Monte Verità

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Monte Verità
Monte Verità, around 1900

Monte Verità, around 1900

height 321  m above sea level M.
location Canton Ticino , Switzerland
Dominance 0.33 km →  elevation at Böcc del Crös
Notch height 28 m ↓  at Premacagno
Coordinates 702 290  /  112 793 coordinates: 46 ° 9 '32 "  N , 8 ° 45' 46"  O ; CH1903:  702.29 thousand  /  112793
Monte Verità (Canton Ticino)
Monte Verità
Works of art in front of the hotel building

Works of art in front of the hotel building

Location map

Location map

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Template: Infobox Berg / Maintenance / BILD1
Template: Infobox Berg / Maintenance / BILD2

The Monte Verità (Italian; German, 'Mountain Truth', meaning «Truth Mountain» or «Mountain of Truth») is a hill (height 321 m above sea level) and a cultural and historical ensemble in the Swiss canton of Ticino . The site is located in the municipality of Ascona , around half a kilometer northwest of the old town. In the first decades of the 20th century, Monte Verità, located on Lake Long, was a well-known meeting place for life reformers , pacifists , artists, writers and supporters of various alternative movements. After 1940 the place lost its importance. The attempt at revival in the late 1970s had very limited success.

The Monte Verità ensemble monument includes, among other things, the Casa Anatta museum , the Albergo Monte Verità hotel and restaurant , which is also used by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich as a congress center, a cultural center and a publicly accessible park .

Monte Verità was originally the name of the local naturopathic institute and can be found for the first time in a prospectus published in 1902; see below for the motif . In the following years it was also transferred to the hill previously called Monte Monescia .

history

The prehistory of the Monte Verità settlement project includes a number of foreign intellectuals who had their temporary or permanent residence around Lake Maggiore in the 19th century . The area around Locarno was a haven for political rebels, including various Russian anarchists , in the 19th century . Among them was Michail Bakunin , who moved to Ticino in November 1869. At first he lived in Locarno and later bought a villa in Minusio , which became a refuge for wanted revolutionaries. The Russian baroness Antoinette de Saint Léger acted as the great hostess of many well-known artists . The Brissago Islands , which they have owned since 1885, were the location of the great festivals . They are within sight of Ascona. Around 1889, the politician and theosophist Alfredo Pioda, together with Franz Hartmann and Countess Constance Wachtmeister, developed the plan to build a theosophical monastery called »Fraternitas« on Monte Monescia . The German life reformer Karl Max Engelmann , who belonged to the 'Pythagorean League' around the nature preacher Johannes Guttzeit and now ran a vegetarian pension, had probably settled in Monti sopra Locarno as a "candidate" for this never-realized monastery . The Gräser brothers came across him in November 1900 and were probably referred to the property on Monte Monescia that Alfred Pioda had already acquired. At that time, the hill was a vineyard threatened by phylloxera and sheep and goatherds grazed their flocks on the bare knoll . Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann joined the suggestion of the Grass Brothers to acquire this area as a settlement site.

Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann (1903)
Agriculture in the Vegetable Cooperative Monte Verità (1907)

The actual story of the alternative settlement project began in Veldes in 1899 (then part of Austria, now in Slovenia ). The music teacher Ida Hofmann, who grew up in Transylvania , and the Belgian industrialist's son Henri Oedenkoven met there during a stay at the Rikli naturopathic facility . Both were unknown to one another until then, but developed a strong sympathy for one another in the few weeks of their joint treatment. They were joined by Karl Gräser , an officer in the Habsburg army, who was also taking a cure from the heliopath ("sun doctor") Arnold Rikli and was planning to resign as soon as possible. Karl's outlook was shaped by his brother Gusto, who had been a wanderer for a year. The three brothers Karl, Ernst and Gusto went on a hike from Veldes to Florence. The budding painter Ernst Heinrich Graeser (1884–1944) later lived at times on the Truth Mountain and lured fellow students such as Willi Baumeister , Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten to the closely related colony in Amden on Lake Walen.

An intensive correspondence developed between Oedenkoven and Hofmann, which led to a meeting in Munich in October 1900 . In addition to the initiators Oedenkoven and Hofmann, the brothers Karl and Gustav Gräser ("Gusto") took part in this meeting, as did Ida's sister Jenny, the teacher Lotte Hattemer and her friend Ferdinand Brune from Graz , a theosophical landowner son. After "Henri's Plan", the establishment of a so-called "vegetable cooperative", was presented, the decision was made that "the movable assets of each individual [...] should be contributed to the establishment of a naturopathic institute [...]". The majority of the expected profit would flow back to the project, the rest of the profit would be distributed among the members. If a member - for whatever reason - intends to leave the project community at some point in the future, the paid-in capital should be returned to him as soon as "when it is liquid". It was also decided that the cooperative should be founded on the banks of one of the northern Italian lakes and that in order to find the right place, one wanted to set off immediately - on foot.

1900 to 1920

Cooperative and naturopathic institute

In autumn 1900, Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, along with Karl Gräser, his brother Gusto and Lotte Hattemer, found what they were looking for in Ascona after a few weeks of searching and bought Alfredo Pioda's property on Monte Monescia . With purchases from other owners, they acquired four hectares. They founded their «Vegetable Cooperative», a settlement community based initially on a vegan and later on a vegetarian basis, and in 1902 they named it Monte Verità . This name did not hide the new owners' claim to be in possession of the truth. Rather, the new name should express an effort to truly live. Ida Hofmann later wrote in the new ortografi, mainly developed by Oedenkoven :

«The meaning of the name of the institution chosen by us can be explained in such a way that we do not claim that we have found the 'truth' of wanting to monopolize, but that we contrary to the often lying behavior of the business world and the like. strive for convincing prejudices of society, in wort u. act 'was' to be, the lie to the distance, to help the truth to the sige. "

- Ida Hofmann

Models of the Monte Verità settlement project already existed. This included the Oranienburger fruit growing colony Eden eGmbH, founded a few years earlier. The direct forerunner was the artist community around the painter and life reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913) at the “Himmelhof” near Vienna. Gusto Gräser had been his student there in 1898 and conveyed Diefenbach's views to his brothers Karl and Ernst. In the summer of 1899, they met Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann in Arnold Rikli's naturopathic institute in Veldes and decided to set up a joint company in the south.

The brothers Gusto and Karl Gräser strived for a communitarian living and working community . At the time of the French Revolution, the utopian socialist Charles Fourier had already drafted the social model of large rural communes in which full sexual freedom should be given. This way of life, called "harmony", became the model for Karl Gräser, who influenced Erich Mühsam and, through him, the doctor and psychiatrist Otto Gross . With Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis , Gross gave Fourier's utopia a modern psychological foundation; at the same time he transformed Freudian analysis into an anti-authoritarian, cultural revolutionary theory with the demand: "Revolution for mother right". The Russian-Greek philosopher Afrikan Spir , who lives in Germany, not only decisively influenced Nietzsche's thinking with his theory of identity, he also designed the model of a life-reforming-philosophical commune that Friedrich Nietzsche and friends in his 'Suggestion to the Friends of a Sensible Lifestyle' in 1869 briefly realized in southern Italy. Coming from Kant, Spir developed a philosophy of identity: "Identity with oneself is the highest norm" (Morality and Religion, Leipzig 1878, p. 3). From this follows for the action and striving of the human being: "Morally wanting and acting = wanting and acting in accordance with oneself (with one's true nature)" (suggestion to the friends ..., Leipzig 1869, p. 4). Gusto Gräser's basic theme comes from Spir as well as from India: "Returning to the Self".

In order to finance the settlement project and at the same time make it known to a wider public, Oedenkoven and his partner Hofmann founded the natural health resort Sonnen-Kuranstalt, which was followed shortly afterwards by the Monte Verità sanatorium . One of the early guests of this institution was the barefoot traveling preacher gustaf nagel , who took a short break on his mission trip from Arendsee to Jerusalem on Monte Verità in November 1902. Ida Hofmann reported on this visit:

gustaf nagel - one of the early visitors to Monte Verità

«Gustav Nagel appears in front of our astonished group on November 17th. Heavy snow flurries do not prevent him from walking bare-footed and only wearing a short shirt. Bright joy spreads over the features of those present; because the sight of his personality is refreshing; he gives the impression of a convalescent, but not yet healthy. His figure, his curly hair wrapped around his head are beautiful. Expression and demeanor are noble, but his eye is unsteady - he often laughs briefly and for no reason. Nagel shows us certificates from the most famous German doctors and naturopaths, which unanimously confirm his often questioned sanity, so that Nagel can free himself from the board of trustees imposed on him. He sells a lot of postcards with his own portrait to us, sleeps until 11 a.m. in the morning, has his food brought to bed, wraps himself naked in a woolen blanket during the day, freezes miserably and rushes to the ship after a two-day stay to bring him further south. "

- Ida Hofmann

Even after the Monte Verità Sanatorium was founded in 1900, anarchists and pacifists played a key role on the mountain. Count Pyotr Alexejewitsch Kropotkin visited Monte Verità several times. Another example is Erich Mühsam . The political activist and anti-militarist made friends with the settler Karl Gräser during his stays between 1904 and 1908 and wanted to publish his writings. The Socialist Federation of Gustav Landauer spoke their own local branch in Ascona, the Zurich anarchists gathered in the mill of Ronco. The unionist Margarete Hardegger and the Tolstoian Bernhard Mayer founded their own communities. The writer Oskar Maria Graf and the painter Georg Schrimpf formed a group with other Munich residents near Locarno. The Tat-Gruppe of the Socialist Federation referred conscientious objectors to the grasses brothers. Before and during the First World War, objectors, emigrants and refugees from the warring states such as Hans Arp , Hugo Ball , Ernst Bloch , Hermann Hesse , Hans Richter , Arthur Segal and many others gathered on Monte Verità . The mountain came into being through Hermann Hesse, who immortalized his friend, co-founder Gusto Gräser, in the master figures of his poems, through Gerhart Hauptmann , Bruno Goetz , Reinhard Goering , Emil Szittya and other writers, but above all through the person of Gusto Gräser himself to a myth.

Artist colony

An artist colony developed around the two poets and painters Gusto and Ernst H. Graeser . After a joint exhibition by the brothers in Locarno in the winter of 1906/1907, a permanent picture gallery was built in Karl Gräser's house. In the summer months that followed, they were joined by a group of Viennese “new artists”: Anton Faistauer , Robin Christian Andersen , the future teacher of Friedensreich Hundertwasser , and Gustav Schütt. The painters Richard Seewald and Georg Schrimpf came from Munich, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen and Carlo Mense from the Rhineland, and Otto van Rees and his wife Adya from Holland . The Darmstadt painter Alexander Wilhelm de Beauclair and his wife Friederike opened a painting school. With the outbreak of the World War, an influx of anti-war artists and exiles began. The Alsatian painter and sculptor Hans Arp and his companion Sophie Taeuber-Arp came , from Romania the painter Marcel Janco , from Munich the Rilke friend Lou Albert-Lasard , from Berlin the Dadaist Hans Richter . A circle of friends formed around the Moldovan Arthur Segal and his painting school, which included Arp, Ernst Frick and Otto van Rees as well as Alexej Jawlensky , Marianne Werefkin and Paul Klee . The Swede Viking Eggeling and the German painter Hans Richter developed the first abstract films. Under the guidance of his friend Gustav Gamper , Hermann Hesse also made his first attempts at painting in Ascona. Pictures of him as well as of the grass friend Adolf Stocksmayr and the other artists then formed the basis for the Museo Comunale of Ascona, founded in 1922. The German architects Carlo Weidemeyer and Paul Evertz brought modern architecture to Ascona. Examples are the Teatro San Materno by Weidemeyer (1927/1928) and the Grass House by Paul Evertz (1903).

organization

Light-air hut Casa Selma
Iron bed in Casa Selma

Monte Verità was neither a rural commune nor a pure artist colony. The special thing about this settlement was that there was no administration, organization or constitution. The original community of founders only existed for a year and then dissolved. However, it became the occasion for followers and like-minded relatives to settle nearby. The chain of settlers ranged from the successful German writer Emil Ludwig from Frankfurt, who built a villa in Moscia, to the Hungarian engineer and Tolstoian Vladimir Straskraba , who ran the 'Heidelbeere' restaurant, to the German-Russian baron Ferdinand von Wrangell, Oceanographer, writer and former educator at the Tsar's court. And it ranged from the rustico of the painter Elly Lenz to the doorless ruins of the former teacher Lotte Hattemer to the bird catcher tower Roccolo, in which the actress Käthe Kruse made her first dolls. Houses were also bought, built or rented by the dentist Schneider, the doctors Rascher and Wilhelm, the sculptor Max Kruse from Berlin, the opera singer Langvara, the well-known naturopath Anna Fischer-Dückelmann from Dresden, the Baroness Bock von Wülfingen, the wealthy fur trader, socialist and Tolstoian Bernhard Mayer , the painter and archaeologist Ernst Frick , the Swabian craftsman Karl Vester from Vaihingen / Enz, the millionaire widow and spiritualist Steindamm from Berlin; Mrs. Paulus, a friend of Annie Besant ; Leo Novak, a former Austrian officer, then theosophist and patron of Rudolf Steiner; the doctor and anarcho-syndicalist Raphael Friedeberg from Berlin; the painters Filippo Franzoni from Locarno, Alexander Wilhelm and Friederike de Beauclair from Darmstadt, Ernst Wagner from Graz, Arthur Segal from Moldova and others. Johannes Nohl and Erich Mühsam had also bought land. The factory owner's wife Albine Neugeboren, who owned several houses in Locarno Monti, also belongs to the Monte Verità. The settlers came mostly from the upper middle class, only Ernst Frick and Karl Vester from the working class and craftsmen. The residents came and went individually and voluntarily, with no plan or program; they were not bound in any way. They were brought about by ideal interests: life reform, spirituality, pacifism, rejection of state, social and religious realities. Freedom in every direction and the search for truth in every direction was in fact the motive, cultural reconstruction or new construction the goal. In the words of Erich Mühsam: «Break with the existing ... Exodus to the holy mountain». The sanatorium of Oedenkoven and Hofmann offered a visible figurehead and the point of attraction for paying spa guests, but it was bound to the existing and therefore little respected among artists and writers. "We actually had nothing spiritual in common with all of them," wrote Hermann Hesse, referring to the naturopathic institution's "seekers of very different kinds". As early as 1904, Erich Mühsam spoke of a "purely capitalist enterprise". The fact that previous historiography focused on the sanatorium was a consequence of the one-sided sources. Oedenkoven and Hofmann had left documents and writings; the scattered settlers, mostly headstrong individualists, hardly left a trace.

There are still some houses and testimonies from the pioneering days that can be visited:

  • Casa Anatta : House of the founders of the naturist colony, built in 1902. As early as 1930, it was considered the “most original Swiss house made of wood” with a flat roof, double walls, roller doors and wooden barrel vaults in all rooms. Today it houses a permanent exhibition on the history of Monte Verità and its colony.
  • Casa Selma: a typical "light-air hut" that was taken over by the colony and the vegetarian cooperative in the first years after the settlement of Monte Verità.
  • The wooden pavilion Chiaro mondo dei beati was built on the foundations of the solarium at the time. Inside is the giant painting of the same name by Elisar von Kupffer (1923).
  • Russenhaus: built for Russian exiles, reopened in 2015 after renovation.
  • Casa Francesco: Karl Gräser's house, built in 1903–1906 in the heritage style based on a design by the architect Paul Evertz, with two wall frescoes by Alexander Wilhelm de Beauclair. A Hesse Grass Museum is to be set up in the house, but it is currently threatened with demolition. (As of 2014)

Expressive dance

After he had approached Henri Oedenkoven in May 1913 with the suggestion to found an art school on Monte Verità, the dance reformer Rudolf von Laban held summer courses on Monte Verità from 1913 to 1917, from April to October . These shaped the reputation of Monte Verità as a center of expressive dance . Laban's idea was artistic work that “(must) grow out of the community in form and content to which I want to bring it together”. With students from his Munich movement studio, he experimented with free dancing on Monte Verità, preferably in the fresh air, sometimes naked, sometimes dressed in light robes, who only works with drum beats or without music at all. The leitmotif was always to establish a connection to the inner being of the respective dancer. Laban kept his summer courses until 1917, even after he had moved to Switzerland in 1915 with his «School for Art» due to the beginning of the First World War.

Dance enthusiasts from all over Germany continued to travel to his 25 or so students, including Sophie Taeuber (who later became visual artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp), including the well-known Gertrud Leistikow or the sisters Gertrud and Ursula Falke and Katja Wulff from Hamburg . Laban's assistants on Monte Verità were Suzanne Perrottet and the young Mary Wigman (then Wiegmann), who was at the very beginning of her career that will make her Germany's most famous and influential expressive dancer.

For patients in the sanatorium on Monte Verità, Laban also gave private lessons that already bore the features of dance therapy that was later developed .

After major open-air productions in previous years - including the drama Sieg des Victims by Hans Brandenburg , which ultimately failed in 1914 because of the acting challenge - Laban, a Freemason since 1913 , most recently in August 1917 , staged a “cultic dance game” in the open air from sunset to sunrise to the congress of the Masonic Order OTO taking place on Monte Verità with hymn, consecration play, dance rite and torchlight dance. Mary Wigman gave a lecture on expressive dance in education, life and the arts .

Independently of and around ten years before Laban's and Wigman's work that shaped expressive dance, Gusto Gräser met the American dancer Isadora Duncan in Paris in 1900 , whose brother Raymond Duncan became a fan of Gräsers and dressed according to his model. Grasses himself then tried out on his hikes as an amateur dancer and reciter.

For the early nude dancers, the villagers around Monte Verità coined the term balabiott as early as 1902 , a combination of biot “naked” and ballare “dance”.

1920 to 1964

Emil Fahrenkamp's hotel
Aerial photograph 1946

In 1920 the facility was leased and a children's home was housed in the main building; the Casa Anatta served as a restaurant with dance and music. The home was soon closed again by the authorities.

In 1923 the Russian painter Marianne von Werefkin drew the attention of the German banker Eduard von der Heydt to the former colony in which she had previously participated. Baroness Werefkin was finally able to persuade Von der Heydt to purchase the legendary mountain. Von der Heydt was very impressed by his “delightful companion”, who was twenty-two years his senior: “The extremely amusing Russian painter Marianne von Werefkin was also present at dinner [...] Like many interesting Russian women, she had not only a great charm, but also one convincing way of speaking and looking at you. With flashing eyes she asked me whether I had already seen the pearl of Ascona, the 'Monte Verità', which I denied. I had never heard of a Monte Verità before. We agreed to go on a tour there the next day, and she told me the strange history of this mountain in brief keywords [...] When I listened to Frau von Werefkin's stories and walked with her over the mountain, I was enthusiastic about the beauty and unique location of Monte Verità. »

Von der Heydt acquired the mountain in 1926 for 160,000 francs and rounded off the site. First, in 1927, he had Ludwig Mies van der Rohe draw up the design for a new hotel building. Then, however, in 1929 he commissioned his friend, the architect Emil Fahrenkamp , with the execution in the Bauhaus style . He furnished the Hotel Monte Verità with part of his East Asian collection. Von der Heydt had brought the art historian Karl With to Switzerland in 1936 and supported him until he emigrated to the USA in 1939. The mountain came back to life with the hotel as an international attraction. The Second World War ended this heyday. In 1946, when the Swiss public prosecutor's office opened proceedings against Von der Heydt for intelligence work for the Third Reich, Von der Heydt bequeathed his East Asian items to the Rietberg Museum in Zurich . The trial ended in his acquittal. In 1964, the mountain passed into the possession of the Canton of Ticino on the basis of a will from Von der Heydts. As early as 1956, the canton had become the owner of the parts of its art collection that remained on Monte Verità. There are around 500 works of art from the 16th to 20th centuries as well as from China and Japan.

In 1949, an anomaly of the geomagnetic field was reported, measured in 1944, the axis of which runs in WSW-ONO direction from Gridone over Pizzo Leone towards the Maggia Delta .

1978 until today

Monte Verità was rediscovered in 1978 by Harald Szeemann's exhibition Mammelle delle verità and a revival meeting initiated by Hermann Müller. The exhibition was then shown in Zurich, Berlin, Munich and Vienna and was a great success as it gave a historical basis to the need for alternatives in the 1970s. Szeemann had turned Monte Verità into a total work of art again, while Hermann Müller had turned it back into a lively meeting place for - even younger - bon vivants. Szeemann's exhibition has been housed in the Museo Casa Anatta since 1981 , which he looked after until his death. In Germany, the German Monte Verità Archive Freudenstein has the largest collection on the history of the mountain.

At the end of the 1980s, a 1.1 kilometer long road tunnel was built under Monte Verità . It relieves the inner city of Ascona, where there were often long traffic jams, especially during the holiday season. Today the cars drive through the tunnel past Ascona, the old riverside road serves as a promenade and local traffic.

In 1989 the Monte Verità Foundation was established. She is responsible for the operation of the facility, including the “Centro Stefano Franscini ” (CSF), the international conference center of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich . The CSF organizes up to 25 scientific conferences per year on Monte Verità. The canton of Ticino holds cultural events in the remaining time.

In spring 2006, a tea park was opened on Monte Verità. The tea plants ( Camellia sinensis ) can also be purchased here. A zen garden and a tea house (in the Loreley house), in which tea ceremonies and seminars on green tea are held, complement the park.

Celebrities and other visitors

Hans Arp : Roue Oriflamme / Goldflammendes Rad (1962) on Monte Verità

The list of prominent personalities from the fields of art, literature, politics and society who attracted Monte Verità includes: a. Nobles such as the Belgian King Leopold II , the last German Crown Prince Wilhelm von Prussen , the composer Richard Strauss , the politician Konrad Adenauer or the psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung , who regularly held his Eranos conferences for many summers. Many other people are named in the literature, but their whereabouts are not always documented.

In the period from March 1906 to September 1909, 411 visitors to the sanatorium were listed in the local newspaper Locarno and the surrounding area . On average, a little more than 11 guests stayed at the same time and they stayed an average of five and a half weeks. So most of them were temporary guests and not part of the permanent colony. They came from Germany (35%), Switzerland (16%), Russia (12%), France (8%), Benelux (5.6%), Italy (5.5%) and other countries.

Von der Heydt and his friend Werner von Rheinbaben put the number of visitors to Monte Verità between 1926 and 1958 at around 30,000 to 35,000 and “at least the same number of passers-by [...] who only stopped for a short time”.

The Monte Verità in the reception

On the one hand, the community offered ideal conditions for a permanent “alternative” way of life and economy. However, their goals , values and methods were in contrast to those of the «established» bourgeois society :

  • She had the chance to start from scratch in a completely undeveloped area.
  • It was tolerated by the surrounding society in Ascona and Ticino and not hindered. It was able to devote itself fully to its intended purpose without having to take security and defense measures.
  • It was founded with the purest ideals and purest intentions, without having to take social or other practical constraints into account.

On the other hand, the community suffered from constant tensions and conflicts , which ultimately led to failure. According to Robert Landmann , the following reasons were responsible:

  • Strongly contradicting values, attitudes and motives of many actors and visitors
    The lowest common denominator - the rejection of the bourgeois world - turned out to be too narrow a basis for the permanent prosperity of the colony.
  • Different ideas of the colonists of a "natural" way of life
    While the " modern " wing (represented by, for example, Henri Oedenkoven) on Monte Verità wanted to use technical progress consciously, but "correctly", the representatives of " primitivism " ( to which, for example, the grasses brothers counted) the technology as the source of the evil flat out.
  • Goals and demands set too high (conflict between idealism and realism / pragmatism )
    Example 1: The vegans' demand for a switch from leather sandals (animal product!) To plant-based footwear could not be realized due to a lack of equivalent plant-based materials. - Example 2: Not all colonists were able to comply with the demands of the vegetarians and to eat exclusively vegetable. - Example 3: Not all colonists were able to do without stimulants (especially tobacco , alcohol , coffee and tea ) immediately, completely and permanently ( abstinence ). - Example 4: The renunciation of servants and employees , who in the eyes of some colonists were considered objects of bourgeois exploitation , proved to be impractical.
  • Disagreements about the pace of reform; d. H. the “right” speed with which the theoretically formulated ideal states are to be striven for and brought about. Innovations
    were often characterized by “shortness of breath”: Thoughts were often not given time to mature; Attempts were stopped before they had a chance to prove their suitability; Ordinances and appeals were seldom given time to take full effect; Successes were seldom fully exhausted; Innovations were rushed and work became obsolete as soon as they were finished.

  • Uninhibited living out of the     personal inclinations of a number of residents ( egoism ) regardless of the needs of others and the needs of the community. Example 1: Idlers and parasites who let themselves be "fed" by the (other) colonists without themselves serving the community put. - Example 2: Obstruction of colonists by guests who involved the former in long conversations and thereby prevented them from working. - Example 3: Lack of respect on the part of some visitors for the colony's common property. When they left the colony, they took with them what they considered necessary as personal needs without being asked.
  • The lack of statutes , i.e. a binding formal community order recognized by all members.
    Such a statute would have offered the opportunity to reject newcomers and visitors who were not prepared to work for the good of the community , or after a probationary period or if they repeated to exclude serious violations of the agreed rules from the colony. The instrument of a statute was frowned upon as a (supposedly) “bourgeois” institution .

The fact that the colony lasted twenty years and has not lost its radiance to this day is primarily thanks to its secessionists . Erich Mühsam saw it this way as early as 1930 and Martin Green even more so in his fundamental monograph from 1986. Karl and Gusto Gräser, Jenny Hofmann and Lotte Hattemer, the dropouts among the dropouts, were determined to keep their original ideals pure. The German sociologist Winfried Gebhardt said: “You left the site of the jointly started settlement project, but not Monte Verità. They settled near the Oedenkovenschen estate and lived here their ideal of a simple, harmonious, self-sufficient life of absolute poverty and fanatical contempt for culture [...] but in harmony with nature . Your example was contagious. " You would have lived the dream of a symbiosis of freedom and roots. «The life-reforming Bohémiens from Monte Verità are, if not the model, then at least the tribe from which all these attempts (a reorganization of society) have outgrown and still outgrown today. Their design for a new community was the “crazy” attempt to bring all the ideas of liberalism, socialism, idealism, anarchism (and, as a specific addition: vegetarianism) that bear modernity and that were born out of the charisma of reason in a closed, consistent way of life to unite." Hubert Mohr draws the conclusion by referring to other settlement projects and alternative life-reforming social designs: "Monte Verità thus joins the tradition of European socially critical social utopias."

Radio

  • A long night over Monte Verità. Fountain of youth for the raptured. Germany, 2010, 172: 34 minutes, script and director: Peter Mayer, production: Deutschlandfunk , original broadcast: March 6, 2010, audio file, ( memento from July 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), excerpts from the manuscript and poems.
  • The myth of Monte Verità. Veganism and nudity as a liberation program. By Thomas Migge. Deutschlandfunk, November 30, 2017.
  • Monte Verità, une reforme de la vie sur la montagne. 4 expériences de return à la nature (2/4). France culture 02/01/2018.

Movies

  • Freak Out - Monte Veritá. The dream of an alternative life. Documentary, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, 2014, 84:40 min., Book: Carl Javér, Fredrik Lange, David Wingate, director: Carl Javér, production: Vilda Bomben Film, MDR , arte , German first broadcast: January 12, 2014 at arte, table of contents by arte, ( Memento from January 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ).
  • Il monte di Hetty. Documentary, Switzerland, script and direction: Alfio di Paoli and Teo Buvoli, first broadcast: November 2, 2009, 9 p.m. in RSI LA 2 . About the Monte Verità and Gusto grasses.
  • The hermit from Monte Verità: Gusto Gräser - natural person and philosopher. TV documentary, Switzerland, 2006, 48 min., Script and director: Christoph Kühn , production: Titanicfilm, entry in the Swissfilms database.
  • Monte Verità. Utopia of a new time. (OT: Monte verità - l'utopie d'un nouvel âge. ) Documentary, France, 1996, 52 min., Book: Henry Colomer, François Marthouret, Michel Papineschi, director: Henry Colomer, production: La Sept, arte, Periplus Ltd., Pathé Télévision, first broadcast: December 10, 1997, film data in KOBV .
  • Julia Benkert: Sanatorium Europa - le refuge des écrivains . Documentary about Riva and Monte Verità, 60 min. Broadcast on Arte on June 28, 2017 ( online ) and on Hessischer Rundfunk on October 25, 2017.

literature

Non-fiction

  • Elisabetta Barone, Matthias Riedl, Alexandra Tischel: pioneers, poets, professors. Eranos and Monte Verità in the history of civilization in the 20th century. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2252-1 .
  • Stefan Bollmann : Monte Verità. 1900 - the dream of an alternative life begins. DVA, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-421-04685-7 .
  • Mara Folini: Ascona's Monte Verità. (= Swiss Art Guide, No. 939/940, Series 94). Edited by the Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 2013, ISBN 978-3-03797-117-8 .
  • Martin Green: Mountain of Truth. The counterculture begins. Ascona, 1900-1920. University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1986, ISBN 0-87451-365-0 .
  • Adolf Grohmann: The vegetarian settlement in Ascona and the so-called natural people in Ticino. Papers and sketches. Hall a. S. 1904. (Reprint with notes and epilogue edited by Hanspeter Manz, Edizioni della Rondine, Ascona 1997, OCLC 81523196 ).
  • Ida Hofmann-Oedenkoven: Monte Verità. Truth without poetry. Karl Rohm , Lorch 1906.
  • Claudia Lafranchi, Andreas Schwab: Searching for meaning and sunbathing. Experiments in art and life on Monte Verità. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 2001, ISBN 978-3-85791-369-3 .
  • Robert Landmann : Ascona - Monte Verità. The story of a mountain. Pancaldi Verlag, Ascona 1930.
  • Robert Landmann : Ascona - Monte Verità. In search of paradise. Huber, Frauenfeld 2000, ISBN 3-7193-1219-4 .
  • Eberhard Mros: Monte Verità phenomenon. Nine volumes, self-published, Ascona 2008/2011, DNB 1013534158 .
  • Kaj Noschis: Monte Verità. Ascona et le génie du lieu. Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, Lausanne 2011, ISBN 978-2-88074-909-5 .
  • Ursula Pellaton, Pierre Lepori: Monte Verità, Ascona TI. In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz. Chronos Verlag Zürich 2005, Volume 2, pp. 1265–1268, with illustration on p. 1267.
  • Andreas Schwab : Monte Verità. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Andreas Schwab: Monte Verità - sanatorium of longing. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-280-06013-3 .
  • Arturo Schwarz : La casa dell'utopia: Monte Verità e gli artisti. 2008.
  • Klaus Steinke: tea house, dance and mountain of truth . Tübingen 2018.
  • Harald Szeemann : Monte Verità. Mountain of truth. Local anthropology as a contribution to the rediscovery of a modern sacred topography. Agency for intellectual guest work, Civitanova Marche and Tegna, and Electa Editrice, Milano 1978. (Very extensive, historical and cultural-historical classifications of the meeting place in the avant-garde movements of modernity.)
  • Ulrike Voswinckel: Free love and anarchy: Schwabing - Monte Verità. Drafts against the established life. Allitera, Munich 2009

Magazines and newspapers

Fiction

Web links

Commons : Monte Verità  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hiking on Lake Maggiore . (PDF) In: alpenverein-kronach.de , 2006, (PDF; 438 kB), accessed on March 26, 2017.
  2. ^ A b Robert Landmann: Ascona - Monte Verità. In search of paradise. Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart / Vienna 2000, p. 60.
  3. ↑ Monte Verità appears for the first time in the map series of the Federal Topography in 1907, although it cannot be determined whether the entry names the naturopathic institution or the mountain. See sheet 514 “Locarno” of the Topographical Atlas of Switzerland , first edition 1895, update 1907; online at map.geo.admin.ch under time travel .
  4. ^ Andrea Ghiringhelli: Alfredo Pioda. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . April 4, 2011 , accessed June 5, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Chronicle . ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) 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. Monteverita.org; Retrieved December 7, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.monteverita.org
  6. ↑ Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt: Munich 2017. p. 11.
  7. ↑ Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt: Munich 2017. p. 13.
  8. ↑ Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt: Munich 2017. p. 23.
  9. ↑ The data and facts in this section are based (if not otherwise noted) on the information provided by Robert Landmann: Ascona Monte Verità (edition revised and supplemented by Ursula von Wiese with the collaboration of Doris Hasenfratz [»Insel der Seligen«]). Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien 1979, pp. 13-27.
  10. ↑ Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt: Munich 2017. p. 32.
  11. ↑ This is Henri Oedenkoven. This is how Ida Hofmann described the idea of ​​a vegetable settlement project in her report; quoted from Robert Landmann: Ascona Monte Verità . Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien 1979, p. 19.
  12. ↑ Stefan Bollmann: Monte Verità 1900. The dream of an alternative life begins . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2017, p. 45.
  13. ↑ Mara Folini: The Monte Verità of Ascona . In: Swiss art guides . Series 94, No. 939-940 . Society for Swiss Art History GSK, Bern 2013, ISBN 978-3-03797-117-8 , p. 4 .
  14. ^ Ida Hofmann: Monte Verità. Truth without poetry. Told from life. Karl Rohm, Lorch 1906, p. 16 ( e-helvetica.nb.admin.ch ).
  15. ↑ Hans-Peter Koch: A contact point for dropouts and do-gooders or Ascona's alternatives . Michael Müller publishing house, 2005.
  16. ↑ Quoted from Robert Landmann: Ascona - Monte Verità. In search of paradise. Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart / Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7193-1219-4 , pp. 60 f .; Thomas Blubacher: Free and inspired. Places of longing for poets, thinkers and dropouts. Ascona, Attersee, Capri, Bali, St. Moritz, Hiddensee. Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-938045-80-0 , p. 14.
  17. ↑ Quoted from nagel, gustaf . In: TicinArte.ch .
  18. ↑ Florian Illerhaus: Mutual Influences of Theosophy and Monte Verità. Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-640-46980-2 .
  19. ↑ Evelyn Dörr: Rudolf Laban. A portrait . Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2560-1 , pp. 62 .
  20. ↑ Suzanne Perrottet: An eventful life . Quadriga, Berlin 1995, ISBN 978-3-88679-246-7 , pp. 110 .
  21. ↑ Evelyn Dörr: Rudolf Laban. A portrait . 1st edition. Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2560-1 , pp. 102-104 .
  22. ↑ Evelyn Dörr: Rudolf Laban. A portrait . Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2560-1 , pp. 78 f .
  23. ^ Gabriele Fritsch-Vivié : Mary Wigman . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, ISBN 978-3-499-50597-3 , p. 26 .
  24. ^ Gabriele Fritsch-Vivié: Mary Wigman . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, ISBN 978-3-499-50597-3 , p. 42 .
  25. ↑ Evelyn Dörr: Rudolf Laban. A portrait . Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2560-1 , pp. 79 .
  26. ↑ Evelyn Dörr: Rudolf Laban. A portrait . Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2560-1 , pp. 124 .
  27. ^ Gabriele Fritsch-Vivié: Mary Wigman . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, ISBN 978-3-499-50597-3 , p. 54 .
  28. ↑ Evelyn Dörr: Rudolf Laban. A portrait . Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2560-1 , pp. 123 f .
  29. ↑ Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe: "The new person". Physical culture in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic . Königshausen u. Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-8260-2772-7 , pp. 71 .
  30. ↑ Peter Michalzik: 1900. Vegetarians, artists and visionaries are looking for the new paradise . 1st edition. DuMont, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-8321-9873-2 , p. 119-138 .
  31. ↑ Gabriele Geronzi, Bruno Reichlin, Danilo Soldati, Carlo Zanetti: Storia e architettonica restauro del Monte Verita . In: Fondazione Monte Verità (ed.): Arte e storia . No. 74 . Ticino Management, 2017, Casa Anatta, l'oggetto misterioso del Monte Verità, p. 45 .
  32. ^ Francesco Welti: The Baron, the Art and the Nazi Gold , p. 40/41.
  33. ^ Robert Landmann: Ascona - Monte Verità. Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1979, p. 190 f.
  34. ↑ Hotel Monte Verità at ethorama.library.ethz.ch/de/node
  35. ^ Simona Martinoli and others: Guida d'arte della Svizzera italiana. Edizioni Casagrande, Bellinzona 2007, pp. 200-201.
  36. ↑ Lidia Zaza Sciolli, Mara Folini: The Collection Baron von der Heydt at Monte Verita. In the exhibition catalog: Dal Seicento olandese alle avanguardie del primo Novecento. Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano 1996, p. 72.
  37. ^ Ernst Karl Weber , Fritz Gassmann , Ernst Niggli and Hans Röthlisberger : The magnetic anomaly west of Locarno. In: Schweizerische Mineralogische und Petrographische Mitteilungen 29, 1949, pp. 492-510., Online with map
  38. ↑ About us - Fondazione Monte Verità. In: monteverita.org. Retrieved November 18, 2017 .
  39. ↑ Centro Stefano Franscini. In: monteverita.org. Retrieved November 18, 2017 .
  40. ↑ Jan Feddersen : Refugium der Utopien. The Monte Verità in Ticino. In: the daily newspaper , June 14, 2008.
  41. ^ Konrad Adenauer: Holidays in Monte Verità . In: TicinArte.ch .
  42. ↑ In his dissertation, the historian Andreas Schwab mentions the following people who “most likely never were on Monte Verità”: Bakunin, Trotsky and Lenin or Paul Klee, Isadora Duncan and Gustav Stresemann. Andreas Schwab: Monte Verità - sanatorium of longing. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-280-06013-3 , p. 255.
  43. ^ Andreas Schwab: Monte Verità - Sanatorium of Sehnsucht. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-280-06013-3 . Pp. 139-147.
  44. ^ Andreas Schwab, Claudia Lafranchi: Search for meaning and sunbathing. Limmat-Verlag, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-85791-369-X , p. 60.
  45. ^ Robert Landmann: Ascona - Monte Verità. In search of paradise. Huber, Frauenfeld [etc.] 2000, ISBN 3-7193-1219-4 .
  46. ↑ Winfried Gebhardt : Charisma as a way of life. On the sociology of alternative life. Reimer, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-496-02542-5 , p. 167.
  47. ↑ Gebhardt: Charisma as a way of life. 1994, p. 170.
  48. ^ Hubert Mohr quoted in Florian Illerhaus: Mutual Influences of Theosophy and Monte Verità. Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-640-46980-2 .
  49. ↑ Perlentaucher : Review: Ascona - Monte Verità: In search of paradise .
  50. ↑ Eberhard Mros: Phenomenon Monte Verità . In: Hetty Rogantini, the woman from the Truth Mountain. ( Memento of March 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 83 kB) In: DRS 1 , June 20, 2010.