lit a candle 1h agoMy sister called from Indiana last night, she'd seen it on some Swiss site I sent her once. 101 years old, started at the Gazette de Lausanne back in 1949 or so, Paris correspondent, editor, the whole postwar run. I only knew him through a book on Swiss neutrality a professor gave me years ago. Strange to hear about him secondhand like that, over the phone, so far from where any of it happened.
Their story
Frank Bridel was a Swiss journalist and writer whose career ran from the postwar Gazette de Lausanne through Paris and Bern reporting to the editor's chair, and later to books on Swiss life, history and medicine. He was born in Lausanne on 25 December 1924 and died on 2 September…
Frank Bridel was a Swiss journalist and writer whose career ran from the postwar Gazette de Lausanne through Paris and Bern reporting to the editor's chair, and later to books on Swiss life, history and medicine. He was born in Lausanne on 25 December 1924 and died on 2 September 2026 at the age of 101.
After a law degree, which an uncle who edited the Tribune de Geneve had urged as preparation for the press, he entered the Gazette de Lausanne around 1949 to 1950. Early in the 1950s he became the paper's Paris correspondent. He later covered the federal capital for the Tribune de Geneve and Radio romande, then returned to Paris for the Tribune before being called home in 1966 to succeed Pierre Beguin as editor-in-chief of the Gazette. He held that post for about two and a half years, a difficult stretch marked by falling advertising revenue and little support from the paper's board. The Gazette would later merge with the Journal de Geneve.
From 1968 to 1989 he directed Pharma Information in Basel, the information service of the major Swiss pharmaceutical companies. From 1990 he wrote as a columnist for Entreprise romande. In retirement he published essays and reportage with Slatkine and other houses, among them Suisse mon amour, Le Grand Chambardement, Non, nous n'etions pas des laches on Swiss life between 1933 and 1945, and the novel Aimer pour vivre. Earlier work included Ces medicaments qui ont change la vie (1985) and books of conversations with figures such as Francois Daulte and Andre Charlet.
In a 2025 interview with Reformes, given at his home in Blonay after his hundredth birthday on Christmas Day 2024, he spoke of a lifelong Protestant faith rooted in the Free Church of Vaud, of his marriage to Maria-Eva, and of their daughters Ariane and Genevieve. Le Temps reported his death on 6 September 2026, citing a family notice that he had died the previous Wednesday. He is remembered as a link between Lausanne's old daily press, the federal and Paris beats of Swiss journalism, and a late literary career that kept arguing about Switzerland's past and present.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), Le Temps, Reformes and LitteratureSuisse. Wikipedia ↗
Photos
1Frank Bridel at about the time of his hundredth birthday
by People Forever
