Wikimedia
The Federal Archives are committed to free access to knowledge. We have teamed up with Wikimedia CH to publish freely available documents from the SFA’s holdings online, for example on Wikimedia Commons. The following pages contain information about the projects already completed.
Carl Durheim’s police photographs of stateless persons
In 1852 and 1853 Carl Durheim, a pioneering photographer from Bern, was commissioned by the Confederation to photograph hundreds of stateless persons and travellers who had been picked up and detained. The result was a unique collection of police photographs. The Swiss Federal Archives have now digitised the more than 200 salt paper prints and published them on Wikimedia Commons.
Geneva Conventions
The first Geneva Convention “for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field”, was signed on 22 August 1864. The original document from 1864 as well as the Conventions signed in 1949 and still in force today, together with further documentation on the subject, have been digitised by the Federal Archives and can now be viewed on Wikimedia Commons.
“Active Service in the First World War” photo collection 1914-1918
The original documents are glass plate negatives and are archived in the fonds on national defence (“Landesverteidigung 1848–1950” - E27). The Federal Archives digitised this collection a few years ago, creating a high-definition digital version of each negative as well as a preview image.
Wikimedia Commons
Media contributed by the Federal Archives
Swiss Federal Archives
Archivstrasse 24
CH - 3003 Bern