by Diccon Bewes
On the other side of the city is the house where Johanna lived. A stone plaque on the wall of Zeltweg 9 tells me this is the right place – it says, Johanna Spyri lived here from 1886 until her death. The list of bells shows that Number 9 is still mainly residential but a sign on Number 11 attracts my attention – the Johanna Spyri-Stiftung. Right name, wrong building, but it’s only next door, so how different can it be? Climbing up the stone staircase, it’s like going back a century or so. Lovely, curly wrought-iron banisters guide me up to a stained-glass door, as colourful as it is delicate. Inside, it’s a riot of moulded ceilings, parquet floors, stucco detail on the doors – and, in among all the period detail, a humming modern office.
Julia, the receptionist, tells me that the building, known as the Escherhäusern, was built in the 1850s as Zurich’s first purpose-built apartment block for rich residents. Johanna Spyri moved in after the deaths of her husband and son, but apparently didn’t live here much; it was merely her pied-à-terre for when she was in town, which wasn’t often. Her name lives on in the Schweizerisches Institut für Kinder- und Jugendmedien,10 as the Stiftung is formally known, an organisation that promotes children’s education and literature. How fitting.
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY
Having found where Johanna died, my next stop is the village of Hirzel, up above Lake Zurich, where she was born. Predictably enough its one sight is a Spyri Museum, though it has the world’s most ludicrous opening hours: Sundays, 2 p.m.–4 p.m. Not exactly rolling out the welcome mat. With that in mind, Gregor and I have timed our trip to arrive a few minutes after 2 p.m. on a Sunday. And I’m well prepared – I now know more about Hirzel than is healthy, having spent far too long clicking through the village website.11 It was a virtual mine of data, to say the least. Who knew (or needed to know) that of Hirzel’s 2106 inhabitants, 24 per cent are aged under 19 and 26 per cent are Catholic? Or that 257 foreigners live there? Perhaps you might like to know that the village has 724 houses and one hotel (with 11 beds). Amazingly, it has seven restaurants and two cafés, which must cater to all the Heidi tourists who turn up on days other than a Sunday and have nowhere to go. After discovering that the library is closed on Tuesdays and Fridays and only open 9–10.30 am on Wednesdays and Thursdays, I tore myself away from the computer. Almost every Swiss community has just such a website, but who else in the world looks at them?
We glide along the western edge of Lake Zurich in a near-empty local train, not quite hugging the shoreline (there are too many houses in the way for that) but close enough to see the sunlight dancing on the water. Lake Zurich is a long, thin sliver, less than 4 kilometres across at its widest point, so it’s easy to see the far shore, known as the Gold Coast, one of the most expensive places in Switzerland, which is probably why Tina Turner lives there. Its residents fight a constant battle with the authorities over the flight paths to Zurich airport; it just wouldn’t do to have their high life ruined by an incoming jet, unless of course it happened to be one of their private ones.
At Horgen we change to one of those ubiquitous yellow Postbuses, which, of course, is already there waiting for the connecting passengers. Our driver greets us all as he gets in and we’re off, up into the hills. Unlike the train the bus is full, and soon it’s standing room only. Not only that but the average age seems to be 77 – and our presence must lower it a fair deal. Either we’ve stumbled on a pensioners’ outing to Hirzel or the old folks in these parts don’t drive very much. I only wish I could remember the percentage of over-65s living in Hirzel.12
Although we climb up 311 metres, it’s not the most spectacular ride but it is pleasantly Swiss: undulating green fields dotted with brown cows, occasional rustic farmhouses in among all the new ones, tiny villages that are gone before you’ve read the sign, and periodic glimpses of the brooding mountains. And rarely any flat land bigger than Hyde Park. As we leave the bus in Hirzel, I see a sign informing me that our driver today is W. Christen and he wishes us a gute Fahrt. For English speakers, the typically Swiss politeness of it is slightly undermined by the German for a good journey.
The Spyri Museum is housed in an old schoolhouse straight out of a Grimm fairytale: a fine half-timbered building, its wood stained blood-red, its roof a typical A-frame. In the tiny garden stands a stone statue of Heidi, Peter and prerequisite goat; we’re definitely in the right place, and at the right time. It’s 2:03 and the door is already open; what’s more, we are not the first visitors – four others are inside already. Perhaps they are all Swiss.
Downstairs, the rough stone walls are lined with black-and-white photos of Johanna and her family, all of them looking as severe as only Victorians can. None of them resembles someone you’d like to meet on a dark night, let alone have read you a bedtime story. Johanna Louise Heusser was the fourth of six children, her father a doctor, her mother the preacher’s daughter. She pretty much stayed put until, aged 25, she met one Johann Spyri. It must have been a tad confusing, a Johanna with a Johann, especially given that her father was also called Johann, but that didn’t stop her marrying the Zurich lawyer and moving to the big smoke. However, she never really took to city life and depression took hold, particularly after the birth of her son. Solace came from her writing and visits to the countryside around Maienfeld. Her greatest success came with Heidi in 1880, only to be followed a few years later by the deaths of her son and husband. She wasn’t exactly a merry widow, but she gave time and money to charitable causes and carried on writing until her death in 1901. It’s rather grim reading, with Heidi the only glimmer of joy in her life, and going up the steep staircase my heart is as heavy as my feet.
The all-wooden first floor is devoted to Spyri’s most famous character, and the friendly lady in charge chats about our heroine, whom she views as an early feminist. She confirms that, although Heidi has been translated into over 50 languages, it isn’t available in Swiss German. Peering into the glass cases I make a startling discovery. The original Heidi book, called Heidi’s Years of Wandering and Learning, was first published in Germany, not Switzerland, and was actually only half the story. It was so successful that a sequel, Heidi Uses What She Has Learned, came out the following year; the Heidi we know today is these two books together. More revealingly, the first volume was published anonymously. Maybe it was a case of, like her contemporary George Eliot, having to hide her gender to achieve success. Even today that can still be an issue: Joanne Rowling became JK in order to make her book appeal more to boys. Or perhaps Johanna sought refuge in anonymity. Either way, the charade was over by book two, when Johanna Spyri’s name finally appeared on the cover.
All manner of memorabilia fills the cases: books in a host of languages, videos, records, clothes, and lots and lots of food packaging. It seems that it isn’t only McDonald’s and Migros who have used our young heroine over the years; she’s been put upon to sell tea, wine, salad, sausages and of course yet more dairy products. There might have been fewer companies falling over themselves to use her if she’d kept to her real name and not shortened it to Heidi; somehow Adelheid lacks that romantic ring, sounding far too Teutonic to be cute. All the same, I wonder what Johanna would make of her little girl’s image being prostituted around the world in the name of profit.
Museum done, we stroll through the village, which straggles out along a downhill road and will never win any awards. Not every Swiss village lives up to the picture-postcard hype. Some, like this one, are plain ordinary. There’s a typically bare Protestant church, with a modern Catholic counterpart nearby, the one hotel, a post office, a butcher, a baker (no candlestickmaker) and two of those aforementioned restaurants. The other five must be hidden away in the backstreets. Down at the main road is one of the ubiquitous Wanderweg signs, but here it seems a little superfluous to be told that it’s a four-and-half-hour walk back to Zurich. As tempting as that is, when the bus trundles into view exactly on time, we hop on.
WELCOME TO HEIDILAND
‘I can’t believe I’m finally standing in Heid
i’s house; it’s like a dream come true.’ Not my words but ones written by an enthusiastic American tourist in the visitors’ book at the Heidihaus in Maienfeld, over in the far east of Switzerland near the Austrian border. This pretty town is the setting for the book, and it milks the Heidi connection for all it’s worth – and given the number of tourists here, it’s clearly worth quite a lot. Not for nothing is this area of Graubünden known as ‘Heidiland’ in tourist-board marketing speak. The whole place looks like it has just stepped out of the book, its stark grey mountains towering over heavily wooded slopes and lush Alpine pastures that roll down to the flatter plain along the banks of the Rhine. The big difference between here and central Switzerland is that these mountains aren’t the pointy triangles dusted with snow that fit with images of the Swiss Alps. Instead, their jagged profiles make a ragged skyline, their sides too steep for all but the stickiest snow, their presence threatening rather than inviting.
Gregor and I are visiting his parents in Liechtenstein, a tiny principality sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria that doesn’t have many claims to fame, apart from being the world’s sixth smallest country.13 Its 35,000 citizens are ruled by a prince in a castle, but it doesn’t have its own currency; Swiss francs are used. Its main products are false teeth, nails (of the hammer variety rather than the stick-on type) and banking of a secretive nature. For sure, it’s a sweet country for a day-trip but, more importantly for us, it happens to be a short drive from Maienfeld. We borrow his parents’ car and take the scenic route past the mountains, driving through practically the whole of Liechtenstein (it really is that small) before re-crossing the border, marked only by a flag and a sign.
Maienfeld is a small place, its centre little more than a cluster of handsome stone buildings around a church with a pickled-onion-topped spire. Although it’s probably never the busiest place, Maienfeld is particularly dead today as it’s Easter Monday. Holiday or not, the Heidihaus is open. It’s clearly far too sensible to close when there’s tourist money to be taken – and too canny to let anyone leave Maienfeld without visiting it. There’s hardly a corner in town that doesn’t sport a signpost touting the route to The Original Heidihaus and, as with most Swiss signage, giving the estimated walking time.
It’s a mere 45 minutes up the gentle slopes towards those forbidding mountains. The old town, little more than one street deep, is quickly replaced by newer houses, and almost as quickly by fields of grass-munching cows. If Hollywood wanted a better backdrop for Shirley Temple to be cute and wholesome, they’d have trouble finding one. Somehow I doubt her 1937 version of Heidi came anywhere near this bucolic scenery, given how inaccurate it was in other respects. After all, it’s largely because of her that most people think of Heidi as having cherubic blonde hair, rather than the plainer, browner hair in the book. Plus the fact that the Shirley Heidi sings and dances, something I’m sure Johanna Spyri never envisaged.
In case your childhood was blighted by not reading the Heidi story, here’s part two of her tale. Just when she’s settled in with Gramps and the goats, along comes her aunt to whisk her off to Frankfurt as a companion to Clara, a rich sick girl. It’s a disaster. Not only is she in a German big city but Clara’s governess is a dragon with the delicious name of Frau Rottenmeier. Before long Heidi’s wasting away, pining for her daily infusion of goats’ milk and mountain air, but the tale ends happily, of course, with Heidi back in her beloved Swiss mountains. When Clara comes for a visit that goats’ milk and fresh air soon cure her, and she’s off out of her wheelchair, gambolling through the meadows. Tears of joy all round.
You may have noticed that my initial enjoyment of the book disappeared at about the same time as Heidi went to Frankfurt. True, the first part was a little schmaltzy, but there was an endearing quality about Heidi’s innocence, love and belief in others. However, throw in a German baddy and our heroine’s descent into surliness and you can almost lose the will to read on. By the time Clara is cured on a diet of bread, goats’ milk, love, faith and fresh air (with not a fresh vegetable in sight, let alone five a day), it was a trial to finish the book. Perhaps I am just too full of twenty-first-century cynicism to appreciate a Victorian morality tale.
If the second half of Heidi was a let-down, that’s nothing compared to the Heidihaus. There was I expecting a rustic wooden chalet, and what do I get instead? A house that is Buckingham Palace in comparison: three storeys, with a stone ground floor, glass windows and a neat garden. Inside, things get worse. A full kitchen, Dutch oven, indoor loo and Heidi even has her own bedroom, one clearly furnished for Barbie. My disappointment, however, is more than compensated for by the gushes of delight to be found in the visitors’ book. Few seem to realise that it’s all a mirage, a Disney-Heidi built to sate tourist appetites for anything relating to the girl. It seems so different from the other Spyri places on my Heidi quest: her grave in Sihlfeld, her house in Zurich, her museum in Hirzel – all of these were typically understated, typically Swiss. No razzamatazz, no exploiting their connection, no surrendering to the tourist dollar (or yen and euro); just modest and discreet, like so many Swiss people themselves.
In the Heidi shop her name is used even more blatantly to sell anything tourists might (not) want. It’s hard to remember the little girl’s innocence when you see her plastered on a bottle of wine or a bag of coffee beans. Such mercenary use of her image feels all the more uncomfortable given how much it contradicts her persona in the book. She, after all, gets sick just from moving to the big, bad capitalist city in Germany, where she has to eat foreign oddities like fish and vegetables and can’t run and play. Give her a chunk of bread, a field of goats and a view of the mountains, and she’s the happiest girl in the world. Then again, given how much the Swiss love making money, maybe Heidi hasn’t sold her soul at all; maybe she just grew up into a normal Swiss woman, albeit one who, here in Maienfeld, displays her wealth far too conspicuously to be truly Swiss.
My Heidi quest is over. Heidiland slips past the train windows, its sharp-toothed mountains giving way to the softer, greener fuzziness of tree-covered hills. The little girl who represents Switzerland to the outside world is alive and well, popping up all over her own country. More than 50 million copies later, children still love Heidi as much as ever, particularly in America and Japan. Not bad going for someone who’s over 130 years old. Heidi was the Harry Potter of her time, not least in terms of how ruthlessly she has been merchandised right up until today.
And the parallels between the two authors are striking. Johanna Spyri was once the most celebrated children’s author alive, the JK Rowling of her day. Both found fame and fortune from writing, though in very different quantities, and helped children’s charities as a result. They even share a similar first name, one that initially remained hidden. But Johanna never found the happiness that JK seems to have, was never at peace with the world around her. It can’t be a coincidence that Heidi gets sick when she goes to the big city, just as happened to her creator, or that she has a happy ending in the mountains she loved. Before she died Johanna burned her diaries and letters, so we’ll probably never really know the real her. Perhaps that’s why it’s Heidi, not her creator, who is perennially seen as the epitome of Swiss womanhood. Or perhaps because it’s easier to believe in a picture that never changes. The Switzerland of Johanna Spyri may be long gone, but the spirit of her creation lives on, as a romanticised image of everything that is essentially Swiss.
MEET THE MÜLLERS
To reveal the real Swiss identity, maybe we must look not at historical figures or fictional heroines, but at the people themselves. After all, they are why Switzerland exists and why it is the way it is. To do that, we have to do what the Swiss would do and use statistics. So it’s time to meet the Müllers, the archetypal Swiss family.14
Stefan and Nicole are in their late 30s and have two children, Laura and Luca, after eight years of marriage. They live in a rented four-room flat15 and get on with their neighbours, as long as they always say h
ello and are considerate of everyone’s peace and privacy. Nicole only works part-time, as bringing up the kids is more important than her career; instead, she spends 53 hours a week cooking, cleaning, washing and shopping. That’s twice as much as Stefan, who works full-time in the service sector. He drives to work and racks up 40 hours’ overtime a year. The Müllers watch television for 2½ hours a day, but always find time to read the local paper.
At the weekends they go cycling, or better yet hiking. Both are free family fun, and they’d rather save for their annual holiday in Italy, France or Spain. The children go to football training, ballet or horse riding, and will live at home until they are 23. Both will be expected to get good grades at school, but Laura will have sex before she is 14, Luca when he’s 17. Their parents have already settled down to having it twice a week, lasting 19 minutes each time, including foreplay.
They always shop in Migros or Coop, with yoghurt their most purchased item. Per person, they eat 250 grams of vegetables, 120 grams of potatoes, 160 grams of meat and 390 millilitres of milk every day. Family finances are carefully watched, as Stefan and Nicole worry what would happen if he lost his job. And of course, they have to think about their own old age and pay the dentist. Straight white teeth are as important as good grades for the children.
The three words the Müllers choose to describe themselves are cautious, friendly and punctual; they are highly unlikely to see themselves as open, spontaneous or disorganised. They might be just the average family, but the Müllers are patriotic and proud to be Swiss.16 And in that respect, they are typical Swiss people.