Clashes in the Land of the Gnomes

Clashes in the Land of the Gnomes

Zurich, Switzerland's largest city (pop. 440,000), is such a bastion of Zwinglian virtues and respect for law and order that unkind observers say it would resemble a graveyard, if only it were a little livelier. The thought of public violence in Zurich is utterly improbable. Yet last week there were student riots right in downtown Zurich-- and they were just as violent as anything seen recently on the Boulevard Saint-Germain or on the Columbia University campus.

The clashes began after 500 leftist students announced their plans to occupy an unused downtown department store, which they hoped to convert into a with-it club for evenings of pop music and hippie happenings. Conservative city fathers decided that the heart of Zurich's hallowed banking section, from which the city's famous Gnomes conduct their mysterious business, was no place for such a frivolous establishment. The students arrived to find the department store ringed with police.

They reacted by bombarding the police with street cobblestones and beer bottles. The police charged with truncheons and hauled many of the students into the store's cellars, where they were severely beaten. Fighting spread all over the main streets of Zurich and dragged on until dawn. Next evening, there were more clashes when students stoned a police station where 20 youths were being held. In all, about 50 students and police were injured in the clashes. It was a rude awakening for Zurich, which so prides itself on its peaceful setting that its road signs announce: "A quiet town has fewer sick people."

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