DE-MOUNT dem BABYLON

On 28th May 2007 was commemorated the 200th birthday of the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), both in Switzerland and worldwide. However, Agassiz was not only an influential glaciologist, but also an influential racist and a pioneering thinker of apartheid. To make this fact known, the campaign "De-mounting Louis Agassiz" has been launched, suggesting to take his mountain away from Agassiz (thus "de-mount-ing" him) and henceforth to call the Agassizhorn (3946 metres above sea-level) on the boundary between the cantons of Wallis and Berne, named after him in the 1840ies, "Rentyhorn". Renty was a slave from the Congo on a South Carolina plantation, whose daguerrotype picture was commissioned by Louis Agassiz in order to "scientifically prove the inferiority of the black race"