Professor Christian Reder
At a time when it was already becoming clear that dictatorships in Europe were heading towards a new war, two young Swiss women, Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) and Ella Maillart (1903-1997), who had already undertaken many extreme journeys, set off by car for Afghanistan. Through the Balkans – “a region of uniform melancholy,” “what richness, what diversity!” – Turkey, Iran, along the Caspian Sea, they reached Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and finally Kabul after two months, in the summer of 1939. to Herat, to Mazar-i-Sharif, and finally to Kabul. The regions along the Oxus River on the Soviet border, where refugees continued to flee south and an imminent invasion was feared, were characterized for her by “the traces of death, skeletons, shards of pottery, and the wind-ravaged mounds of ruins of buried cities, fortresses, and cemeteries.” The relics of unknown events, the dimensions of the landscape, the “mystery of space,” as Ella Maillart later observed, became the backdrop for a path to inner self-discovery that was “more psychological than geographical.” With her short color films, she was among the first to transcend the conventional black-and-white technique.
For Annemarie Schwarzenbach, whose essayistic travelogue was only published as a book long after her early death, this escape from Europe was also meant to be a way to break free from drugs, not, as was later common, a cheap means of access. The people she encountered are described as “unspoiled, fun-loving, helpful, and hospitable.” They met “passionately democratic tribal brothers.” Everywhere they went, the two women alone in a Ford convertible, were warmly received. No one ever wanted to accept money for aid. “In Kabul, we made friends, settled in, got to know the Russian who baked European bread and Gulam Haidar, who sold fountain pens, airmail envelopes, and Veramon cigarettes. We quickly established our daily routines, found our way home in the dark, and it ultimately depended only on chance that we didn’t spend the rest of our lives here.” With their arrival, the “main driving force” of their journey had been broken, but a return to “the hatred of a continent shrouded in darkness” was still not appealing. Staying in a modernizing state seemed at least conceivable to them, even though after the overthrow of King Amanullah in 1929, who, influenced by Europe and Turkey, had initiated reforms and even abolished the chador, much had reverted to its former state. Most of the women were re-elected Joyless, fearful beings,” who didn’t even know “that one could live differently.” The changes that had to be dealt with in any way were more palpable there than elsewhere: “Neither in Turkey nor in Persia nor, for example, in the Soviet-occupied Caucasus countries,” noted Annemarie Schwarzenbach, “did I experience the visible and tangible intrusion of a new lifestyle connected with Western technology as so bitter, so devastating as in Afghanistan.” The melancholy of what was breaking down could evidently temporarily balance one’s own state of mind. Looking back on her own experience, she said: “I didn’t learn much that was new, but I saw everything, experienced everything firsthand.” Ella Maillart moved to India, while Annemarie Schwarzenbach, despite the now fully erupted World War, managed to return home via Bombay and Genoa.
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