Skip to content
VitrineRoyal Houses of Europe
Sign in

Baroness Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza

b. 1958

Born
7 Jun 1958, Lausanne
Country of birth
Switzerland

Living person. The family sees only the name, dates and photo; everything else stays private unless they choose to share it.

facts
6
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

A life in time

  1. Born · Lausanne

    Birth, Lausanne

What was it like?

The world around Lausanne, 1958: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Baroness was born around the same time as Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, and Stephen Harper.

Born around the same time

  • Tom Hanks

    1956 · American actor and film producer (born 1956)

  • Mel Gibson

    1956 · American actor, director, producer and screenwriter (born 1956)

  • Stephen Harper

    1959 · 22nd prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015

  • Martina Navratilova

    1956 · Czech-American tennis player

  • Naruhito

    1960 · Emperor of Japan (born 1960)

  • Theresa May

    1956 · Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2016 to 2019

Fashion

Girl's clothing in Switzerland

Between 1950 and the late 1960s, girls commonly wore knee-length skirts or dresses with blouses, while trousers only became more frequent around 1970.

Stocking support methods

During the 1950s, children often used elastic garters to hold up their knitted wool stockings, as tights only became common in the late 1950s.

Music

Festival music and dance traditions

Traditional music played at festivals included the alphorn, used for mountain calls to cattle, and the bödeler, a rhythmic clog dance from Central Switzerland.

Instruments used in the home

People played diverse traditional instruments at home, such as the Toggenburg house organ, hackbrett (hammered dulcimer), violin, accordion, and halszither (a type of cittern).

Getting around

Cars became mass transport in mid-century Switzerland

In the 1950s and 1960s, the automobile became a mass transport mode, significantly expanding the travel radius of ordinary people compared to the mid-century period when most needs were met locally.

Around 1964–1964

New rail link reduced journey times in 1964

The opening of the Lucerne-Stans-Engelberg railway in 1964 enabled direct travel and cut the journey time to one hour.

Daily life
Around 1953–1957

Washing could take two days

In some places, people still relied on communal laundry schedules; one testimony says it took about two days to finish washing because the shared laundry room could be used only every six weeks.

Electrification made appliances commonplace

By the 1950s, electrification let Swiss households buy and use more electric appliances, including washing machines and refrigerators, directly in their apartments and houses.

Food

Shift in Milk Consumption

Between 1950 and 1960, Switzerland shifted from raw milk consumption toward specialized products like yogurt, cream, and pasteurized milk.

Around 1945–1949

War created the Ragusa chocolate bar

After the war, the popular Ragusa chocolate bar was created by stretching limited cocoa supplies with nuts imported from Italy.

Prices and wages
Around 1959–1959

Worker household income and expenses, 1959

In 1959, the average annual income for a husband in a Zurich worker household was around 11,100 francs, with about 1,560 francs spent on clothing for the entire family. Families often supplemented their income with home gardens for vegetables and fruit.

Around 1961–1961

Unskilled worker wages in 1961

By 1961, the average hourly earnings for an unskilled worker in Switzerland had risen to 3.53 francs. During this period, food expenditure accounted for 29 percent of total spending in worker families.

Work

The factory women known as Eleveners

Women in watch factories were nicknamed the Eleveners because they left work at 11 am to rush home, shop, and cook a fresh meal for their families by noon.

Around 1954–1954

Demanding conditions for domestic workers

In 1954, domestic service contracts could legally require a 15-hour workday and a six-day workweek, with only eight hours of rest allowed per week.

News and letters

Apprentices memorized complex postal geography

To cope with sorting, apprentices had to memorize the entire geography of Swiss post offices, a challenging skill known as Pöstlergeographie.

Daily mail volume doubled in fifteen years

Between 1949 and 1964, the number of letters processed in Switzerland doubled to eight million per day.

During their lifetime

  1. 1959

    Magic formula government established

    In 1959, the four largest political parties adopted the magic formula to permanently divide the seven government seats among themselves.

  2. 1971

    Women gain voting rights

    Women were granted the right to vote in federal elections for the first time in 1971.

  3. 1980

    Zurich youth riots erupt

    In May 1980, youth riots erupted in Zurich against city funding for the opera house, triggering a wave of similar protests across Swiss cities.

Family

Parents

Spouses

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.