September 2024 …
While on a well-overdue holiday I had the chance to visit Zürich – the home of Henry Wirz, the central character of my first novel Trials of Henry. The draft I have written does not contain details of Henry’s early life but a consistent piece of advice is that a writer should have a deep understanding of the background of their main characters in order to make them feel authentic. This includes writing a detailed biography, even though much of this will not appear in the central work. This background writing allows a writer to instinctively know what a character would say or do in various situations.
I took the opportunity to wander the streets of Old Zürich. Henry’s father, Johannes, was a prominent member of the Tailors’ Guild (or Zunft), a very old trade guild with origins in the 1400s. Membership of the guild is exclusive and passed from father to son. Being a leader of a guild included membership of the Zürich regional council or Canton. Hence membership of a guild was highly regarded.
I had an address for the office of the guild from when Henry was a teenage boy until the time he was jailed. I also had the address of the guild of today – all in the old part of Zürich. It was a privilege to walk those streets that Henry walked. The layout of the streets and alleys had changed little in hundreds of years. I found the old headquarters of the guild from Henry’s time. At street level it was a range of modern shops including a tailor and a clothes retailer.
I also found the headquarters of the modern guild. The lower floors were an exclusive bar and restaurant. The building itself was the former home of a Zürich Burgermeister from 1450. For a while I sat outside, hesitant about making myself known; would my story seem ludicrous or immaterial to them?
Then I took the plunge. I had travelled halfway around the world to be in that spot and it could be a matter of years before I returned. I approached a concierge and asked if I could speak to a guild member who may be aware of the guild’s history. The concierge’s expression was sceptical. After a phone call he told me to contact the webmaster of their website.
Then magic unfolded. He took me upstairs to a function room used by the guild. It contained honour boards of members who had passed away in the previous one hundred years. Among those honoured was not one but two Wirz names. Henry’s older brother, Abraham, had become the member of the guild after Johannes – and here I was seeing the name of Abraham’s son and grandson, nephews of Henry. This was a breathtaking moment; I was closer to Henry’s origin story than I had ever dared to imagine.
I discovered that each family of the guild had its own heraldry shield, and the yellow and red Wirz shield was easy to locate. The windows of the function room were filled with stained glass representations of all guild families. These were families that Henry, Johannes and Abraham would have known, laughed with, argued with, competed with, conspired with. This was information I could only discover by being in that room.
I told the concierge the synopsis of my novel and he seemed touched that I was writing a positive story of someone associated with the guild. The more I told him the friendlier he became and the more willing he was to help.
During those few days I learnt more about Henry than I could have ever gleaned from remote research. I could place his family in the upheavals of Zürich, the transitions taking place between the conservative past and the modern Switzerland being created. As a writer it was now easy to imagine the pressures and stresses within the Wirz family and the effects on the desires and motivations of the Wirz family members. It has given me a depth of insight greater than I could have imagined – and all because I decided to take the plunge and share my story.