History.

Named after the former estate "zum Rosental," the Rosental site was located in front of the Riehentor and thus outside the city when it was built in 1858. It is the oldest chemical site in Basel, where colors were produced industrially for the first time. Johann Rudolf Geigy built his new paint mill, the Extraktfabrik, on the Rosental site. His business, which had been grinding powder from dye-woods used to dye fabrics since 1830, was located in the St. Alban Valley in 1833. From 1858, Rosental Mitte was the headquarters of the Geigy company. The advantage of the Rosental site was the proximity of the Badischer Bahnhof railroad station, which in its first provisional location from 1855-1862 was located on the present site of the Basel Exhibition Center and was moved to its current location in 1913.

Thirteen years after the construction of the Farbholzmühle, 66 workers were employed in the so-called "inner factory", where both natural and synthetic aniline colors were produced. Later, the extract factory was enlarged and the factory grounds were expanded, office space and research buildings were built. In 1960, production on the Rosental site was finally stopped, the factory buildings gave way to laboratory buildings, and ten years later J.R. Geigy AG merged with Ciba to form Ciba-Geigy AG. In 1980, the original grinding and mixing building was demolished. In 1996, Ciba-Geigy AG and Sandoz merged to form Novartis, which four years later became Syngenta, headquartered in Rosental.

In 2007, the group sold a large part of the site to a private investor based in Gibraltar, only keeping its headquarters, which employs some 1,200 people from around 50 nations. The canton could purchase Rosental Mitte successively in 2016 and 2019.

Clara März joined J.R. Geigy AG in 1928, initially as the only switchboard operator. When she retired in 1963 after 35 years, Geigy had a fully equipped modern telephone exchange in what was at the time one of Basel’s first high-rise buildings.

Before Clara März started working at J.R. Geigy AG in 1928, the company had already had a telephone line at the Rosental site for almost 50 years. The management took out their first phone contract in 1882, one year after the opening of the first telephone exchange in Basel. The modernisation of telephone networks soon required the establishment of a dedicated department. At J.R. Geigy, a team consisting solely of women received a constant stream of calls and connected customers from all over the world with the appropriate offices.

In the wake of the automation of telephony, the job profile of switchboard operators had changed fundamentally by the end of the 1950s. At J.R. Geigy AG specifically, it was only the internal numbers that still needed connecting manually, but at the same time there was a considerable increase in the number of calls, for which the company once again relied on more staff. In the 1950s, Geigy worked with charities for the blind to train visually impaired people as switchboard operators. The collaboration worked flawlessly and the newly trained switchboard operators soon became an indispensable workforce.

Better working conditions or an occupation on the way out?

When Clara März retired in 1963, her colleagues at the internal telephone exchange were facing new challenges: on the third floor of the high-rise building constructed on Schwarzwaldallee in 1956, two new operator control desks were set up to be able to receive more than four calls at any one time and to minimise waiting times.

With the expansion of the telephone exchange, it was expected that the working conditions of switchboard operators would also improve. But an article in the company newspaper in 1965 pointed out that the direct dial system, which was already being used successfully in Germany, would soon also be making its way to Switzerland. In future, this would allow the company to do without the work of a large number of its switchboard operators.

Text: Lina Schmid, Büro Schürch & Koellreuter, Basel

J. R. Geigy AG began promoting company-based sports at a very early stage. One popular athlete was the 14-time Swiss boxing champion Hans Müller, who was employed at Lokal 88, a pub at the Rosental works.

Founded in 1920, the Geigy sports club was open to office and works staff and their families alike. It was set up to promote physical fitness among the workforce and foster a sense of community within the company. Netball was particularly popular with the women, while fistball and table tennis were favourites with the men. On weekday evenings, training sessions were held on the Geigy sports field, led by skilled instructors. The weekends were reserved for matches against other teams, which were also organised by the company sports club. The Geigy Sports Days, which were held annually from 1941, were always hugely popular.

Hans Müller: a boxing legend

The most popular athlete from the Geigy ranks was boxer Hans Müller (1915–1967), who earned the nickname 'KO' Müller: he is said to have defeated two-thirds of his opponents with a knock-out blow. Müller, who had won the national championships 14 times by 1951, is still considered the most successful Swiss boxer of all time. He represented Switzerland at two European championships and at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. There, however, he was beaten on points, although the Swiss press claimed that he was unjustly robbed of the victory. After the Swede Gunnar Nilsson went down in the first round, the referee allegedly started counting too late, and then counted too slowly. Nilsson was allowed to continue fighting, although he was reportedly “down for 13 seconds”, which would have meant that he was actually knocked out. Müller's fellow workers at Lokal 88 followed his Olympic fight with great excitement. After his defeat, they raised a flag of mourning out of solidarity.

J. R. Geigy AG was proud of their exceptional athlete. The company newspaper interviewed him after he took part in the Olympics. When asked about his boxing training, Müller revealed that he “had ample practice lifting heavy objects” as part of his day-to-day work at Lokal 88, and that in his free time he liked to do athletics, swim and play handball.

Text by Felix Steininger; Schürch & Koellreuter Basel

The Rosental site became a research centre in the 1930s. It was here that chemist Paul Müller and his team discovered the highly potent action of DDT.

The 25-year-old Elsa Mühlethaler (1917–1998) was an exceptional figure on the Rosental site. She was the first woman to study veterinary medicine in Berne and graduate with a doctorate. When she started her job at Geigy in 1942, she was the first woman with an academic degree.

Mühlethaler’s workplace was in the ultra-modern Sandmeyer laboratory in the middle of the site. There she researched insecticides together with Paul Müller (1899–1965), who later won the Nobel Prize.

Müller, who had discovered the insecticidal efficacy of dichlorodiphenyltrichloethane (DDT) in 1939, was conducting research in the field of pest control. In 1940, the Geigy company patented DDT. Subsequently, the insecticide was widely used against everything from malaria to the Colorado potato beetle. In 1948, Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology. Gesarol and Neocid, the trade names of DDT used in agriculture and hygiene, were a great commercial success and triggered an agricultural revolution that could no longer function without insecticides.

In the 1950s, criticism of the highly effective poison was growing: resistance was observed, and contrary to the assumption that DDT only affected insects, larger animals were also being harmed. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s famous book "Silent Spring" was published, in which she described the consequences of the widespread and indiscriminate use of pesticides. Although she also discussed other agents, DDT was at the centre of her nightmare scenario of a spring without birdsong. The book is considered to have triggered the gradual awakening of an environmental movement.
Elsa Mühlethaler left Geigy in 1948 and in 1949 became the first woman to open a veterinary practice in Berne.

Text by Franziska Schürch; Schürch & Koellreuter Basel

In just 58 days, the Geigy tower, built in 1957, was taken down to make way for a new, modern administration building. But this was never built, and now a park stands in its place.

On 30 September 1956, in the presence of the Basel government and a phalanx of press, the management of Geigy AG marked the construction of its new administrative high-rise building on the Rosental site. It wasn’t the first skyscraper in Basel but, at 53 metres, it was the tallest, and it had grown inexorably upwards in the previous months. In 1957, the twelve-storey, state-of-the-art building, with an underground telephone system for 4,000 connections and a lift system with cabins for up to 13 people, was made available for use.

Space gets tight on the Rosental site
The new high-rise building was not an isolated project but part of a larger whole. Back in 1951, Geigy management had already commissioned the Basel-based architect Martin Burckhardt to develop an overall plan for the Rosental site. The company premises had been growing constantly for almost a century, and building development had expanded in line with relevant needs.

At that time of great economic growth, space on the site was getting tight and there were hardly any opportunities to extend: the company premises were almost completely surrounded by residential buildings. The overall plan was therefore intended to accommodate the largest possible volume of construction on the site to suit the organisation's needs.

…the best solution is to reach for the sky
The overall plan launched in the winter of 1951 was to offer the best operational solutions without wasting space. The idea was to implement the plan in small stages and avoid the need for temporary arrangements. The administration was to be clearly separated from the factory and roads that were entirely within the factory’s own site were to be included in the factory premises.

In July 1953, Martin Burckhardt presented his ideas to Geigy management: he wanted to surround the site with a rectangular belt of uniform buildings, so that it appeared closed off. Inside, away from the gaze of local residents, were the factory buildings, while the outer sections were home to research and administration. For the approximately 4,000 square metres of office space needed, Burckhardt planned the high-rise on Schwarzwaldallee.

Still too small…
In 1960, the municipality of Basel-Stadt handed over to the company the sections of Sandgruben-, Bleiche- and Riehenteichstrasse located on the factory site so that they could be integrated into the factory premises, as intended in the overall plan. The site was then closed to the public. However, within just a few years, it ultimately became too small for a mixed use of administration, research and manufacturing. Production was relocated entirely to Schweizerhalle.

Author: Franziska Schürch, Büro Schürch & Koellreuter Basel.