In 1923 and 1924, Bernard von Wattenwyl — who lived in London but had his roots in Bern — and his daughter Vivienne went on safari in Kenya to hunt animals which were subsequently to be donated to the Natural History Museum. At that time, almost the entire African continent was occupied by European powers, and the population was subjected to often brutal colonial regimes.

While Switzerland did not itself have any colonies, it was a beneficiary of systematic exploitation — and this was also true of its big-game hunters: the feat of shipping the bones, horns and skins of 134 animals to Bern could not have been accomplished without utilising colonial transport networks and missionary outposts, and taking advantage of the local population’s labour and knowledge.