11 Hotel Elvezia

Texts by Rodolfo Huber

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The Crociani family's Albergo Elvezia was built in the early 1900s. It was originally a typical restaurant with a shady garden on the lake side, covered by a beautiful pergola. Over time the rusticity that characterized it disappeared to make way for the current elegance. Then again, all of Ascona's lakefront has turned into "Quai" and is no longer a natural shore where fishing boats dock.

On October 7, 1925, during the Locarno Peace Conference, German Chancellor Hans Luther and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand met for confidential talks in the arbor of the Elvezia restaurant. The secret meeting took journalists by surprise and therefore left ample room for interpretation. It was later said that the discussion determined the positive turning point in the negotiations. Thanks to the archives of the Weimar Republic Chancellery, now accessible to scholars, we know Luther's report on the meeting. During the conversation, the importance of peace between the German and French peoples and of European economic cooperation to counter America was stressed. Issues related to Germany's eastern borders, the role of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and relations with Russia were then discussed. These were all important issues that found resolution in the negotiations of the following days.

To commemorate the event in the Hotel Elvezia a plaque is affixed depicting the two protagonists caught in the act of shaking hands with the inscription, "HERE ON OCTOBER 7, 1925 BRIAND AND LUTHER LAID THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE LOCARNO PEACE."

Hans Luther returned several more times to Ascona and the Hotel Elvezia in the years following the Locarno Conference and after the war.