The Alps and the Poet Von Haller
15 October 2022
For centuries, mountains were a ‘no go area’ for townspeople or villagers. Only cattle farmers and traders climbed mountains to pasture their cattle in the summer or transport cattle and their meat and milk products.
Nobody thought of climbing a mountain for pleasure. Although the Dutch and Flemish masters of the Golden Age introduced idyllic mountain landscapes to the canvas, few had visited, let alone seen or climbed the mountains. The Swiss painters followed suit and not vice versa.
Scuol, Motta Naluns. Photo: TES.
The physician, biologist, and poet Albrecht von Haller was the first Swiss to write an ode to the mountains (1708-1777). He studied medicine in Bern and then went to Leiden for a few years.
Johann Rudolf Huber (1668-1748), Albrecht von Haller, 1735. Photo: File:Albrecht von Haller 1736.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
There he studied under Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) and others. Afterwards, he studied mathematics in Basel with the mathematician Johann Bernoulli (1667-1748). Bernoulli was the first to introduce statistics on the effectiveness of vaccinations against smallpox.
He worked as a librarian from 1729-to 1735. In his collection of poems “Versuch Schweizerischer Gedichte” from 1729, the poem “Die Alpen” describes the mountains and their inhabitants lyrically.
Von Haller became a professor of botany in Göttingen in 1735 and regularly visited the Alps in his native country. He published various famous books on the flora of the Alps.
Bellwald. Photo: TES.
However, what is essential is that his trips to the mountains removed the fear of people. No dragons, devils or other monsters lived there, as was believed at the time.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1768) also introduced a positive image of the Alps in his novel Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761). He presented the mountains and their inhabitants as the lost paradise Arcadia.
Just before the French Revolution, the first Alpine hype among scientists and artists. The upper middle class also began to take an interest in hiking in the mountains.
The researcher-theologian Jakob Samuel Wyttenbach (1748-1830) from Bern, the painter Caspar Wolf (1735-1783) from Muri and the German writer Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) also inspired the public with their enthusiasm for the Alps.
However, it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that the breakthrough came, partly due to painters such as the Englishman William Turner (1775-1851), who visited the Swiss Alps intermittently after 1802 and painted them.
Aletschgletscher, Eicher, Mönch und Jungfrau. Photo: TES.
Not the Swiss made the mountains ‘salonsfähig’, but the English, just as the Masters from the Low Countries had introduced the Alps as a subject for art in Switzerland two centuries earlier.
The story of the rise of the tourist resorts after 1850 in the Swiss Alps is well known. Anyone who puts on their snowshoes to go on one of the many hikes in the snowy Alps might pause to reflect on the spectre of the mountains until 1800.
Nowadays, no mountain tour, skiing, cross-country skiing or snowshoeing is without (avalanche) danger. Still, dragons and other monsters certainly do not live there, although the wolf has recently made its comeback.
The Matterhorn. Photo: TES
Albert von Haller probably never went up into the mountains for his botanical research, but he is one of the pioneers of a different perception of the Alps.
Before a trip in the snow, it is worthwhile to look at the first poetic perception of the Alps from 1729 in a then-unknown and certainly not touristy landscape. The poem has 41 verses. Verses 12 and 14 of Die Alpen read:
Hat nun die müde Welt sich in den Frost begraben,
Der Berge Thäler Eis, die Spitzen Schnee bedeckt,
Ruht das erschöpfte Feld nun aus für neue Gaben,
Weil ein krystallner Damm der Flüsse Lauf versteckt,
Dann zieht sich auch der Hirt in die beschneiten Hütten,
Wo fetter Fichten Dampf die dürren Balken schwärzt;
Hier zahlt die süße Ruh die Müh, die er erlitten,
Der Sorgen-lose Tag wird freudig durchgescherzt,
Und wenn die Nachbarn sich zu seinem Herde setzen,
So weiß ihr klug Gespräch auch Weise zu ergötzen.
Dann hier, wo Gotthards Haupt die Wolken übersteiget
Und der erhabnern Welt die Sonne näher scheint,
Hat, was die Erde sonst an Seltenheit gezeuget,
Die spielende Natur in wenig Lands vereint;
Wahr ists, daß Lybien uns noch mehr neues giebet
Und jeden Tag sein Sand ein frisches Unthier sieht;
Allein der Himmel hat dies Land noch mehr geliebet,
Wo nichts, was nöthig, fehlt und nur, was nutzet, blüht;
Der Berge wachsend Eis, der Felsen steile Wände
Sind selbst zum Nutzen da und tränken das Gelände.
Wenn Titans erster Strahl der Gipfel Schnee vergüldet
Und sein verklärter Blick die Nebel unterdrückt,
So wird, was die Natur am prächtigsten gebildet,
Mit immer neuer Lust von einem Berg erblickt;
Durch den zerfahrnen Dunst von einer dünnen Wolke
Eröffnet sich zugleich der Schauplatz einer Welt,
Ein weiter Aufenthalt von mehr als einem Volke
Zeigt alles auf einmal, was sein Bezirk enthält;
Ein sanfter Schwindel schließt die allzuschwachen Augen,
Die den zu breiten Kreis nicht durchzustrahlen taugen.
(Bron: Albrecht von Haller, Versuch Schweizerischer Gedichte, Berliner Ausgabe 2013)
Ardez
Meiertal, Kanton Uri