Daniela Zetti, how will 2025 go down in history?
The Head of the Archives of Contemporary History at ETH Zurich contemplates how events become “historic” and reaches some surprising conclusions about 2025.??
There is an interesting twist to the question of which were the most important events and developments of a year just drawing to a close: it is also a glimpse into the future. Predicting how “history” will judge 2025 is extremely difficult in December. Too many processes remain in motion, while too many players are also still debating about what should be considered historic.
Yet there are a few “spontaneous” clues that suggest whether an event will be remembered as historic. As people experiencing an event, we sometimes even observe how this kind of status is conferred in real time. “Where were you when...?” is one of those questions that shows how we view the passage of time and how we attempt to classify happenings in that framework. One example of an event quickly identified as historic took place quite a few years ago: many people know when and where they first heard about 9/11. This question takes far-away events and reshapes them into a localised, personal experience. They become a part of our everyday lives.
The expert
Daniela Zetti is a historian who took over as Head of the Archives of Contemporary History (AfZ) in November. She played as goalkeeper for FC Blutgretchen – a football club in the alternative league (FSFV) in Zurich – as a way of taking a break from her doctoral thesis on the origins of German public television in the post-war period, which she wrote at D-GESS.
The media play a pivotal role in this process. Images of historic events enter our collective memory. Everybody knows what it looked like when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, even if they hadn’t yet been born in 1969 and despite the grainy television images.
2025 was a year when people were quick to talk about “unprecedented situations” and protagonists’ own staging of themselves emphasised their power to take action. The scene showing Elon Musk standing next to Donald Trump in the White House’s Oval Office definitely has the potential to become iconic, although perhaps not in the way the two had originally intended. That makes me cautious whenever I wonder whether any events took place that we might already be able to treat as “historically significant”. What’s special about 2025 might be the fact that it simply isn’t clear how long-lasting these performances might be. Whether peace in Gaza or the tariffs – will these things really stay the same?
I’d still like to mention two events that have the potential to become indelible memories. The landslide in Blatten kept people spellbound for weeks – both before, during and even after the event. Like natural disasters of the past, this landslide influenced how we perceive natural hazards. While we may be able to document nature in intricate detail and take appropriate action, climate change is causing nature itself to simultaneously undergo fundamental changes.
Lastly, I’d like to share a more personal memory: when the European women’s national teams played exciting, “epoch-making” football matches in Switzerland this past summer, I was on holiday and couldn’t follow the games. However, I received lots of messages from people I knew, assuming I simply must be “there”. The implied question of “Where are you?” quickly became: “You’re not there?!”. That made me all the more excited to share in the success of the Women’s EURO through this lens.
Let’s wait and see which parts of 2025 stick.