His beloved Swiss mountains, the writer Hermann Hesse praised to the skies. The other tourists in the Engadine, received the Nobel prize, however, is hard on the nerves.
As a right buzzkill Hermann Hesse as it turned out The writer was a pretty nörgeliger a guest of the hotel. About “Elderly” among the other guests and he was upset, left and drank and danced: “Everything is booming, and evaporated in front of mirth,” he wrote in disgust and lashed out at the “whipped Vergnügtheit”. And still, His enthusiasm for the mountains of the Engadin in Switzerland could do no harm.
Travel destination for writers
The love began in 1905, as Hesse (1877-1962) was a nearly 30-year-old for the first time in Graubünden. He came often to the Hiking, but from 1949 until shortly before his death, he spent every summer for several weeks in Sils Maria behind St. Moritz. A mountain world in which the soul could come to courage, and to breath, he wrote. “The soul” as people would say today.
The place inspired him to create masterpieces, such as the Editor, and Hesse-expert Volker Michels found out. The poem “Tired evening”: “evening wind, babbling/Complaining smothered in Foliage/Heavy drops fall/Individually in the dust.”
Sils Maria is up today, proud of “his” writers. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spent in the 1880s, seven summers there and found the inspiration for his most famous work “Thus spoke Zarathustra”. Other writers such as Thomas Mann were there, painters and musicians right up to today. Sils Maria sees itself as a Magnet for cultural tourists.
Critical Guest
The Waldhaus Hotel in Sils Maria
“Hesse was in the first two years is not easy,” says Felix Dietrich. He led the Five-star Hotel “forest house” in the fourth Generation, before he handed it over in 2010 to his sons. Only Hesse, lodged in the “Belle Etage” on the Bar. However, he was the music too loud, reports Dietrich from memories of his parents-in-law, Rolf and Rita Kienberger, which led then to the house. Hesse finally got the other room, number 60 and 61, and from there everything went around. Hesse wrote the Kienbergers heartfelt thank you letters and gave them books with personal dedications.
“We walk back under the larches and Swiss stone pines, grateful for the size and nobility of this most beautiful mountain scenery I know,” wrote Hesse in a letter from Sils Maria. Although he complained in another letter, the “settlement with big and small residential buildings, the Infiltration”. But the worst tourism-sins with ugly new buildings, remained in the Village with approximately 700 inhabitants, be spared. Larches and Swiss stone pines stand there like once.
Nietzsche’s home in Sils Maria is now a Museum
Locals speak in Sils Maria from the surrounding “places of power”, in which visitors can refuel noticeable. The wooded Peninsula of Chastè in the Sils is such a place. Foreign tourists are sometimes a little perplexed, in front of the Nietzsche-stone: “Oh man! Give Eight! What the deep midnight talks?”, Zarathustra is carved into a concrete slab. Hesse found the stone to be ugly. He estimated the philosophers, and made sure that the house had spent in the Nietzsche of his summer, not demolished, but the Museum was.
A friend of nature and Gourmet
The sporty Hesse drove for years, elegant skis and was a fitter hikers as companions, certified. Even with 78 years, he and his third wife, Ninon Dolbin into the close and almost car-free Val fex, at the Restaurant “the sun”. Not a forced March, but at least a good hour, steadily uphill: “The road from the forest house to the Fexkirchlein and the “sun” is one of the longest courses that I can do on a good day,” lamented Hesse. It’s an Alpine idyll offers pure: narrow paths through lush meadows, scattered old farmhouses, high mountains in the Background and the sound of cow bells.
On the trail of the Wanderers of Hermann Hesse – the Val fex, in the case of Sils Maria
The forest house-the Hotel has lifted many of the Hesse-memorabilia. A menu card 1956, Hesse eating “Wiener Backhändl”. “Pretty simple,” says Dietrich, finally, the forest house prides itself on its fine cuisine. After all, there was “Poire Bourdaloue” for dessert – pear tarte.
The Five-o’clock tea in the Salon, one could imagine the gaunt, Hesse just at the next table. The more than 100-year-old Hotel fosters with its creaking floorboards all the charm of days gone by. The tea is a classical Trio playing as Hesse’s times. Also the loud mobile phone users never disturb the dignified impression: namely, they are asked to be discreet in two specially-built mobile cabins in front of the Salon. 54 of the Swiss franc, Hesse’s at the time, according to the screw-in blade grinding paid per day for two rooms. This summer, the cost of the smallest room according to the price of more than 200 Swiss francs (180 euros) in the list.
Inspiring panoramic lake Sils in the Swiss Canton of Engadine
Hesse is not inspired only poems. Also, as a painter, he flourished here, inspired by the special light: “A strong, cool, dry mountain air gives all the colors a particular Freshness,” he wrote. Much he held in watercolours and drawings: In the Winter he painted dark green fir trees in the snow, and houses, and the throw mats in the sun shadows on the Snow. Later, it was the rich colors of the summer vegetation.
Christiane Oelrich (dpa)