: “I would write letters – without spelling mistakes,” he joked in his speech. He is living proof of the fact that even if you start out from humble circumstances, you can go a very long way.
1953 Despite good marks at school, he did not pass the secondary school entrance exam.
1995 Father and son.
The speaker begins. His subject: “The mountain experience”. It is an inspiring speech. The honorary PhD with his brilliant oratorical talent “gave the event a real down-to-earth note”, as Dr This Rutishauser, journalist and lecturer at the institute, wrote later. The forester’s son, mountain hiker, Defence and Transport Minister has experienced at first hand and in all its aspects the natural environment that is the subject of the university geographer’s detailed research. He explored it with his father, the central figure in his life, as he told his academic audience. “In his capacity as forester and mountain guide my father surveyed three glaciers: the Blüemlisalp glacier, the Schwarzgletscher and the Kanderfirn. As a small boy I accompanied my father on these surveys.” His father reforested the Wätterbach by planting more than 1,000 fir saplings, and tamed the stream itself using environmentally friendly measures. “It is a true story that has been been part of my consciousness for nearly 70 years now.”
Rutishauser understood the message: the boy was influenced for life by experiencing so close at hand the way his father worked with and for his natural surroundings. As Dölf put it in his speech: “Mountains, glaciers, water and nature have always had a role in my life.” Together with his father he saw the beginnings of climate change: “The glaciers are melting. I know!” He draws his audience under his spell with an anecdote. During his time at the UN he learned that in the English-speaking world in particular you should include a good story in your speech if you want people to listen. This time the story was to do with the issue of traffic in the Swiss Alps. It was the late 1980s and things were getting tough. Huge pressure was coming from abroad to allow more traffic in the Swiss Alps, and above all to lift some of the restrictions on road freight. Under the slogan “Come and see”, he invited each of the European Transport Ministers to go with him to Wassen, a village on the way to the Gotthard road and rail tunnels, so that he could work on them one by one. Each time he took the minister from whichever Euro– pean state it was up to the little village church – “this beautiful church on the hill” – and pointed to the countryside around. “Here you have the river Reuss!” “Here you have the highway!” “Here you have the railway!” “Here you have the motorway!” And then his gaze would travel down into the valley and he would raise his voice: “And in this area what you have above all is noise!”
Most got the message. Some did not. The latter he then took into the church and gave them an earnest talking to. A first – somewhat muted – laugh from the academic audience. But there was one who just refused to get it: Jean-Luc Dehaene, Belgium’s Transport Minister and subsequently Prime Minister. Later, as director of the FrancoBelgian Dexia Bank, he hit the headlines in October 2011 when he had to split the bank after it got into difficulties.
2010 Ogi against the Bire, Blüemlisalp and Doldenhorn (l to r).
“You could, but you just don’t want to!” Jean-Luc argued. There was simply no way to convince Dehaene. Then he had a brilliant idea. It had been arranged that they would fly to Kandersteg by helicopter for tea. He told the pilot to make a detour to the North Face of the Eiger: “Right up close to the rock face, at 3,800 metres, that’s where you’re to stop!” A second wave of laughter, a bit louder now. He was a bit frightened himself, he admits. But then he suddenly decided to unfasten Dehaene’s safety belt. Loud laughter. He raises his voice, stressing every syllable. “Then, as the helicopter wobbled a bit, I said to him: ‘Jean-Luc, ici on ne peut vraiment pas construire une autoroute – you really can’t build a motorway here.’ ” Then Jean-Luc fell on his knees and begged me: “I see, I’m terrified, let’s go.” More laughter. “I know this isn’t how academics behave, nor diplomats, but it was effective!” More laughter.
From that time on Jean-Luc Dehaene was one of the best ambassadors within the EU for Switzerland’s transport policy. He would always phone when a Transport Minister was due to visit, and advise him accordingly: “This one, you need only stand in front of the church with; that one you’ll probably have to take inside – and the third one you’ll have to the Eiger.” A final burst of laughter. He’s home and dry. At last he has all these august people in his pocket. The subsequent speakers can hardly avoid referring to him in their own speeches. The former rector of Bonn University, Professor Matthias Winiger, has taken as his subject: “The mountains are more…” On the issue of traffic in the mountains, he comments that no-one could put it better than the story they have just heard. The guests sitting in the lecture hall include Winiger’s son David, who for many years was Dölfi’s personal assistant during his time at the UN.
But the nature-loving son of Kandersteg avoids one thing in his entire speech: he does not include what is now probably the most famous catchword in Switzerland. He does say, when the occasion comes up: “I was not the only one who felt joy ruling the day.” Someone else produces the exact quotation. The head of the geographical institute in Zurich, Professor Robert Weibel, ends his congratulations to his colleagues at the sister institute in Bern with the words: “Freude herrscht!”, which means something like: “Joy rules the day!”
Not in the least tired
19
“Dölf, you aren’t obliged to do everything you are asked to.” BRIGITTE WISLER
As they do every year, in December 2012 Katrin and Dölf Ogi travelled from Fraubrunnen to their winter home in Kandersteg. On unpacking, Dölf was a bit surprised to find his black patent leather shoes in his suitcase, but he didn’t attach any importance to the matter and had soon forgotten about it. But that was the first hint that something was up. When on 12 January 2013 his wife and daughter drummed it into him that he had to return to Kandersteg the moment the first run of the giant slalom in Adelboden was over, he began to wonder. They were expected to a black-tie function in Zurich – or that’s what they told him. He hadn’t noticed that his dinner jacket had also been packed along with the patent leather shoes. Together with the Swiss SRF television service, Katrin and Caroline Ogi had been working on the plan for some time. Dölf
had to be kept completely in the dark. It was when a VIP minibus arrived in Kandersteg that evening and he thought he recognised the driver, that he got his first inkling that perhaps not everything was as it seemed. But the driver remained monosyllabic. When Dölf asked where they were going, he didn’t get a proper answer. Only when they got to Zurich did he realise that they were driving towards the Hallenstadion stadium. But he still didn’t know exactly what he was going to be doing there. It was the night of the SwissAward ceremony. But his name had not been mentioned in this connection… The Ogis took their places in the front row. Sitting behind and to one side of them, Dölf recognised Bernhard Russi. Suddenly the ski legend softly disappeared… to appear later on the stage. At last the penny dropped.
2013 Dölf Ogi receives the Lifetime Award for his life’s work.
The award ceremony was memorable also for the fact that Bernhard Russi had to fight back tears during his speech.
20
Ogi simply pressed the button and out it all came: four languages, four cultures, 26 cantons, unity in diversity, at peace since 1848.
Dölf Ogi was the recipient of the 2012 Lifetime Award, and Bernhard Russi delivered the presentation speech. “The much-loved elder statesman, superb communicator and successful politician was honoured for his life’s work at the SwissAward ceremony,” SRF stated on its website at 10:01 that evening. The award ceremony was memorable also for the fact that Bernhard Russi had to fight back tears during his speech. It was another highpoint in Ogi’s life – and a totally unexpected one. He had imagined that the wonderful ceremony held in the Gasterental for his 70th birthday on 18 July 2012 could never be bettered, and that he would now be able to withdraw a little from public view. He had thought the same thing in March 2012, when he was presented with the European Cultural Communication prize in Bern. The former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had actually been due to make the award speech. “But the world and peace need Kofi Annan’s intervention once again”, said Ogi’s former cabinet colleague and close friend Ruth Dreifuss at the ceremony in Bern’s Kulturcasino. She, rather than Annan, delivered the speech to the audience who had come to honour Dölf. Annan was involved in an extremely tough mission to Syria at the time. But he had already written his speech before he got the call from the UN. He asked Ruth Dreifuss to tell everyone how extremely sorry he was not to be able to be present at the award ceremony for his good friend “Dolfi”. On that Saturday morning in March Adolf Ogi was presented with the European Cultural Communication prize. Another major award in the long list of 15 national and international prizes and honours he had received since 2000. The citation says:
“We are honouring the charismatic and visionary statesman, in particular his worldwide efforts to promote sport as a means to understanding between peoples, his skill at communication in the interests of Switzerland and his activity with the United Nations.” Dölf was not the only one to receive an award that day. One of the other prominent prize winners at the same event was Josef Ackermann, the Chief Executive Officer of the Deutsche Bank AG. He received the German-Swiss culture prize for his cultural activities in Frankfurt, presented to him by the city’s mayor Petra Roth – someone whose name had at one time even been mentioned as a possible German President. But, once again, Ogi was the centre of attention. He was not in the least tired. He hadn’t known beforehand, though had perhaps suspected, that after the awards had been presented, he was expected to say a few words. No problem for Ogi. He simply pressed the button and out it all came: four languages, four cultures, 26 cantons, unity in diversity, at peace since 1848. He had said it so often before. But the force of the words lies in their constant repetition, over the course of decades, almost like turning a prayer wheel. A knowing smile passed over the faces of his former assistants who were sitting in the hall. In her speech Ruth Dreifuss had already said the communications prize seemed to have been tailor-made for him. It’s as if Adolf Ogi were still in the cabinet. He continues to treat everyone he meets, be it ever so fleetingly – in the street, in the train, in the corridor – with respect… He notices and greets everyone he passes. Even today, he never just walks past anyone as if they weren’t there, especially “ordinary” people. Ogi’s old friend Bruno
Not in the least tired Marazzi, who built the St Jakob Park football stadium in Basel and the Stade de Suisse in Bern, put it like this: “Dölf has never given himself airs, and he’s never been overbearing. He’s perfectly capable of greeting a farmer smoking his pipe on the side of the road, then turning round and getting into the black limousine next to Prince Charles.” Or as Ruth Dreifuss said somewhat ambivalently in her speech at the Kulturcasino: “His way of doing things was successful in the international arena too: he developed a relationship with the former French President, François Mitterrand, that no-one else could have done… and he even managed to put Chinese President Jiang Zemin in a more conciliatory mood.” But more of that anon… He is still much in demand. Brigitte Wisler, who has been his private secretary since his time as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, has to keep reminding him: “You aren’t obliged to do everything you are asked to.” Even today he gets 20 or 30 mails a day. Everybody wants something from him: a speech, a foreword, a lecture… And then there’s the media! When the Swiss People’s Party, the party he belongs to, is at odds with itself, he feels duty bound to have his say, even if it’s just to let Christoph Blocher know that he really ought to start thinking about… But recently he has begun to think he would like to stop living quite so hectically. And he still has one big dream he’d like to fulfil: to climb Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain. And for physical reasons, he
2011 The inauguration of the Swiss glockenspiel in London with Urs Eberhard (Switzerland Tourism), Robert Davis (deputy leader of Westminster City Council), Ambassador Anton Thalmann, Susie Burbridge (Lord Mayor of Westminster) and Dölf Ogi (l to r).
21
Like two brothers: Ogi and his close friend Gregor Furrer in Ascona. 2007 Paying respects at Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks in New York. 2001 Captains on deck: Ogi with Post boss Ulrich Gygi (l) and contractor Bruno Marazzi on the Lake Zurich steamship “Stadt Rapperswil�. 2008
Not in the least tired needs to do that quite soon, in the next two to three years. And then there are all the touching moments. Like the package addressed to Former Federal Councillor Adolf Ogi, 3312 Fraubrunnen, delivered on 9 February 2012: a 30 page report carefully drawn up by the lawyer Jean-Claude Wenger and containing Wenger’s memories of how the two of them “buried” the Kaiseraugst nuclear power station project. Not long after Ogi had joined the Federal Council, Wenger was engaged to conduct the negotiations with the operating company when it was decided not to build the station after all. Recalling the late 1980s, Wenger wrote: “Ogi was angry when he felt he had not been sufficiently briefed. But when he saw that things were moving forward successfully, he gave us powerful and effective support, in particular by repeatedly talking about the political dimension of what we were aiming to do.” That had been almost 25 years before. And, since Fukushima, way ahead of his time. June 2011. In the Walliserhof in Zermatt, which is managed by his daughter Caroline and her husband Sylvain, Adolf Ogi got so carried away when he addressed the local Kiwanis Club that he almost knocked the decorations off the wall in the room where he was speaking. The audience listened spellbound as he passed in review the main phases of his life. July 2011. In Mels, on a visit to “his” swisscor Foundation, his eyes lit up when he saw how the 80 or so orphans from Macedonia were enjoying their visit to Switzerland, staying at the organisation’s twelfth holiday camp. Some of the children were seriously disabled. The Swiss Army medics were being kept busy – the dentists most of all. By the end they had carried out 128 dental treatments. And many new wheel chairs
23 and walking aids went home with the children. Adolf Ogi drums up 200,000 francs in donations for swisscor every year. November 2011. In London he mingled with the hundred Swiss “treichler”, traditional bell thumpers, who had travelled to the British capital with him for the festive inauguration of the newly refurbished Swiss Glockenspiel in Swiss Court, Leicester Square. Susie Burbridge, the Right Worshipful the Lord Mayor of Westminster, duly fell under the charm of the former President of Switzerland. “You can see at first glance that he is a remarkable man,” she said at the ceremony in Swiss Court. The glockenspiel, which used to be attached to the now demolished Swiss Centre, had been silent for three years. Now, after extensive restoration, the 27 bells are chiming again and the figures in traditional Swiss costume processing in a circle above the coats of arms of the 26 cantons. If they possibly could, homesick Swiss made the effort to turn up for the event at Swiss Court. One was Benedikt Käsermann from Bern, who teaches geography and politics at the German School in London. He had seen Ogi back in Switzerland only a short while before, at the 125th anniversary celebrations of Bern University’s Institute of Geography, where Ogi had made what he described as a truly brilliant speech. Also there of course was Lord Lyell, the indestructible Scottish member of the House of Lords, who used to race against Dölf Ogi in the Anglo-Swiss parliamentary ski week. “Ogi’s lot have won today!” he laughed, as ever. Usually it was Ogi himself who won. March 2012. Adolf Ogi, accompanied by 30 entrepreneurs, travelled to India, in a trip organised by the Swiss Economic Forum. The Swiss businessmen were very grateful for his political support, as if he were still a member of the government.
24 They visited successful Indian firms and found old Swiss roots, like the Moser-Naef company, which was originally established in Sumiswald in the Emmental, but is now Indian-owned and produces DVDs. But not everything in this hectic life is wonderful. The most shattering event in Adolf Ogi’s life occurred on 18 February 2009: the death of his son Mathias. Since Easter 2008 the promising 36-year-old had been battling cancer – a particularly uncommon so-called soft tissue sarcoma. It had started to proliferate in the muscle fibres between the trachea and the bronchial tubes. Mathias had wanted to marry his girlfriend Manuela as soon as he was better – but that was never to happen. The number 18 has had an almost magical significance in the life of Adolf Ogi and has always been connected with beginnings and endings. Adolf Ogi was born on the 18th; his father was buried on the 18th. And finally, his son Mathias succumbed to his cancer on the 18th.
2009 The grieving family in front of Bern cathedral, which was filled to overflowing for the funeral service for Ogi’s son Mathias.
The first decade of the 21st century was marked with sadness. Three years earlier Ogi had witnessed the death of a good friend in a skiing accident in Crans-Montana. He reproached himself bitterly that he had not managed to stop Erika Studer skiing down a cordoned-off piste. She crashed into a rock and died on the spot of the severe head injuries she suffered. The Studers and the Ogis were close friends. And then Mathias. Former UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan was among those attending Mathias Ogi’s funeral service in Bern Cathedral. Along with many celebrities from the worlds of politics, business and sport, it was striking how many ordinary people came to grieve with the family. Not only was every seat in the great cathedral taken, but those who arrived too late had to squeeze into the entrance area. Bern Cathedral has rarely been seen so full. “It is always a shock when a person dies, particularly when it is a young person,” Kofi Annan said later in his office in Geneva. “Parents usually expect that their chil-
Not in the least tired
25 dren will bury them, and not the other way round.” Mathias’ death at such a young age reminded him of a tradition in his African homeland. “There we only mourn for the death of young people. When old people die we celebrate and thank God that he gave them a full life. The death of someone after the age of 70 is celebrated. It is only young people who are mourned, that they did not have the chance to live a full life.” Wise words. It is certainly not by chance that Kofi Annan and Adolf Ogi understand each other so well. Both have deep roots, Annan in the luxuriant countryside around Kumasi in Ghana, Ogi in the mountains of Kandersteg in Switzerland. Mathias Ogi had a great future ahead of him professionally. After a post-graduate course in London, at the beginning of 2007 he had started working as a lawyer in the legal department of the Swiss Life Group, headquartered in Zurich. No less a person than Rolf Dörig, at that time Chairman of the Corporate Executive Board and now Chairman of the Board of Directors of the insurance holding, is full of praise for him. “Thanks to his excellent qualifications and his linguistic abilities, Mathias Ogi was immediately involved in various different transnational projects, and had been appointed Secretary to the Board of Management of the Swiss market, a first step in a potentially glittering career.” Dörig speaks of the promising young man’s “frank, unflappable, yet dynamic character”. “We are all deeply sorry about his death at such a very young age.” It took Adolf Ogi a long time before he could start to come to terms with his loss. Michael Kleiner, who worked alongside Ogi in his first years as Kofi Annan’s Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace, was deeply shocked the first time he saw his old boss in Geneva after Mathias’
death. Kleiner had prepared and coordinated the UN International Year of Sport for Ogi. “It wasn’t the same Dölf ”, he recalls. It is only very recently that the old inner flame has flared up again. During the period when they worked to come to terms with their grief, Ogi and his family and friends set up the “Freude herrscht” ( Joy rules the day!) association. The idea is to give children and teenagers, both healthy and sick, the chance to discover the pleasures of exercise and of the great outdoors, preferably of course in the mountains around Kandersteg. At about 6 o’clock in the evening on 25 August 2011 a simple ceremony was held at the cemetery in Kandersteg at which only the immediate family – and Mathias’ partner Manu – were present. The urn containing Mathias Ogi’s ashes was transferred to a new family grave. There was no pastor, only a local council employee who conducted the reburial. Despite the fine summer weather, storm clouds were gathering on the horizon. It was almost like a second funeral, a very moving moment, Ogi said later. But there have been more joyful moments in Ogi’s life. On 17 December 2011 his daughter Caroline and Sylvain Stefanazzi were married in the registry office in Sion: she a hotel manageress from Fraubrunnen, he a chef de cuisine from Crans-Montana. The solemn ceremony at the oval table in the reception room of the Sion city corporation remains in Ogi’s memory. The church wedding was held in Kandersteg on 26 May. His own family and that of his in-laws as well his friends were pillars of support in the difficult time after Mathias’ death. Looking back now, Ogi says that without them it would have been much harder to him to find a way to cope with life again.
It is certainly not by chance that Kofi Annan and Adolf Ogi understand each other so well. Both have deep roots, Annan in the luxuriant countryside around Kumasi in Ghana, Ogi in the mountains of Kandersteg.
With Swiss Life CEO Rolf Dรถrig at the Parsenn Derby in Davos. 2002
2007 Who is laughing at who? Ogi with railway head Benedikt Weibel.
2000 In friendly conversation with scientist Bernard Piccard.
2012 Award ceremony at the Pro Europa cultural foundation in Bern. The recipients Joe Ackermann (l) and Dรถlf Ogi with the speakers who delivered the eulogies: Petra Roth, Mayor of Frankfurt, and Ruth Dreifuss, former Federal Councillor.
Not in the least tired “I am really very fond of Dölf, and of his whole family”, says one of these friends, Bruno Marazzi. “The loss of their son Mathias was a terribly painful blow.” Marazzi is glad that Dölf has such a kind, understanding wife and that his daughter Caroline and her husband Sylvain are a dynamic and successful young couple. “I am so pleased that Katrin and Dölf have got such a smart son-in-law”, he says. Businessman Gregor Furrer and Adolf Ogi have known each other since the 1960s. According to the local newspaper “Regionalzeitung Oberwallis”, Furrer at one time used to help look after cows put out to summer pasture on the Greicheralp in canton Valais; today he is a highly successful vendor of sports goods. Among other things, he resurrected the fortunes of Völkl skis. “As far as I am concerned, the most important thing about Dölf is that he likes people”, says Furrer. Ogi’s friends all make similar comparisons. “He can talk as easily to a workman from the Emmental as to a head of state.” Furrer explains: “That’s Dölf ’s great strength. And that is the deeper reason why Kofi Annan gave him a job at the UN.” Furrer recalls an important meeting in Saas Fee in 1979. In a quiet moment the two of them sit down at a table in the Saaserhof hotel to have a talk. “Just the two of us!” he stresses. In a very personal conversation he told Ogi that he had achieved everything he could as head of the Swiss Ski Federation. “I told him the direction he should think of going in.” Politics! “You have every chance of becoming a Federal Councillor one day,” Furrer had assured him. But even he was astonished at the speed at which things then moved. Gregor Furrer’s brother Art, the ski acrobat, says this about his friend: “Dölf has
27 always known how to open doors. He has a fantastic gift for communicating. Everyone he speaks to, whatever their background, gets the feeling that he is taking them seriously.” But he has noticed a minor weakness, that from time to time really gets on his nerves: “As soon as he is kept waiting
“Dölf has the stamp of a statesman.” BRUNO MARAZZI
for just a few minutes, he gets horribly impatient.” But no-one is allowed to say anything… Art Furrer is quite right. In canton Valais in summer 2011, when good old Dölf had to queue in the cramped terminal of the little cable car to go up from Kalpetran to Embd, for him it was like being in a torture chamber. Not because he thought he should have any special privileges, certainly not, but because he is quite simply too impatient. He admits it – “but everyone has their faults”, he says. Art Furrer has a fond memory of standing with his wife Gerlinde and Dölf on the summit of the Dom, 4,545 metres above sea level, the highest mountain completely within Swiss territory. It was 1993, the first time Ogi had taken the annually rotating role of Swiss President. The highest ranking Swiss on top of the highest mountain! He would love to do it again, and, as he put it, “once more enjoy together the power and the purity of nature, the panorama and the glory of creation”. And another friend, Benedikt Weibel, has this to say: “In my memory there have been
28 2012 Mingling with the people, India-style. Ogi and Helene Niedhart, manager of CAT aviation, on a rickshaw trip in Varanasi.
two Federal Councillors who stood out from their colleagues: Willi Ritschard and Adolf Ogi. The two men have a lot in common. Modest backgrounds, a way of speaking everyone can understand, and, above all, openness to people.” Clear, bold words, when you remember that Weibel once headed the Federal Railways, the SBB.
“You have every chance of becoming a Federal Councillor one day.” GREGOR FURRER
“Bepo” Weibel also remembers his friend as a sensitive boss: “I shall never forget Dölf ’s reaction after the serious accident in Lausanne station in 1994.”
That was the derailment of a freight train carrying highly toxic material. Lausanne city centre had to be evacuated. It was the third serious rail accident that year. Bepo had been sitting despondently in his office, preparing himself for the recriminations that were about to come, when Ogi phoned. It was not what he had expected. Dölf asked him how he was feeling, and assured him of his full support. “And that wasn’t just words. He kept his promise”, Weibel recalls today. An interesting thing: his friends from the business world use the word “statesman” to describe him much more frequently than politicians do. “Dölf has the stamp of a statesman”, says Marazzi. Is it that they have been quicker than others to realise that that really is the case? Is it slowly sinking in to people in Switzerland that the politician whom they sometimes mocked, is in fact a gifted statesman? Only now, years after he left office? Dölf himself thinks it might be so. “Yes, I have the feeling that I am appreciated more now than I used to be.”
Not in the least tired There’s an astonishing historical parallel. Something very similar evidently happened to US President Harry Truman. This is how historian Hans-Peter Schwarz describes “the little man from Missouri”, President from 1945 to 1953, in his book “The Face of the 20th Century”: “Of all the Presidents in the 20th century, Truman was the only one who had not been to college. He spoke robustly, like most of his compatriots, and was direct and frank. He behaved simply, and was genuinely so, making no effort to hide his provinciality.” And yet he was remarkably successful: “The reason for this was to no small extent because in the very depth of his being he really was a simple man”, Schwarz writes. This kind of person often gets by thanks to a few old fashioned qualities: industry,
29 attention to detail, loyalty to colleagues, courage, plain common sense and patriotism. While Truman was in office, there were evidently few influential voices in the country which would grant him the title of statesman. But a generation later things were very different, Schwarz comments. It is now 2012 – and Adolf Ogi is indefatigable. This was a year of some very private and personal anniversaries for Dölf. 40th anniversary of his marriage to Katrin – ruby wedding 40th anniversary of Sapporo winter Olympics 20th anniversary of his “Joy rules the day!” slogan 50th anniversary of the Beatles
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1993 The top Swiss climbing to the top of the highest mountain located entirely within Switzerland, the Dom.
2012 His daughter Caroline’s early present for his 70th birthday: a two-day ski tour in the mountains of canton Valais, including the Tête Blanche, at 3,711 m above sea level.