Bruno Deckert is dead: Zurich culture is losing a piece of its soul

He was a founder and someone who tirelessly built bridges in Zurich. Between generations, scenes and business models. Without him, the bookstore-café event Sphères with its beautiful covered outdoor area on the Limmat would not exist. He was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago and died peacefully on January 4 at the age of 73, as Sphères announced at Watson’s request. He supported the team, who always continued to run the company in his spirit, with advice until the end.

Without him there would not be that other location on the corner of Langstrasse and Europaallee, which was baptized Kosmos in 2017 and whose remaining fragments are now called Frame and Khouris – cinema with pub, bar and bookstore, which was also a café and among all this a large staircase where you could be during the day and which often turned into a grandstand for controversial stages in the evening.

In Bruno Deckert’s hybrid, transparent atmospheres on all sides, people effortlessly found culture – or simply a pleasant moment in the hustle and bustle of the city. And just as people had become accustomed to the Sphères in Züri West since 1999 and were occasionally surprised at how incredibly well the decentralized café under the editorial staff of the “Wochenzeitung” was running every day, and how great people apparently loved it, only at the river, but also in front of it and when you saw the trams go by, you got used to the cosmos. Like Sphères, it was a good spot in a rather inhospitable corner of Zurich.

Everything was a bit bigger there than in Sphères, you could look at the trains instead of the trams, and the word megalomania was often used in connection with the company that Deckert founded together with filmmaker Samir and real estate entrepreneur Steff Fischer. In 2022, the Kosmos went bankrupt, the three men had a hopeless quarrel, the huge cultural complex stood still for 10 months. Since then, the Zurich Film Festival has tried, with little success, to revive the cinema halls. The restaurant is certainly doing well, but the idea is not there. A Zurich house full of films, books and encounters has remained more of a ruin on a ventilator than something living.

According to his companions, Deckert’s urge to create a business may stem from the need for replacement families and liberation. When Deckert, who grew up on Lake Constance, was six years old, his mother joined Jehovah’s Witnesses. For a child this means a rigid renunciation and constant distancing from many things that other children are allowed to do, especially from collective activities.

Together with his best friend Silvio, whom he met in the sect, Deckert later broke with his family, studied psychology and investigated in his dissertation how Jehovah’s Witnesses immunize themselves against criticism. He dedicated the rest of his life to freedom. The free exchange of opinions and culture. Together with Silvio and others he created the Sphères; their friendship later fell apart due to the fundamental quarrels of the cosmos.

He was good for Zurich. He saved the spirit of the 1980s movement that transformed Zurich’s cultural scene into the apolitical hipster era. With him old rebels met new expats, he was a master of mixing and mediation. Now he’s gone. And is already missing.