Marlene Wagman-Geller

Nov 17, 2024 by Marlene Wagman-Geller

 

“Let us enjoy the beautiful things we can see, my dear,

and not think about those we cannot.”

– Johanna Spyri

 

The Johanna Spyri Museum (opened in 1981)

Hirzel, Switzerland

The museum is situated in Johanna’s grammar school.

 

Literary orphans are associated with their respective locales: Jane Eyre with England, Dorothy with Kansas, Anne of Green Gables with Prince Edward Island. The paradigm holds true for Heidi and her Swiss homeland. The Johanna Spyri Museum affords visitors a glimpse into the author’s life while its environs provide a postcard of pastoral perfection.

                

Die-hard devotees of the 1880 classic make a mecca to the setting of Heidi located near the Liechtenstein border. Visitors explore the Alpine meadows and climb the steep trail that leads to Heididorf, the stone and wood house and village modeled on the book. The tour includes resting in straw to emulate Heidi’s experience of sleeping in a hay-filled loft. For those who complain of hiking rough terrain in a high altitude: Heidi did it daily–and barefoot.

                

Children love the classic as they long for Adelheid’s, (Heidi’s) carefree existence: cavorting in the meadows, sharing adventures with Peter the Goatherd, drinking milk fresh and warm from her cow. The appeal to adults is the theme that aligns with the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Christian message of redemption. 

                

The endearing and enduring classic makes the world associate Switzerland with the pure of heart Heidi, an image that endures even in the face of Swiss scandals such as hoarded Jewish Holocaust bank accounts and Nazi gold. The Pollyanna of the Alps moved in with her grandfather who, embittered by his past, shunned religion and humanity. Despite his gruff personality, his granddaughter loved her home above the village of Dorfli from whose windows she gazed upon a valley of white crocuses. The conflict arose when Heidi’s Aunt Dete arranged for her to serve as a companion to the wheelchair-bound Clara Sesemann in Frankfurt. Although the two girls became firm friends, Heidi hated city life. In a nod to all’s well that ends well, Heidi is united with her grandfather who made peace with the villagers and returned to their church. When Clara visited, she was able to do away with her wheelchair, as she regained the use of her legs.

                

Although the book has sold millions of copies, the author’s life, due to her dislike of attention, remains murky. Johanna Louise was born in 1827, in the picturesque village of Hirzel. Her white, three-story house afforded a vista of the green of fir trees, the blue of Lake Zurich, the white of the snow-capped Alps. Other residents were Dr. Johann Jakob and Frau Meta Heusser, their six children, (Johanna was the fourth), a maternal grandmother and two maternal aunts. The doctor’s patients also resided in the home while convalescing. In addition to his medical practice, Dr. Heusser acted as the pastor of the hamlet’s Protestant Church.

                

Down the path from the family home is the 1660 grammar school that Johanna attended until age fourteen. Hating the confines of a desk, she was an apathetic student who a teacher pronounced “a dunce.” Afterwards, Johanna attended the höhere Töchternschule in Zurich followed by a lengthier educational experience in the French-speaking city of Yverson. In 1852, Johanna married her older brother’s friend, Johann Bernhard Spyri. The couple settled in Zurich where Johann became a respected lawyer; three years later their only child, Bernhard Diethelm, arrived. A double kidney punch was when her son passed away at age twenty-nine, likely from tuberculosis, and her husband died a few months later. Johanna ended up an invalid who pursued writing until her 1901 passing.

                

A rough spot in the Spyris’ marriage had been Johanna did not care for city life, and to escape into nature, she often visited her childhood friend, Anna Elisa von Salis-Hössli in Jenins, in the Bünder Herrschaft (Canton of Grisons). The village seems lifted from a picture-postcard: its homes have heart-decorated shutters, and the window planter boxes are awash with geraniums. On one of her alpine walks, Johanna met Heidi Schwaller who lived in Chur in the Swiss Alps with her grandfather. As he was strapped for cash, Johanna paid for the child’s schoolbooks. From the picturesque setting and her enchantment with Heidi, the daughter she never had, Johanna gleaned the inspiration and setting for her books that put Switzerland on the literary map.

                

Heidi acted as a muse for Johanna and was thrilled when her name and story appeared in a novel, an instant best seller. As Johanna was reclusive, the press subsequently beat a path to Heidi’s mountain home. She recalled that “Grosspapi” tried to shield her from the press and turned down requests for interviews. Unlike the author, the adult Heidi gravitated to the spotlight, and she became the 1930s darling of high society. Contributing to her international fame was the 1937 film version of Heidi that starred America’s sweetheart, Shirley Temple, in which she sang, “In Our Little Wooden Shoes.” In 1968, during the Super Bowl championship game between the Jets and the Raiders, television executives curtailed the game to air the 7:00 p.m. version of a new production of Heidi.

                

Her manager, Jürg Boschung, arranged for Heidi to make guest appearances on a world tour.  Under Jürg’s influence, Heidi broke off her engagement to Peter who she had been close to since childhood. She married Jürg, a relationship that came with an expiration date. Peter, who still held the torch for his youthful crush, became her second husband. They took their vows in Maienfeld and bought a lovely home where they raised their four children. The relationship disintegrated when Peter became as dedicated to the. bottle as he had been to his goats. Although they did not divorce, the couple ended up living apart. After Peter’s 1981 death, Heidi reverted to her maiden name.

                

In 2008, journalist Clare O’Dea tracked down the ninety-two-year-old Heidi, a resident of a luxurious retirement facility in Ruhetal. While sipping champagne, Heidi reminisced about her bygone glory days. She recalled, “Bob Hope was such a charming and amusing gentleman, and he was very interested in Switzerland because his grandmother was Swiss. We stayed in touch for a long time.” The former mountain dweller owned an extensive collection of photographs that showcased her with famous international stars, including one of her dressed in traditional costume, in the company of the Sultan of Brunei. In the 1950s, Heidi worked as a court storyteller for the Brunei royal family. She recalled of her singular experience, “I used to go there for a fortnight every year to entertain the children. We communicated in French but I used to teach them funny phrases in Swiss German.” In her later years, Heidi spent time with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, answering fan mail, and walking in the Ruhetal gardens.

       

The Johanna Spyri Museum: While Wilhelm Tell remains Switzerland’s most famous male folk hero, Heidi is the country’s most enduring literary heroine. In 1968, in a marketing campaign, Swiss Air portrayed an alpine paradise with the slogan, “Heidi wouldn’t lie.” Two years later, the message had changed to “Heidi lied” as a blonde tressed hippie cavorted in the mountains meadows, the updated version’s intent was to modernize the country’s image, to show it was more than the land of chocolate and cuckoo clocks.

      

In the 100^th anniversary of Johanna’s passing, (when Heidi turned 120), the book had appeared in fifty languages and sold fifty million copies. To mark the milestone, Zurich arranged for a Heidi exhibition at its Strauhof museum, and Hirzel experienced an upsurge in tourism.

                

On the eightieth anniversary of the writer’s death, teacher Jürg Winkler converted Johanna’s old grammar school, which had fallen into disuse after World War II, into a museum to honor Switzerland’s foremost author. From the window, guests are greeted with the spectacular vista of snow-capped peaks of the mountain ranges of Rigi, Pilatus, and the slopes above the Canton of Zug. Guests immerse themselves in a 1840s Hirzler primer and look upon the desk that holds original objects such as letters and manuscripts. The first floor has white-washed walls with photographs such as Johanna on her wedding day with her bridal finery that consisted of a black velvet dress, a red print Indian shawl draped across her arm, as well as those of the Heusser family. In one corner, set against a backdrop of majestic Alpine mountains, is a life-like tableau. In front of a cabin reclines the papier-máché figure of an old man with a gray wool beard smoking a long-stemmed pipe. Off to the side, Heidi, dressed in a dirndl skirt, pets her goat. A barefoot Peter, crook in hand, sits cross-legged amid wildflowers.

     

In terms of authenticity, the museum has the Spyri family’s wheelchair, as well as a large copper kettle. The upstairs floor houses Johanna’s childhood dollhouse: a glass-fronted bookcase holds twenty-two first editions of Heidi as well as translations in Arabic and Japanese. The German publisher F. A. Perthes released the first book of the series in 1889 under the title, Heidi…Mountains and Marvels. A video plays the Heidi classic that starred Heinrich Gretler and Elsbeth Sigmund. Immersed in the world of childhood innocence, visitors might long for the sentiment expressed in Shakespeare’s Richard II,  “O call back yesterday, bid time return.”

 

The Window of Her World:  Johanna, in her first book, A Leaf on Vrony’s Grave, employed the landscape of her childhood where she wrote, “There is an old house next to the small white church in the mountain village where I lived for a good twenty years. I enjoyed, with open eyes, the glory that God poured out on this little spot of earth.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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