10 Facts About Ernst Sieber

Ernst Sieber was ordained in the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Zurich.

In 1963 he initiated the basis for the relief organisation Sozialwerke Pfarrer Ernst Sieber, founded in 1988 for "disadvantaged people, to help to alleviate the hardships around addiction, disease, violence and homelessness".

Ernst Sieber called himself a "dreamy child, I preferred to go fishing with my brother than to go to school", but he said on occasion of an interview in February 2015: "The sense of justice and for the most vulnerable people in society has always been in me".

Ernst Sieber first worked as a farmhand in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and graduated from the former Zurich agricultural school Strickhof in the present-day Irchelpark in 1947.

Ernst Sieber decided to study theology and was ordinated at the Theological Faculty of the University of Zurich in 1956.

In Winter 1963 Ernst Sieber initiated a shelter for homeless and marginalized people in Zurich-Aussersihl, and began to establish further projects, among others for drug addicts at Platzspitz park and Letten in the 1980s.

At the time of the so-called "open drug scene" in Zurich, Ernst Sieber provided the addicts with soup and bread, and gave them shelter.

In 1963, Ernst Sieber established the first homeless community in a bunker in Zurich-Aussersihl.

The later charity Sozialwerke Pfarrer Ernst Sieber started numerous initiatives over the decades, among them Sune-Dorfli, Sune-Egge, Ur-Dorfli, Sune-Stube, Pfuusbus, and the Brothausen settlement in Zurich-Affoltern for homeless people, or food supplement for poor people in cooperation with Swiss retailers.

Ernst Sieber died on 19 May 2018 at the age of 91 in Triemli Hospital in Zurich.