Vermisst: Ursula Koch
09.01.2021
Swiss Press Award 21 Audio – E – Missing: Ursula Koch
Vermisst: Ursula Koch
NZZ am Sonntag
2021
This Wachter
Winner 2021
The rise and fall of Ursula Koch is told using numerous contemporaneous witnesses from politics and the media, as well as archival sound recordings. On 15 April 2000, she resigned as President of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland and member of the National Council for the Canton of Zurich for health reasons – with immediate effect and disappeared permanently from public view. The listener learns a lot: how she had just recently suffered a fainting attack in a radio studio. How the party split into two factions under her leadership. How, as a City Councillor, she caused consternation by declaring that the city of Zurich “is built,” which today is, for all intents and purposes, the political consensus. Or how, as the newly elected Cantonal Councillor, she took great delight in rewording the oath of office in a less gender-normative manner. Ursula Koch is portrayed as a woman with two sides: ambitious, polarising, uncompromising – sensitive, cheerful, conciliatory. She was ahead of her time and thwarted by the establishment. The podcast creators questioned whether she is even still alive. They make an attempt to track her down through relatives; the suspense of how this plays out is maintained until the very end of the series.