Swiss Banknote Series: Introduction

It feels like almost everyday I end up going to an ATM machine to withdraw my hard-earned American Dollars as Swiss Francs. We’ve mentioned before on this blog how expensive things can be here, but it is more than just the expense that makes me look at Switzerland’s money in a different light. Certainly Switzerland is a world financial powerhouse and daily updates from the newspapers detail the complex policy-making issues within the Swiss National Bank.

But living here has given me the opportunity to really examine the issued notes that make up the money. It’s not something we usually think about in America, but maybe that’s because I know who George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin Franklin are (not to mention Sacajawea), but who are the people on the Swiss Currency, and what did they do to get immortalized like this?

Part of this interest has been prompted by the recently publicized Swiss Franc New Banknote Project. In 2012 the Swiss National Bank will start printing new currency whose design was the result of a contest. So for a few posts over the next several weeks, I was going to look at who was on each Swiss Franc Banknote (10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 1000 – never seen that one), and find out a little about them. And if I’m feeling up to it, I’ll throw in a bonus post about the coins if you’re lucky.