This is a photography blog, right? So how come a Swiss Roll 1AKA jelly roll, cream roll, roulade, Swiss log or Biskuitrolle is such a star. The Swiss Roll story (or, perhaps, we should say “saga”) is the most-read story on Macfilos, spawning several sequels and world-wide interest. Hardly a day goes by without a message from some corner of the globe enquiring if we ever tracked down the mystery couple from 1950, their dog and their BMW cabriolet.
Only this week, we discovered a strange YouTube video which consists of a mishmash of odd photos with a robotic narrator reading from an old published article. View it here if you are in the mood to be amused.
The disappointing answer is NO, we still don’t know who they are. On the other hand, we know a lot about them, their little dachshund and their car; how they took a road trip from Zürich, through Switzerland and on to Italy in their pre-war tourer; where they stopped to take photographs; which table they used in a particular café; and which hotel room they occupied. It’s all down to some initial sleuthing by William Fagan and a lot of effort by readers, many of whom took the trouble to visit locations in Switzerland and identify locations in the photographs.
But the story is fascinating nonetheless.
Over to Dublin
It all started in Ireland, where resides one of the world’s greatest experts on vintage Leicas and old lenses. William Fagan had successfully bid at auction for a couple of mid-thirties Leica cameras, as he does quite frequently. Nothing remarkable in that. A black Leica III from 1935 came with a brass FILCA cassette inside, and it contained film. That camera had been delivered from the Leitz factory to a Swiss dealer.
The second camera, a chrome Leica IIIa was accompanied by a box of FILCA cassettes and one of those also contained film. The camera had been delivered initially to Berlin, but soon found its way to Sweden. According to a note inside the box, the camera was used at an event in Sweden which celebrated the 200th anniversary of the publication of a famous book about botany by Linnaeus in June 1935.
Unfortunately, William could not remember which of the two cameras had contained the cassette, which prevents one obvious route for identification. He was able to trace both cameras at the Leica Archive. However, this didn’t seem important at the time. The problem was how to develop such an old film. The usual techniques needed a great deal of improvisation. Fortunately, he has a good friend, Mella Travers, who runs The Darkroom in Dublin, a specialist photographic processing company.
Looks like a Leica
To finish up on the camera angle, all I know for certain is that a Leica was used, as the cassette could only be used in a Leica camera. The FILCA brass cassette could have ‘joined-up’ with one of my Leicas at any stage in its long history since 1950. On the other hand, it might have been with the camera all the time since 1935. We might never know.
William Fagan
Mella was just the person because her specialist knowledge enabled her to retrieve passable negatives from what was originally thought to be pre-war Perutz film. There was an element of hubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble to the process, with the indomitable William stirring the brew for several hours. What emerged, however, was beyond anyone’s expectations. It posed so many questions and set Our Man in Dublin off on a quest that still continues.
The pictures
Just over 20 frames of the 36-frame film had been exposed, and the results were stunning, especially considering the age of the material and the amount of guesswork that had done into the development process. William was introduced to the mystery couple that would occupy much of his time, involve Macfilos, and subsequently the world’s press.
William first saw a youngish couple with a vintage car in a city which appeared to be somewhere in the German-speaking world, probably Germany, Austria, or Switzerland. There followed a series of photographs tracing a journey through what was almost certainly Switzerland. The couple, their rather cute little dachshund and their car were frequently in the frame, although the majority of pictures featured the lady of the story, indicating that the man was the main photographer.
I soon got involved as editor of Macfilos. Looking for a suitable headline, I thought of Swiss Roll. It describes perfectly the roll of film so painstakingly developed by William and Mella. Macfilos published the story and it created an immediate sensation. An artocicle and link on the BBC website prompted enquiries from all over the world, and features appeared in a vast range of publications. Altogether, we calculated that the Swiss Roll story enjoyed between five and six million hits worldwide. And those are just from the media we were aware of.
Amateur sleuths
This amount of interest was reflected in Macfilos traffic and a bulging comments section — by far our busiest-ever period. Readers set themselves up as amateur sleuths, concentrating on identifying the locations in the photographs and on identifying the couple and their car.
It didn’t take long to identify the starting point as Bahnhofsplatz in Zürich. Furthermore, thanks to the involvement of Macfilos sleuths, it became possible to narrow the date to a month in 1950. This was not, as at first thought, a set of pre-war snapshots. It was definitely post-war, taken by a camera that was already 15 years old.
Identifying the locations
Bahnhofsplatz was one thing. Posters and other indicators made it relatively easy (with the help of readers) to be sure of that. But, once on the road, the identification process became more difficult. The first stop, some 98 km from Zürich, was Bad Ragaz which was identified from a picture of the old town hall taken from a height. Again, thanks to local readers, we determined that the particular frame had been taken from the window of a fourth-floor room in the Tamina hotel. The hotel still exists, but sadly all visitor records for the period have been lost or destroyed. Disappointment No. 1.
The trip continued, from Bad Ragaz to St Moritz, a distance of 104 km. En route, we caught a clear glimpse of the Julier Hospiz on the Julier Pass and, for the first time, a clear image of the BMW 315 cabriolet and its number plate AB52:3287. Opportunity No. 2, followed by Disappointment No. 2 as all efforts to trace the number came to naught. It was a US Occupation number issued in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria. But all records have been lost.
Day trip clues
Our mystery couple stopped again in St Moritz and then continued to Menaggio on Lake Como. Locations en route have been identified by Macfilos readers. Macfilos author Chris Rodgers identified a lakeside shot and even calculated that the picture of the steamer was taken from the Grand Hotel Victoria, where another night (or two) was spent.
The couple found time for a car trip to nearby Lenno and a steamer excursion to Bellagio (soon identified from the picture of Via Giuseppe Garibaldi). Remarkably, back in Menaggio and thanks again to Chris and another reader, Toby Vickers, we were able to identify the very table in a café where the couple spent some time. The café still exists, and the table is more or less in the same position. And, judging by the shadows, our investigators could even determine the time of day.
The last picture on the Swiss Roll was taken in Lenno, presumably on the day trip from Menaggio. The rest of the Perutz film remained unexposed, thus bringing the saga to a premature and unsatisfactory end.
Abiding mystery
While the roll of film has answered many questions — remarkably so, considering its age and the initial sparsity of “hooks” on which to hang a plausible story — it also creates an abiding mystery. Why was the rest of the film never exposed? Why was the FILCA cassette left in the camera for seventy years? Who rewound the film into the cassette and why? At the time, William and I (and several thousand people around the world) came up with many theories.
Perhaps the camera had been stolen in Lenno and kept in someone’s loft for over half a century. Not so likely because any thief would have wanted to turn it into money at the first opportunity. Or maybe the happy couple fell out and the owner of the camera simply put it away, never to be used again (and certainly not worth developing the film which would only stir up bad — or all too sweet? — memories). Or could they have been involved in an accident on the return journey?
William summed up the story in his comprehensive article in Macfilos on 22 December 2020:
I am assuming that the couple went back to Zürich since that is where the trip commenced. But there are no further photographs. After Frame 22, the roll of negatives is completely blank, indicating that no exposure had taken place. When I received the camera, the FILCA brass cassette, which can only be described as an industrial-grade product, had the film completely rewound into its “brass tomb”.
The FILCA locks when it is taken out of the camera, but the film has to be rewound first. So, whoever rewound the cassette was doing something deliberate. There is, of course, no evidence as to who might have done this, the person who took the photos, a dealer or another subsequent owner. When you know how to do it, it is easy to check whether there is film in a Leica camera without opening it.
DNA to the rescue?
The quest for the Swiss Roll couple never ends. Just a few weeks ago, a regular reader and friend of the editor, Dunk, raised the interesting possibility of checking the FILCA cassette for DNA. This had not occurred to us at the time of the original article, but it is a fascinating prospect. By eliminating known contacts (primarily William and Mella) we might discover some intriguing connections. Unfortunately, as Dunk says, this would be an expensive operation and only feasible with some form of sponsorship. William and Mella are not holding their breath on this one.
Conclusion
Finding undeveloped film is not a rare event, but most of the long-lost images usually turn out to be mundane and of interest only to the original subjects. Simple holiday snaps with little by way of identification. The Swiss Roll is so different, and that is why it has captivated millions throughout the world. The road trip is now well documented, although the identity of the couple will probably remain one of history’s mysteries. We know so much detail of the journey that the Swiss Roll story never fails to intrigue. But the biggest mystery of all is that the film was never developed, and that the cassette remained in a camera undisturbed. It’s hard not to imaging some dramatic event cutting short the holiday and causing the camera to be abandoned, exactly 74 years ago.
Read a much more detailed account of the Swiss Roll from Macfilos in 2020.
Follow the Swiss Roll story as the months progressed in 2020
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