Adele – an unassuming colossus

Migros’ greatest love story begins with an ordinary train journey: Adele Bertschi has only just turned 18 years old and is travelling from Horgen to Zurich to get to work. A man four years older sits opposite her. He has a proud posture, is well dressed and wears a wide-brimmed hat. But most important of all, he is completely captivated by this charming young woman. “He kept looking at me with big eyes. I didn’t really like it as I was still almost a child,” Adele told her biographer Alfred A. Hänsler years later recalling her first encounter with Gottlieb Duttweiler. This train journey marked the beginning of a love story that lasted almost 50 years, out of which no children were born, but that spawned a large company that still carries the DNA of Adele and Dutti today.

Dutti persistently pursues Adele

The romance nearly fizzled out. Because Adele is shy and was not impressed by ­sailing trips on Lake Zurich (without any wind) or by Dutti sitting on a (rented) horse. She thought his behaviour silly, as Gottlieb biographer Curt Riess writes. But this simply provided one more reason for Dutti to woo her. He told his mother on the very first evening that he was going to marry this woman. In 1913, the couple do just that in Adele’s ­hometown of Horgen.

A quiet, incorruptible person

Adele’s modesty and incorruptible nature remain her trademark. The ’grande dame’ of Migros is a small, quiet woman who was always able to hold her own alongside the blustering giant Dutti, providing a sense of clarity and touch of humour. He is forever grateful to her throughout his lifetime. “I was incredibly lucky to have found this woman,” he says affectionately in an audio recording. “She looked up at the man of action but down at the child in the man.”

Adele is the polar opposite of her brash, often argumentative husband. And she provides a bold retort to those who label him a loner: “He was never alone or lonely either as he always had me by his side.” She was the one who opened the nasty, threatening letters and answered the anonymous phone calls when Dutti and his Migros empire were shaking up the food retail sector. She saw the punctured tyres on the sales vehicles and her husband’s anger. She reheated countless meals and waited for him for nights on end because he forgot about time and hunger.

When asked by ’Schweizer Frauenblatt’ what marriage meant to her in 1982, she promptly responded: “Camaraderie.” And it is more than just coquetry when she reveals: “Migros wouldn’t have been founded without me.”

She remains in the background even after Dutti’s death

This is because without his down-to-earth Adele, who never cared for luxury, Dutti would not have known exactly what housewives really wanted. Even when Dutti no longer cast his oversized shadow, she remained in the background. In the almost 30 years that she lived without her husband, she gave very few interviews, never gave a speech and never wrote an article. But she did like talking to people and had a much better feel for people than her husband. The fact that Migros should serve the people and not just profit is a key principle that Dutti was probably not alone in realising. It was down to Adele that Migros continued to expand its social commitment.

The conscience of Migros

It was certainly not easy being the wife of this energetic, often unpredictable man, but no one ever heard Adele Duttweiler complain about her role. She was not the neglected wife in the house on Lake Zurich, but his advisor and critic. She is often called the ’conscience of Migros’. The reason for this is explained by number 9 of Adele and Gottlieb Duttweiler’s 15 theses.

A calm authority until her death

The Migros bosses adhered to this instruction until Adele’s death in 1990. Adele Duttweiler was regularly seen at the FMC headquarters in Zurich. Those in charge at the time say that she was a good listener­ and had an extraordinary memory­. Migros also looked after Dutti’s widow. It is documented in writing that apprentices shopped for her once a week. She provided the shopping list over the phone.

When she died at the age of 97, the then Migros boss Pierre Arnold wrote: “It was Adele Duttweiler who encouraged, advised and supported me during difficult times. It’s as though the Migros­ family has lost its mother.” This woman was an unassuming colossus, even without Dutti – he would probably not have become such a great figure without her.