Paul Ruggiero
Zurich bank employee and friend of JJ. Born in Laufen-Uhwiesen near Zurich, he married Berta Friedli (1903-?) in 1923. Their son Alfred was born in 1924. A member of the "Club des Étrangers", the informal group of ex-pats whom JJ befriended in Zurich in 1916, he spoke with and sometimes corresponded with JJ in Italian and Greek, which he had learned during several years' residence in Greece. He helped the Joyce family to find a flat in 1917. When JJ sang an accompaniment for the English Players' production of Robert Browning's In a Balcony, Ruggiero accompanied him on a guitar (which he later maintained that JJ had given him, and which in 1966 Ruggiero donated to the Joyce Tower Museum in Sandycove). The two corresponded occasionally while JJ lived in Paris, and their friendship proved to be critically important during the last months of 1940, when Ruggiero was, with Carola Giedion-Welcker, a key figure in enabling the Joyce family to enter Switzerland during the German occupation of France. William Brockman
Funding
James Joyces Unpublished Letters: A Digital Edition and Text-Genetic Study.
Belgian Federal Science Policy Office
Find out more...