The Société de Lecture of Geneva is a private non-profit association founded in 1818. Over the last two centuries, it has preserved and developed an encyclopaedic library of 200,000 volumes. It is an active cultural centre of European renown (Prix Europa Nostra in 2020). Located in the heart of the old town of Geneva, the Société de Lecture was originally an exclusive meeting place for scholars. Nowadays, it is no longer the "salon de conversation" of Geneva's patrician society, as it was during the Restoration, nor, the thinktank of political refugees and would-be revolutionaries as it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Today, it is a place of exchange, research, conferences and learning open to the public, mainly in the fields of literature, as well as music, science, geopolitics, history and the fine arts. In 1947, the novelist Robert de Traz defined it as "a haven of grace for the body and the mind, a flight path for the imagination, a kind of intellectual hammam, a fabulous cave where the treasures of literature accumulate".
History
Creation Under the impetus of John Calvin, from the Reformation onwards, Geneva became a city of theologians, lawyers, humanists and printers. Its fame extended far beyond its walls. Two centuries later, the influence of the Age of the Enlightenment gave Geneva's scholars an encyclopaedic desire to learn and exchange everything.
The tensions arising from the revolutionary unrest and the French occupation under Napoleon in 1798 drove the well-born sons of wealthy families from Geneva into exile and to the discovery of Europe. After fifteen years of French annexation, this republican aristocracy returned. They wanted to create a literary society like those that existed elsewhere, in order to share knowledge, ideals, and reading. Geneva regained its independence in 1813 and joined the Swiss Confederation in 1815. It then became a city of scientists, men of letters, and artists.
The Société de Lecture was founded in April 1818, under the patronage of botanist Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle, a member of a hundred European academies. In his memoirs, the Genevan scientist reports that he was struck by the poverty of the Public Library of Geneva. In order to "bring the city's distinguished men closer together", he convinced his friends to bring together some of their collections and to build up, in a joint financial effort, a library commensurate with the needs of the many researchers and scholars in Geneva at that time. Professors from the Geneva Academy donated their book collections to the nascent institution. One of the aims of this society was also to receive the foreign press and scientific journals to make them available to its members in order to quench their thirst for information and academic knowledge after the French tutelage.
Candolle recounts in his Memoirs: "a few academic friends joined us and finally twelve people put themselves forward to create the institution. Some of them, chosen from among the richest in the city, undertook to bear the initial costs, others contributed to the success by their scientific and literary reputation". In addition to Candolle, the founders' Committee was made up of:
Henri Boissier, professor of literature and archaeology and rector of the Geneva Academy (the future university). Étienne Dumont, jurist and collaborator in the Mirabeau atelier during the French Revolution. Jacob and François Duval, two brothers, jewellers, who had returned from Russia with great wealth. Jean-Gabriel Eynard, entrepreneur, financier, diplomat and philhellenist. Guillaume Fatio, State Councillor, deputy of the Federal Diet and future syndic (mayor). Guillaume Favre-Bertrand, heir of a Geneva shipowner dynasty and collector. Charles-Gaspard De la Rive, physician and professor of chemistry. Jean-Marc-Jules Pictet, magistrate and former representative of the Department of Lake Geneva. Marc-Auguste Pictet, professor of physics and astronomer, known, among other things, for not having left Geneva during the years of revolution between 1780 and 1794, unlike many of his contemporaries. William Saladin, owner of the Château de Crans, near Nyon.
The 12 founders of the Société de Lecture were not lacking in ambition: they all wanted to place Calvin's town among the first cities of knowledge and freedom. The departure of the French gave rise to a frenzy of projects to provide Geneva with a cultural offering of the highest level. They chose to set up their project in the former residence of the representative of France. It is a strong symbol: "occupying France" was thus becoming "occupied France".
These 12 men corresponded all the time. The slightest scientific breakthrough was brought to their attention. Erudition was their only religion. Unlike many other Geneva circles, there was no gambling or drinking at the Société de Lecture. However, playing chess was permitted. Nevertheless, success was immediate: after one year of existence, the Society had 225 members.
The initial objective of making up for the shortcomings of the Public Library of the time was quickly supported by the Geneva patriciate, which wished to offer itself a place of instruction, knowledge, and intellectual exchange. One of the strengths of the institution was that it was able to open up to the world and welcome foreigners, whether famous or not. The Société de Lecture thus became a discreet and sought-after meeting place. In 1835, for example, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the future Napoléon III, met Count Camillo of Cavour, the future architect of Italian unity at the Société de Lecture.
Originally, the practice of member sponsorship led to the emergence of an identity specific to the Société de Lecture. In order to become a member, two members had to introduce the candidate to the committee. The Committee then decided whether or not the candidate was accepted. It was not until the mid-1970s that membership practices became more flexible. Today, anyone who pays the subscription (the equivalent of one Swiss franc a day) can become a member.
The "ladies' issue" Women were not allowed to become members until the end of the 19th century. Initially, they were completely excluded. Then, from 1888 onwards, widows, sisters and daughters of deceased members were allowed to borrow books but not to sit in the salons, "where their chatter was deemed incompatible with the concentration for scholarly reading requires". They were called "subscribing ladies". One of them was the Geneva suffragette Émilie Gourd: a subscriber from the time of her father's death in 1909, she remained a subscriber until her own death in 1946, without being able to obtain full membership for women. In her monthly Le mouvement féministe, the activist writes that "the members of the Société de Lecture consider themselves superior, privileged and they do not intend to give up any of their privileges to these inferior beings, i.e. women". Moreover, throughout Switzerland, women were not allowed to be distracted from their family obligations by reading. They were confined to the stories of magazines such as the Schweizer Familie founded in 1893.
The ridiculousness of this situation came to a head in 1940, when a young woman won a competition in the Journal de Genève for a year's free membership of the Société de Lecture. It was impossible for her to take advantage of it. It was not until 1947 that the Sphere Room was opened to women "on a trial basis. Six years later, in 1953, women were allowed to become members. This was 18 years before they obtained the right to vote in Switzerland. As women emerged from this long reign of male exclusivity, they also took a major role in the management of the institution.
Lenin, member of the Société de Lecture
Great names of European culture such as Alice Rivaz, Nicolas Bouvier, Andreas Calvos, Jean Capo d'Istria, Camillo Cavour, Albert Cohen, Pierre de Coubertin, Henri Dunant, Guglielmo Ferrero, Franz Liszt, Edgard Milhaud, Gustave Moynier, Elisée Reclus, Ferdinand de Saussure, Juliusz Slowacki, Carl Vogt were members of the Société de Lecture. One of the most famous was Vladimir Ilitch Ulyanov, better known as Lenin.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Geneva was teeming with Russian refugees. Lenin settled in Geneva in 1903 and applied for admission on December 12, 1904. Among other things, it allowed him to escape the many other Russian refugees around the Public Library and to find the calm that was essential for his work. Paul Birukoff, former secretary to Leon Tolstoy, sponsored him. In his book "My Life with Lenin", his wife writes: "Vladimir Ilyich joined the Société de Lecture, where one could work comfortably and have access to a large number of books, as well as all kinds of magazines and newspapers in French, German and English. The Société de Lecture was not very busy, with only a few old professors in attendance, and Vladimir Ilyich was usually alone in one of the rooms. He could not only write in peace there, but also, as was his habit, wander around murmuring the sentences of his articles and take the books he needed from the shelves himself. It was really quiet there. Not a single Russian comrade came to join him; no one came to tell him that the Mensheviks were saying this and saying that; he could think. And he had something to think about". And a little further on, Nadezhda Krupskaya adds: "every morning the librarian of the Société de Lecture would see a Russian revolutionary arrive, with his trousers rolled up in the Swiss fashion to avoid the mud; he would open the military art book he had left the day before, sit down as usual at a small table in front of the window, pull back his thinning hair and start reading. From time to time he would go and consult some dictionary, then return to his seat and fill up many sheets of quarto paper in his small, quick handwriting".
Lenin also prepared speeches for political meetings in Geneva. According to accounts of the time, he would read his speeches aloud while walking between the shelves of the library to practise his elocution.
Alphonse Bernoud, a doctor of science and member of the Société de Lecture since 1901, also sheds light on the revolutionary's habits in the library: "Our tables were next to each other, Ulyanov had a predilection for the room where a huge globe stood and where the walls were covered with maps. Usually Ulyanov took notes on sheets of paper while reading. I often saw him copying large extracts from his readings". Another member remembers being called to order one day while he was talking aloud in the room, which he thought was empty, by a loud "shush": hidden by a pile of books, a gentleman with a blond beard was demanding silence. The two chatterboxes learned a few days later that the excited reader was called Ulyanov". It is comical to see the members of the Société de Lecture generally very bourgeois take pride in the fact that the Russian revolutionary found in their premises a place conducive to the development of his devastating theories.