On June 19, 1941, Prof. Dr. med. Hans Wolfgang Maier, director of the Burghölzli University Psychiatric Hospital in Zurich, submitted his resignation effective October 15, 1941, citing health reasons (heart and eye conditions). In May 1942—that is, seven months after his resignation—the Zurich attorney Dr. Karl Scherrer launched, without any warning, a nationwide campaign against H. W. Maier by distributing a printed brochure containing a statement against Hans W. Maier made by an intern (SS) who had been entrusted to him in late 1931, as well as private correspondence from H. W. Maier to SS, which contained descriptions of embarrassing intimate scenes. The authenticity of these letters cannot be verified, and no originals exist. Nevertheless, Karl Scherrer printed thousands of copies at an unknown location in an unknown printing shop and distributed them throughout Switzerland to state and cantonal governments, medical societies, politicians, etc. To this day, this brochure has been sold and distributed. Furthermore, it was available for viewing in the State Archives without any indication that it was a smear campaign and not an official, legally valid document. As a result, this smear piece by Karl Scherrer has, for example, been cited by the Swiss Historical Dictionary since 2002 as a historical source describing the dissolute lifestyle of Hans Wolfgang sexual assault and impregnation of a patient, initial denial of the child’s paternity, and subsequent dismissal from the clinic. For decades, no Swiss historian verified this information; that is, no one first looked for a complaint filed by a patient alleging rape by a doctor and pregnancy—instead, they were content to rely on the statements in Karl Scherrer’s defamatory pamphlet, which was likely influenced by anti-Semitism. Please find the whole process in the shop.

Three new books on Marie Meierhofer, the wife of Albert, the director of a Bronze industry in Switzerland, "Bronzewarenfabrik AG", BAG, powered with an hydroelctric station. The first book gathers their private correspondance on amazing old post cards at the beginning of the 20th Century. Then a book on Marie, the artist, who created Ex Libris and also collected them. Ex Libris were often created until the beginning of the 20th century, as book-plates.The others skills of Marie was to launch a famous Art Competition for the children and teanagers, in this third and last book, you could discover incredible drawings gather for art lovers.

In his travel sketch of Sicily (available in the shop), Gustav Maier describes how he painstakingly translated the guide to the National Museum of Naples into German. Gustav was an enthusiastic visitor to this museum and got into conversation with the museum director because there was no guide in German, despite the large number of German tourists. So Gustav Maier took on this huge task.

On November 9, 2023, a letter from the German-Jewish writer Gustav Maier was discovered in the Jena City Archives. This letter had lain dormant there since 1897, i.e. for 126 years. Actually, almost all writings by people of Jewish descent in Germany had been destroyed. This particular letter, however, had been assigned to an archive of the Jena Masonic lodge "Friedrich zur ernsten Arbeit", and no one could have guessed that it contained historically important statements on anti-Semitism in Germany. In fact, Gustav Maier states that in Germany, Jewish origins were an odium that attracted hatred and contempt, and that is why he immigrated to the freer Switzerland. There he was also able to informally join the liberal Reformed Zwingli Church with his family. At the time, he could not have known that Gustav Maier had thereby saved part of his family from the Shoah, only anticipated it.

Three related families are presented on this website: The family of Gustav Maier from Ulm, Germany, who, in the year 1892, had established his family in Switzerland,The family of Albert Meierhofer born at Weiach in the canton of Zurich, and The Anner family, originally from Tegerfelden, canton Aargau. Family archives dating back in part 200 years have been preserved from the Maier and Meierhofer families, and some of these archives have been published recently in form of books, which are presented on this site. Gustav Maier has been a sponsor of the young Albert Einstein at Zurich, from 1895, helping him to get enrolled for studies in physics at the Zurich Polytechnical School (called ETH today). His son Hans Wolfgang Maier has become a professor of psychiatry at Zurich and director of the psychiatric clinic Burghölzli, where he took care of Eduard Einstein, the son of Albert Einstein. Albert Meierhofer, on the other hand, became father of three daughters at Turgi, canton Aargau. The oldest one, Marie (called Maiti), studied medicine at Zurich and made her doctorate in psychiatry with Prof. HW Maier as her supervisor. There, her younger sister, Emmi, met a son of HW Maier, named Gerhard. They fell in love and married in October 1938. They had three daughters: Elisabeth, Beatrice (the author of the books presented on this site) and Verena. Beatrice went to Geneva for studying pharmacy at the University of Geneva and met there Rolf Marc Anner, son of George and Charlotte Anner-Esther. This summary explains why this family history website is called "The Maier Anner Files".