Text: Stefan Schröder

A Swiss gold bar was hidden in the hills along the Simplon Pass. It was stamped with the words silence and gold. A message was left with the gold that its finder would be allowed to keep it. The only condition was to keep strictly silent about their good fortune. The Schweigen und Gold project (Silence and Gold) is, on the one hand, about discovering gold in Simplon, Jewish gold and the Swiss national reserves. On the other hand, it is a play on the well-known expression: talking is silver, and silence is golden. During the research and preparation process, it became more apparent that the role of Swiss banks, which made sizeable profits with the handling of the so-called Plunder Gold that Nazi Germany misappropriated from Jewish families during the years of the Third Reich, has been increasingly questioned during the five years ahead of the project.