Monte Verità (Italian; German 'Berg Wahrheit', meaning "Mount Truth" or "Mountain of Truth") is a hill standing 321metres above sea level and a cultural-historical ensemble in the Swiss canton ofTicino. The site is located in the municipality ofAscona, about half a kilometre north-west of the old town. Situated onLake Maggiore, Monte Verità was a well-known meeting place for life-reformers (Lebensreformer),pacifists, artists, writers, and supporters of various alternative movements in the first decades of the 20th century.[1][2] After 1940, the place lost its importance. An attempt at a revival in the late 1970s met with very limited success.
Monte Verità was originally the name of the local "Nature Healing Sanctuary Sun Sanatorium" (in German:Naturheilstätte Sonnen-Kuranstalt) established on the hillMonte Monescia. This name first appeared in a brochure published in 1902. Shortly afterwards, the sanatorium settlement was renamed "Sanatorium Monte Verità". In the period that followed, the nameMonte Verità was also transferred to the entire hill, which was formerly known asMonte Monescia.
A whole series of foreign intellectuals who had their temporary or permanent residence aroundLake Maggiore in the 19th century belonged to the prehistory of theMonte Verità settlement project. The area aroundLocarno was then a haven for political rebels, including various Russiananarchists. Among them wasMikhail Bakunin, who had moved toTicino in November 1869. Bakunin first lived in Locarno and later bought a villa inMinusio, which became a refuge for revolutionaries who were wanted onarrest warrants.
The Russian-born BaronessAntoinette de Saint Léger [de] acted as a great hostess to many well-known artists and writers. TheBrissago Islands, which she had owned since 1885, was the site of great festivals; they are within sight ofAscona. Around 1889, the politician andtheosophistAlfredo Pioda [de], together withFranz Hartmann and CountessConstance Wachtmeister, developed a plan to build a theosophical monastery called "Fraternitas" onMonte Monescia. Presumably, the German life-reformerKarl Max Engelmann, who had settled inMonte Brè, was a candidate for this never-built monastery. Engelmann belonged to the "Pythagorean League" around thenature-philosopher preacherJohannes Friedrich Guttzeit [de] and was running a vegetarian guesthouse.
In November 1900, Engelmann met the Gräser brothers and probably drew their attention to the property on Monte Monescia that had already been purchased byAlfredo Pioda [de]. At that time, the hill was avineyard threatened byphylloxera infestation, and shepherds and goatherds grazed their herds on the bare hilltop.Henri Oedenkoven [de] andIda Hofmann [de] followed the Gräser brothers' proposal to acquire this site as a settlement.
The actual story of the alternative settlement project began as early as 1899 inBled (at that time belonging toAustria-Hungary, today inSlovenia). It was there that the music teacherIda Hofmann [de], who had grown up inTransylvania, and the Belgian industrialist's sonHenri Oedenkoven [de] met during a stay at theArnold Rikli natural healingsanatorium. Both were unknown to each other until then but developed a strong sympathy for each other in the few weeks of their common cure therapy. They were joined byKarl Gräser [de], an officer in theAustro-Hungarian Army who was also taking a cure therapy from theheliopath ("Sun Doctor") Arnold Rikli and intended to resign as soon as possible from his army post. Karl's views were influenced by his brotherGustav Gräser, an artist who had been living ajourneyman life for a year. The three Gräser brothers Karl, Ernst, and Gustav went together on a hike from Bled toFlorence. The aspiring painterErnst Gräser [de] later also lived temporarily on "Monte Verità" and lured fellow students such asWilli Baumeister,Oskar Schlemmer, andJohannes Itten to the closely related colony inAmden onWalensee.
An intensive exchange of letters developed between Oedenkoven and Hofmann, which led to a meeting inMunich in October 1900. In addition to the initiators Oedenkoven and Hofmann, the brothers Karl and Gustav "Gusto" Gräser attended this meeting, as well as Ida Hofmann's sister Jenny, a trained opera singer, the teacherLotte Hattemer, and her friend Ferdinand Brune fromGraz, a theosophically influenced son of a landowner. After "Oedenkoven's plan" of the founding of a so-called "vegetable cooperative" had been presented, the decision was made that "each individual's movable property [...] should be contributed to the founding of a natural healing institute [...]". The main part of the expected profit would go back to the project, and the rest of the profit would be distributed among the members. If a member, for whatever reason, intends to leave the project community at a later date, the paid-in capital should be returned to him as soon as "it is liquidated". It was also decided that the cooperative should be founded on the shore of one of the northern Italian lakes and that, in order to find the right place, they wanted to set off immediately – on foot.
There were already models for the Monte Verità settlement project. This included, among others, theOranienburg "Eden Cooperative Fruit Growing Colony" (Eden Gemeinnützige Obstbau-Siedlung). The direct precursor was the artist community around the German painter and life-reformerKarl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913) at the "Himmelhof" near Vienna. Gustav Gräser had been his student there in 1898 and also conveyed Diefenbach's views to his brothers Karl and Ernst Gräser.
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In the fall of 1900, the 25-year-old industrialist' son fromAntwerp Henri Oedenkoven, and German pianist Ida Hofmann, together with Karl Gräser, Gustav Gräser, and Lotte Hattemer, found what they were looking for inAscona, Switzerland, after a few weeks of searching. They bought property onMonte Monescia fromAlfredo Pioda [de]. With purchases from other owners, they acquired fourhectares. They founded their "vegetable cooperative," a settlement community initially on avegan and latervegetarian basis, and in 1902 they gave it the nameSanatorium Monte Verità.[3] This name did not hide the claim of the new owners to be in possession of the truth. Rather, the new name was meant to express the effort to live truly. Ida Hofmann later wrote in the new orthography developed mainly by Henri Oedenkoven:
The meaning of the name of the establishment which we have chosen [is so] to explain, that we in no way claim to have found the 'truth', to monopolize, but that we, contrary to the often lying behaviour of the business world and striving for it from the conventional prejudices of society, in word and deed "was" to help the lie to be destroyed, the truth to be successful.
— Ida Hofmann
In order to finance the settlement project and at the same time make it known to a larger public, Oedenkoven and his partner Hofmann established the "Nature Healing Sanctuary Sun Sanatorium" (in German:Naturheilstätte Sonnen-Kuranstalt), which was shortly afterwards renamed "Sanatorium Monte Verità". One of the early guests of this institution was the barefoot itinerant preacherGustaf Nagel [de], who took a short break on Monte Verità in November 1902 on his missionary journey fromArendsee toJerusalem.
Anarchist physicianRaphael Friedeberg moved to Ascona in 1904, attracting many other anarchists to the area. Artists and other famous people attracted to this hill includedHermann Hesse,[4]Carl Jung,Erich Maria Remarque,Hugo Ball,Else Lasker-Schüler,Stefan George,Isadora Duncan,Carl Eugen Keel,Paul Klee,Carlo Mense,Arnold Ehret,Rudolf Steiner,Mary Wigman (at that time still Wiegmann),Max Picard,Ernst Toller,Henry van de Velde,Fanny zu Reventlow,Rudolf von Laban,Frieda andElse von Richthofen,Otto Gross,Erich Mühsam,Walter Segal,Max Weber,[5]: 269–70 Gustav Stresemann,[6] and Gustav Nagel.
At the beginning of the 20th century, theLombardy termbalabiott [it], which can be translated as "dancing naked" or "naked dancer," was often used to describe someone who is carefree or uninhibited. It was used by the Ticino peasants to designate the heterogeneous community of utopians, vegetarians, naturists, and theosophists who settled on the slopes of Mount Monescia (renamed Monte Verità). This community, inspired by the theories ofBakunin andMühsam (famous anarchists), Oedenkoven, Hofmann, and the Gräser's (utopian socialists),Hartmann and Pioda (vegetarian theosophists and humanists), andvon Laban (theorist of the "reform of life"), was mainly financed by the Northern Europeannobility. These nobles were fascinated by theories that aimed at the spiritual and physical elevation of man, also through the artistic expression of the body and the sexual revolution. The local inhabitants observed with perplexity the nonconformist attitudes of the members of the community and had hastily catalogued them as fools due to their antics.
Monte Verità has been cited as an example of "lightasceticism" which arose during theBelle Epoque, inspired byTolstoyan values.[7] The colonists "abhorred private property, practiced a rigid code of morality, strictvegetarianism, and introduced health aspects of the GermanFreikörperkultur movement (FKK, free body culture, also known asnaturism). They rejected convention in marriage and dress, party politics, and dogmas: they were tolerantly intolerant."[8]
From 1913 to 1918,Rudolf von Laban operated a "School for Art" on Monte Verità.[9][10]
In 1917, the occultistTheodor Reuss, and master ofOrdo Templi Orientis, staged a conference on Monte Verità covering many themes, including societies without nationalism, women's rights, mystic freemasonry, and dance as art, ritual, and religion.[11] The conference also addressed the "ecstatic release" in the mysterious procedures on the "paths to enlightenment".[12] Reuss, Grandmaster of his lodge, organized a "cult of theMary" based on "brotherhood and sisterhood" and prepared himself to seduce the colony's women.[12] The colony director, Henri Oedenkoven, having had enough of the midnight erotic-orgiastic rituals that took place in Reuss' lodge, where men and women would gather in rows simultaneously, had promptly thrown Reuss out.[12] Insulted as a charlatan and devourer of women, Reuss left the Monte Verità colony.[12]
From 1923 to 1926, Monte Verità was operated as a hotel by artists Werner Ackermann, Max Bethke, and Hugo Wilkens. In 1926, it was acquired by BaronEduard von der Heydt.[13] The following year, a new Modernist-style hotel was built byEmil Fahrenkamp. Eduard von der Heydt died in 1964, and the site became the property of the Canton ofTicino.
Monte Verità is currently home to theSwiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürichconvention centre,Congressi Stefano Franscini (CSF), as well as a museum comprising three buildings: the Casa Anatta, a flat-roofed brick and wooden building built in 1902, it served as the colony founders' residence and now houses an exhibition of the site's history; the Casa Selma, a light-and-air bathing sanatorium hut built in 1904 by the first settlers; and a building housing thepanoramic painting "The Clear World of the Blessed" byElisar von Kupffer. The hill is also the site of a tea garden and Japanese teahouse. Since 2013, Monte Verità has also been the home to the literature festivalEventi letterari Monte Verità.[14]
A fictionalized version of the colony at Monte Verità is the subject of a short story named "Monte Verità" by the Cornish authorDaphne du Maurier, which appeared inThe Apple Tree published in 1952, and then republished under the nameThe Birds and Other Stories.A.S. Byatt's 2009 novelThe Children's Book mentions the colony, as does Robert Dessaix's 1996 novelNight Letters.
Monte Verita is the location for some of the climactic action in the graphic novel trilogySuffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst's Amazons (2015).
The novel "El miedo te come el alma" byEduardo Sguiglia (2017) refers in several passages to the community that inhabited Monte Veritá at the beginning of the last century.[15]
46°09′30.52″N8°43′29.43″E / 46.1584778°N 8.7248417°E /46.1584778; 8.7248417
