Stafelalp

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Stafelalp (2016)

The Stafelalp is an alp above Davos in the Swiss canton of Graubünden . It is located at 1900  m above sea level. M. There are fourteen residential huts and two small stables on the alp. An alpine cooperative, consisting of long-established families of the Davos Frauenkirch fraction , manages the pastures and buildings. The Stafelalp has become famous through various works by the painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner .

history

At the end of the 13th century the area around Frauenkirch was settled by the Walsers . The existence of the alp as a summer place for livestock can be traced back to at least the early 15th century. The name “Stafel” refers both to the meeting place for the cows and to the construction of the residential huts, which is also called Stafel. On the first floor of a board there are cattle stalls, above the living and sleeping rooms of the farmers and their helpers. The term “Stafel” (from “Staffel” = section of a pasture area) is Swiss and means alpine pasture.

According to a door inscription at the entrance to the milk cellar, the oldest of the existing residential huts, the Müller-Hütte, dates back to 1644. The other residential huts date from the years 1790 to 1838. The youngest huts were built between 1908 and 1931, while a dilapidated hut was demolished before 1930. Each of these huts is provided with a house symbol belonging to the corresponding family .

House sign on the hut that Kirchner temporarily lived in

In 1881 the Stafelalp received a central dairy for cheese production. Before that, cheese was made in the individual houses. To make the Alp more accessible from Frauenkirch, the footpath was expanded into a driveway in 1908. The road contributed to the fact that the cooperative could deliver its milk to the dairy in Davos every day by horse and cart. As a result, the dairy was rarely used for cheese production and was completely closed from 1922.

Kirchner on the Stafelalp

Moonrise on the Stafelalp , oil on canvas, 1917.

During his first long stay in Davos in May 1917, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner expressed to the doctor Lucius Spengler that he wanted to retreat to a lonely alp in the summer to recover from his nerve paralysis. With his nurse, "Sister Hedwig", who had brought with him from Berlin , he rented one of two Stafelalp huts owned by the farmer Johann Ruesch. The painter was not completely isolated there by the horse and cart business. Kirchner described his health in the summer of 1917 as desolate. Still he could work. In addition to a few oil paintings , he created eleven woodcuts , of which he subsequently made prints.

In July 1918 Kirchner traveled again from the Bellevue Sanatorium in Kreuzlingen to the Stafelalp, where he again painted a series of oil paintings and made woodcuts. The artist Henry van de Velde , who was friends with Kirchner, visited him on the alp to talk about plans together.

Between autumn 1918 and autumn 1923 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his partner Erna Schilling lived in the house "In den Lärchen" in Frauenkirch. From there he went to the Stafelalp several times, around the spring of 1919, to paint the still snow-covered landscape. In 1920 the watercolor and the oil painting "Alte Sennhütte" were created , which depict the interior and the fireplace in the old Müller-Hütte. In addition, a self-portrait from this time shows Kirchner in front of the living room oven of the Ruesch hut.

After 1920 there were no longer any longer stays on the Stafelalp, and from 1923 Kirchner only visited the place sporadically.

tourism

The Stafelalp is located on the Walserweg , a long-distance hiking trail through Graubünden. It can also be reached in around an hour from Davos Frauenkirch on the sculpture trail or via the three-hour high trail from Schatzalp . The year-round inn on the Stafelalp is visited in winter on ski and snowshoe tours.

literature

  • Eberhard W. Kornfeld : Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Tracing his life. Catalog of the Kirchner-Haus Davos collection . Kornfeld Verlag, Bern 1979, ISBN 3-8577-3010-2 .
  • Andreas Giedion (Ed.): The architecture of the Davos alpine huts. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's “Alte Sennhütte” and its role model. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-85881-142-4 .

Web links

Commons : Stafelalp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eberhard W. Kornfeld: The Stafelalp above Frauenkirch. In: The architecture of the Davos alpine huts. , Pp. 10-20.
  2. ^ Gerhard Wahrig : German Dictionary , Mosaik-Verlag Munich 1986, p. 1215
  3. ↑ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , pp. 86–88.
  4. ↑ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , p. 87.
  5. ↑ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , pp. 93–98.
  6. ↑ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , pp. 117–120.
  7. ↑ a b Eberhard W. Kornfeld: The Stafelalp above Frauenkirch. In: The architecture of the Davos alpine huts , p. 20.
  8. ^ Eberhard W. Kornfeld: The Stafelalp above Frauenkirch. In: The architecture of the Davos alpine huts , p. 87.

Coordinates: 46 ° 46 '11.4 "  N , 9 ° 47' 7.2"  E ; CH1903:  779,220  /  182531