61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

systematic enquiry based on correspondence. On the other hand, the ICE
finalised a research plan which was presented to the public in June 1997 and
which identified the subjects on which emphasis was to be concentrated. 34 A
series of fields of enquiry were defined based on general issues. These were then
narrowed down with a view to establishing specific fields of research but
remained very broad in terms of their analytical depth and thematic scope. The
main keywords were: international trade relations, the finance industry, flight
capital and looted assets, services relevant to the war economy, policy on
foreigners and refugees, cultural memory, and policy on dealing with the past
after 1945.
The five-year research project was completed in several phases comprising
various processes that interlocked both in chronological and subject-related
terms. The first involved a broad-based investigation of sources in the entire
field of enquiry geared to numerous questions and hypotheses. As of mid-1997,
research became more focused on organisational aspects as fixed working teams
were formed and specific research goals were defined so as to place the taskrelevant
issues in the foreground. The decision made by the Commission to
publish the results of this research process and not to use them purely as internal
working papers for the final report constituted a turning point. The teams thus
had the opportunity to publish the results of their work, provided they satisfied
the scientific quality standard that would be evaluated by the Commission.
Since autumn 1998, a publication programme including seventeen studies, six
shorter research contributions, and finally two anthologies on historical legal
questions has materialised. The Commission’s task was to supervise the working
process and the teams by allocating mentors; this generated useful discussion
on the scientific research requirements and facilitated concentration on that
which was feasible.
In view of the numerous – and, from a scientific perspective, highly attractive
– options that presented themselves in the course of classifying the available
sources and gaining new insights, it became necessary to make a choice. To give
one example: we were unable to undertake parallel, in-depth studies of the
chemical, pharmaceutical, engineering industries, the food manufacturing
sector, textile companies, and other economic branches. We therefore concentrated
on culling examples based on selected lines of business and issues
essential to our research mandate – in particular forced labour and financial
transfer transactions. This was based as much on pragmatic considerations
(archive holdings) as on the significance of the companies or industries
concerned for the export economy. Furthermore, the time-consuming work on
gold transactions and refugee policy (including several supplements published
in 1999) militated in favour of abandoning individual research project dossiers.
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