| Creator | Hans Erni |
| Printing year | 1964 |
| Sheet size (cm) | 127.5×90.5 |
| Printing technique | Offset |
| Printer | Säuberlin & Pfeiffer |
| Condition | A |
| Asking price | 1'300 CHF |
| Categories | Plebiscites & Campaigns |
Original poster, designed in 1964 by Hans Erni on the occasion of an exhibition in Lausanne, which goes back to an episode in Swiss politics that seems rather absurd from today’s perspective: Immediately after the Federal Council announced its intention to equip the army with nuclear weapons in 1958, the Swiss Movement Against Nuclear Armament was constituted to combat these plans – among other things with the aforementioned exhibition «La Suisse de demain sans armes atomiques», but above all also by means of the constitutional initiative submitted in April 1959 intended to ban the manufacture, import, transit, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons of all kinds, as well as their integral components, on Swiss territory.
The population rejected the initiative in 1962 (otherwise the movement against nuclear armament would not have organized the exhibition) – by a very clear majority of 65% of votes. However, with the conclusion of the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, it became clear that the nuclear powers had no interest in Switzerland having nuclear weapons. Not signing the treaty would have made Switzerland a pariah that would have been subject to considerable pressure. Nevertheless, the government took until 1977 to ratify the treaty.
Against this backdrop, Hans Erni (1909 – 2015) was virtually predestined to design the exhibition poster; he had already created the drastic poster denouncing nuclear war on behalf of the Swiss Movement for Peace in 1955: