Karl Gräser (officer)

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Karl Gräser in his natural chair
A chair by Karl Gräser on display in the Museo Casa Anatta

Karl Gräser (* 1875 in Kronstadt , Transylvania , Austria-Hungary , † 1920 in Kassel ) was an Austro-Hungarian officer and dropout . He is considered to be the co-founder of the reformed Monte Verità settlement near Ascona.

Life

Karl Gräser was the son of the couple Carl Samuel Gräser (1839-1894) and Charlotte, née Pelzer. He had two younger brothers. Gustav (called Gusto) (1879–1958) was a student of the artist and dropout Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach and initially lived in Monte Verità, but only for a short time. Brother Ernst (1884–1944) was a painter and graphic artist.

Before leaving bourgeois life, Karl Gräser was stationed as an officer in the Austrian fortress town of Przemyśl ( Galicia ). There he met Leopold Wölfling , the former Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria-Tuscany and great-great-grandson of the Austrian Emperor Leopold II , who had given up all nobility titles and married a former prostitute. Both felt deep contempt for the soldier's drill, "the mindless preparation of the body as well as the mind for military purposes" and founded the association without compulsion . Karl became its managing director and Leopold its president. The name of the club referred to the ideas of the early socialist Charles Fourier , whose philosophy Karl Gräser valued. "Everything that is based on coercion", as Fourier had formulated, among other things, "is obsolete and lack of spirit".

In the late summer of 1899, Karl Gräser went to Veldes , then part of Austria and now part of Slovenia . There the "heliopath" and medical autodidact Arnold Rikli ran the Mallerbrunn naturopathic clinic . The reason for the stay seems to have been a serious illness.

During his cure, an intense relationship developed between Gräser and two patients who were living in Rikli's sanatorium at around the same time. The two were the Belgian industrialist's son Henri Oedenkoven and the Transylvanian music teacher Ida Hofmann . The three discovered that, despite all the differences, they had one thing in common: “a new life in which the origins were erased and the future was taking shape”.

A good year later, Karl Gräser, who had since retired from military service, met again with his former fellow patients. The agreed meeting point was the Hofmann's apartment in Munich-Schwabing. Ida's mother and her two sisters, Lilly (actually Julia) and the trained opera singer Jenny (actually: Eugénie) lived there. The latter had been invited by Ida to the planning round and was later to join Karl Gräser in a so-called reform marriage . The Berlin mayor's daughter and dropout Lotte Hattemer , her temporary companion, the Graz landowner's son Ferdinand Brune and - unannounced - Karl's brother Gusto also attended the meeting . It was decided that "Henri's Plan", the founding of a "vegetable cooperative", should be implemented on the banks of one of the northern Italian lakes and that in order to find a suitable area, one wanted to set off immediately - on foot . Ferdinand Brune had to stay behind, because apart from Lotte Hattemer nobody in the group considered him suitable for the project. The majority of the group also refused to take part in Gusto Gräser. But since brother Karl stood up for him, he was allowed to make his way south, albeit only with tolerance. Jenny Hofmann stayed behind in Munich for the time being to take care of the sick mother.

After an intensive search, the dropout group found what they were looking for, not in Northern Italy, but in Ascona on Lake Maggiore . Monte Monescia , a hill a good 300 meters high, came into view . With funds that came mainly from Oedenkoven's property, four hectares of the hill were acquired in the late autumn of 1900 and then Monte Monescia was renamed Monte Verità (= Mountain of Truth ).

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In 1900 Karl Gräser gave lectures in Zurich together with Gusto. In December 1901 the movement split on Monte Verità and Karl Gräser left the group to follow his own ideals in the immediate vicinity. He lived in a "free marriage" with Jenny Hofmann, sister of Ida Hofmann , pianist and educator, a "radically consistent life without money", which the two practically never fully achieved. He lived in the so-called grass house until his illness in 1915. He died in Kassel in 1920 .

“The Gräsers went much further in their theories than Ödenkoven. They despised any help. Only what a person can create with his own strength, with his own hands, is suitable and good for him. He is not even allowed to use the animals or the machines. Stealing strength means deceiving nature. "

- Käthe Kruse : In: Karl Gräser . ticinarte

"Grass is the first person I have met who, with rigid consistency, puts into practice what he has recognized theoretically as correct."

- Erich Mühsam : In: Ascona . Birger Carlson Publishing House, Locarno, 1905

literature

  • Adolf Grohmann: The vegetarian settlement in Ascona and the so-called natural people in Ticino . Carl Marhold, 1904, p. 33-39 .
  • Andreas Schwab: Monte Verità - sanatorium of longing . 1st edition. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2003, ISBN 978-3-280-06013-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gusto grasses. Monte Verità Archive Freudenstein, accessed on November 17, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . DVA: Munich 2017. ISBN 978-3-421-04685-7 . P. 23
  3. ↑ Quoted from Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . DVA: Munich 2017. p. 25
  4. ↑ Syphilis ? See Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . DVA: Munich 2017. ISBN 978-3-421-04685-7 . P. 23; 305
  5. ↑ Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . DVA: Munich 2017. ISBN 978-3-421-04685-7 . P. 25
  6. ↑ This is Henri Oedenkoven. This is how Ida Hofmann described the idea of ​​a vegetable settlement project in her chronicle; quoted from Robert Landmann: Ascona Monte Verità . Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien 1979, p. 19.
  7. ↑ Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . DVA: Munich 2017. p. 32
  8. ↑ Hiking on Lake Maggiore . In: alpenverein-kronach.de , 2006, (PDF; 438 kB), accessed on March 26, 2017.
  9. ↑ Andreas Schwab: The terrain is occupied. The myth of Monte Verità. In: Hans-Caspar Bodmer, Ottmar Holdenrieder, Klaus Seeland (eds.): Mythos Monte Verità . Landscape, art, history. ISBN 3-7193-1230-5 .
  10. ^ Andreas Schwab: Monte Verità - Sanatorium of Sehnsucht . 1st edition. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2003, ISBN 978-3-280-06013-1 .
  11. ↑ a b Karl Gräser, anarchist and nature man. (No longer available online.) In: ticinARTE. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017 ; Retrieved November 19, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ticinarte.ch
  12. ↑ p. 40
personal data
SURNAME Grasses, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian anarchist, dropout and nature lover
DATE OF BIRTH 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Brașov
DATE OF DEATH 1920
Place of death kassel