Erna Fueter-Stauffer, an elderly lady, was a close acquaintance of ours from the Bern years. Based on her decidedly Swiss name nobody would assume that one of the most interesting figures of Switzerland’s Hungarian community had just passed away, whose family history is still part of our everyday lives in the literal meaning of the word.

The Stauffers had lived in the municipality of Emmental in the Bern canton for centuries when in 1905, due to the pressing economic situation and poor living standards in Switzerland – strange but true – Friedrich Stauffer opted for the better conditions and alluring lands of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and along with his family settled in Répcelak.  In line with his original profession he founded a small cheese factory, which within a few years grew into one of the country’s leading dairy industry companies. The Stauffers enriched the Hungarian cheese culture with numerous patents and with their Swiss work ethic. Furthermore, the introduction of new technologies contributed to the development of Répcelak, which thus became nationally recognised. The Swiss proprietors enrolled their children – the recently deceased Erna and her brother, Andor – into the local elementary school and they were thus able to master the Hungarian language. They later completed their studies in the capital’s best Protestant secondary schools, namely the Baár-Madas and the Fasori Lutheran Secondary School. World War II put an end to the unbroken development of the 1920s and 1930s and the factory was rendered unusable by 1945 with the machinery dismantled or stolen and the little castle and business units left in ruins.

However, this was not the greatest loss for the family but rather the death of Andor, who was once a pupil at the Fasori Secondary School. Even though he had Swiss citizenship, which would have spared him from having to serve at the front, Andor volunteered to join the army. He never fought in combat but was transported to a training camp as a prisoner of the Americans and then of the French. During his captivity he kept a secret diary to the very last, which later found its way into the hands of his sister. The diary revealed that in the autumn of 1945 Andor Stauffer had died in France and that the fundamental cause of his death had been starvation. From the notes in his diary it transpires that it had never even occurred to him to disclose his Swiss identity in order to alleviate his circumstances, although it would probably not have made much difference as far as his captors were concerned in any case.

Gáspár Bíró wrote a scholarly still valid study at the beginning of the 1990s on the freedom to choose one’s identity, which he sees as such a basic human right that it should not be called into question by any state whatsoever. Andor Stauffer gave his life for this freedom, while Erna Stauffer – leaving the nationalised cheese factory behind – worked as an interpreter in the autumn of 1956 helping those who sought political freedom in Switzerland.

The memory of this family that hailed from the Bern canton survives beyond Répcelak. One of their innovations, the cream cheese, derived its names “bear” and “cub” from the animal figure on the Swiss capital’s coat-of-arms. Although the Stauffers returned to their ancient homeland, the Swiss bears, presumably as a result of the brand having been declared state-owned, remained here on cheese paper. Of course the people who nationalised the business and doubtlessly those who named the brand “bear” could not have known that the first specimen of the bears that are still to be found on the Bern river banks had been taken to the alpine country from the Zagon, Covasna County, by a resourceful Hungarian merchant at the end of the 1800s.