The archives of the Bethlehem Mission Society SMB contain extensive documents relating to the Mission Society. Since 2014, the archives of the Mission Society have been housed in the Lucerne State Archives, where they are open to interested parties for research purposes. Enquiries may be addressed to the SMB archivist.
The archive of the Bethlehem Mission Society SMB contains extensive documents on the SMB missions in Africa, Asia and Latin America and a range of audiovisual media documenting the worldwide work of the SMB missionaries. The archive also contains holdings relating to the schools and training centres of the Mission Society, such as the Immensee Gymnasium (grammar school), the Rebstein and Torry Progymnasium (lower forms) and the Wolhusen and Schöneck missionary seminaries.
In 2014, the archive of the Bethlehem Mission Society was transferred to the State Archives of the Canton of Lucerne, where they are open to interested parties for research purposes. The website of the Lucerne State Archives provides some insights into the holdings of the SMB archive (in German). Elisabeth Vetter, the SMB archivist, will answer any enquiries about the archive of the Mission Society.
About the archive
The Bethlehem Mission Society was founded in 1921 and ranks among the big and important missionary societies in Switzerland. The archive dates back to 1895, when the French priest Pierre Marie Barral founded an apostolic school in Meggen near Lucerne, and moved it to Immensee in 1896. The holdings of the school archive and later Gymnasium (grammar school), which had a long tradition of school theatre, form an important foundation of the archive. From 1924 onwards, the still young Society was active in China, later in what was then Southern Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe, then in Taiwan and Japan, but also in Colombia and several other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The documents of the Mission Society comprise 350 to 400 linear metres, only a small part of which has been processed. Due to the volume, the cataloguing work required to archive the Immensee documents properly will take several years.
A planned building project and structural reasons meant that the archives of the Bethlehem Mission Society (SMB) had to be relocated. The Schwyz State Archives were unable to accommodate the archive due to lack of space. Lucerne offered to do so but is unable to carry out the cataloguing work itself, which will take years to complete. The missionaries and the State Archives therefore agreed to transfer the archive, including the SMB archivist, to Lucerne and to have the cataloguing work carried out and financed by the Mission Society.
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Students of the Apostolic School helping in agriculture, undated photograph. (SMB archive)
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Graduating class of 1961 in front of the Bethlehem Mission House in Immensee. (SMB archive)