Johanna Spyri's story of Heidi, the girl from the Alps, became a world-wide success story already towards the end of the 19th century and children do still like it today - as a book, as a radio play and as a movie. Heidi is by far the most popular work of Swiss literature and has been translated from German into 50 languages, been filmed more than a dozen times, and more than 50 million copies of Heidi books have been sold world-wide (Switzerland's population is only 7 million ...).
> Summary of the story of Heidi

Johanna Spyri: Works

From 1879 to 1895 Johanna Spiry wrote 16 volumes of stories for children in a series entitled Geschichten für Kinder und auch für solche, welche die Kinder lieb haben [stories for children and for those who like them]. Among these, four have found special resonance, but only the two Heidi volumes have become really popular:

From 1871 to 1901, Johanna Spyri published 27 books and 4 booklets containing a total of 48 stories / novels. All things considered, Johanna Spyri had a rather critical view on Switzerland's society in the late 19th century. Today her works - apart from the famous Heidi story - find probably more interest among historians trying to understand society in the 19th century than among people interested in literature. Johanna Spyri took a special interest in the situation of children and young women. In 19th Europe children were regarded, treated (and disciplined!) as small, imperfect adults. So it was quite revolutionary when Johanna Spyri took sides with the children as having their own world and their own needs differing widely from the world of adults.

Johanna Spyri: Biography and Background

Johanna Heusser was born and raised in a small village named Hirzel, situated on the prealpine hills above Lake Zurich. Her father Johann Jacob Heusser was a country doctor coming from a rural background. Her mother Meta (Margareta) Heusser-Schweizer, daughter of a pastor and descendant from a family closely related to the 18th century literary circles in Zurich (Gessner, Lavater), wrote pietist religious poetry and hymns. Meta Heusser did not want that her works were published, and when she finally could be persuaded to do so, she insisted that her name would not be disclosed. At the time, her works found widespread resonance, but only a few enthusiasts in literature do know her today. A selection of Alpine Lyrics by Meta Heusser-Schweizer was even translated into English in 1875, reflecting 19th century enthusiasm for the alps. Her letters and her chronicle (Hauschronik) show that Meta Heusser-Schweizer was a precise observer interested in politics and society.

Johanna Heusser had three brothers and three sisters, but one brother died as a small child. Johanna Heusser grew up in a sheltered upper class family environment, but also deeply rooted in a small rural community. At the age of 16 she was sent to a residential school in the French-speaking city of Yverdon, western Switzerland - a typical choice for an upper class Swiss family at the time. After graduation she returned home, helped her mother, taught her little siblings and read a lot. Politically, these years were quite turbulent in Switzerland with a short civil war between conservatives and liberals in 1847 followed by the foundation of a modern, democratic, federal national state with national parliament and government replacing a loose confederacy of small territories. Seen on this background, staying in Hirzel with her parents might have been a choice for safety .

In 1852, at the age of 25, Johanna married Johann Bernhard Spyri, a lawyer and journalist and moved to the pulsating city of Zurich. Her husband became town clerk (might also be translated as general secretary), at the time a very honorary position, in 1868. As Johann Bernhard Spyri was a workaholic and did not show too much interest for his wife, the marriage was not very happy. Johanna Spyri suffered from depression during pregnancy and could not escape from it for several years. She had one son, Bernhard, who died early at the age of 28 from comsumption. The same year, 1884, Johanna Spyri's husband died as well.

A friend of the family encouraged Johanna Spyri to write, and so she published her first story "Ein Blatt auf Vronys Grab" in 1871. The story is about a woman being maltreated by her husband, an alcoholic; Vrony prays to God and accepts her fate as she is advised by her pastor. This story is a dismal portrait of 19th century social reality. At the time this story was a success, and it certainly encouraged its authoress to keep on writing.

Johanna Spyri's personality is multifaceted. Earlier portraits focused on her depressive, introverted side. Recent analysis of her letters shows some other aspects, however. As a widow, she traveled a lot, had many friends and was a very self-confident, independent woman. It would seem that writing stories helped her to find her personal road out of the traditional, all too devotional way of accepting suffering as an unchangeable fate - a way that had been paved by her family. Johanna Spyri did not, however, quit her faith and turn into a viperish social critic (as others would probably have done), but rather believed in personal development and in accepting challenges.

Summary of Johanna Spyri's Heidi

The orphan child Heidi first lives with her aunt Dete, but Dete would like to concentrate on her career. So she brings Heidi to her grandfather, a queer old man living in an alpine cottage far from the next village (he is therefore called Alm-Uncle, Alpöhi or Almöhi in German). Alm-Uncle is good-hearted but mistrusts anybody and wants to keep the child from all evils of the world. So he refuses to send Heidi to school; instead she goes to the pastures, together with Peter, a shepherd boy looking after the goats (Geissenpeter = goat-Peter in German). This (all too harmonious) apine idyll finds a sudden end when aunt Dete comes in again and brings Heidi to Frankfurt (Germany) where she shall stay with Clara, the paralyzed daughter of a rich family, and learn something.

Thanks to the grandmother of Clara, Heidi learns to read but she can't get acquainted to the strict discipline in a bourgeois upper class house (personified by governess Fraulein Rottenmeier). She is very lonesome and gets depressed by the gray anonymous city. Heidi becomes ill of homesickness, she starts to walk in her sleep. Miss Rottenmeier is alarmed, not because of the fate of the poor child, but rather because she thinks that there are ghosts in the old house. Finally Clara's father Herr Stresemann and the sympathetic doctor of the family decide to stay up till midnight and find out about the ghosts. When the doctor sees Heidi walking around in her sleep, he finds the right diagnosis and sends her back to the alps.

Next summer, Clara visits Heidi there. They go to the pastures and Heidi shows Clara all the beauty of her world. Peter gets terribly jealous, and in a moment when he feels unobserved, he pushes the empty wheelchair down to the valley so it gets smashed. Clara wants to see the flowers and is forced to walk - and her desire is strong enough that she overcomes her handicap. Healings at body, spirit and soul in that healthy Alpine world - end well, all well.

Heidi at the Cinema

Heidi Movies from 1920 to 2001

Heidi: an Attempt to an Interpretation

At first sight, Heidi is certainly «an emotional story dealing with primitive fears; the anxiety of the child to be without parents and to be displaced.» (Markus Imboden, movie director). To this substance the story is reduced essentially when Imboden starts his 2001 Heidi movie on the Alp (not on lovely pastures, but rather in a modern mountain restaurant, however), and finishes at a Popmusic concert in Zurich's Hall Stadium. Imboden admits openly that he intends to radically change the view we have of Heidi, «because it has been misused, instrumentalized ideologically and politically.» With this kind of internal distance to the traditional view of Heidi, one might, however, miss the chance to understand this novel for children in a deeper sense - taking into account that all good children's books have to say quite something to adults as well.

Perhaps we have to keep a little distance from the tendency of Swiss intellectuals to critize traditional Swiss values and take a really detached view - for example a Japanese view. While some academics in Switzerland are very critical about Johanna Spyri in general and her novel Heidi in particular, it may be significant that the only complete edition of Johanna Spyri's works was published in Japan (1962). As far as has been reported in Swiss newspapers, young Japanese women do not see and love Heidi as a precocious, vigourous teenager (as Imhof presents her). Heidi seems to be loved as a child of nature, a symbol for romanticism and lost innocence.

Such notions, however, remind of the end of the 19^th century when authoress Johanna Spyri coming from a peasant village Hirzel am Albis lived in Zurich and shared the feelings of insecurity with thousands of workers displaced by the compulsions of the industrialisation. Moving out of rural Switzerland into modern cities was sort of a "cultural shock" for most of them. Besides they had to struggle hard to find their place, not only economically, but as well emotionally.

Johanna Spyri's Heidi-story tries to give orientation in a world shaken by rapid social change, a world in disorder that makes people feel insecure - and this is exactly what makes the story attractive today in view of neoliberalism and globalization.

The foundation on an inctact alpine nature is, however, but one element of the story and one should not have an isolated view on it. Heidi as presented by Johanna Spyri does not return into the intact alpine world as if she had never been to the metropolitan city - to the contrary: Heidi makes use of what she has learnt (the title of the second book is program!). Johanna Spyri does not opt for a cheap retreat into a idealized sweet world (as grandfather Almöhi does in his frustration about mankind), neither for an obstinate keeping to simple views (as Geissenpeter, who is too lazy to learn reading and writing). To the contrary: Johanna Spyri wants to empower people to accept new challenges while keeping a good heart like Heidi, who is able to read stories to Peter's blind grandmother and even moves her unsociable grandfather to return into the village community.

Seen from this perspective, I wouldn't interpret the message of the story as sheer propaganda for internet and mobile phone "literacy" (on a simply technical level) neither for coolness as Markus Imhoof's movie might suggest. The real challenge today is not, whether to use the modern means of communication at all, but rather what to communicate.

	ALL ABOUT SWITZERLAND					JOHANNA SPYRI HEIDI, THE GIRL FROM THE ALPS
German	Gotthelf	Keller	Dürrenmatt	Max Frisch	French	Italian	Rumantsch

1920	The first film production on Heidi was a silent movie made in USA
1937	Sound film by Allan Dawn starring Shirley Temple as Heidi
1952	Swiss film production by Luigi Comencini starring Elsbeth Sigmund as Heidi, Thomas Klameth as Geissenpeter and Heinrich Gretler (one of Switzerland's best know actors) as Alpöhi. This was probably the most successful Swiss movie in the USA (300 copies in 4300 movie theaters).
1955	Franz Schnyder tries to follow on his own successful 1954/1955 film productions dealing with stories by Jeremias Gotthelf (a conservative early 19^th century Swiss writer) and presents his own version of Heidi (same leading actors as in Comencini's production). Schnyder's Heidi is the first color movie produced in Switzerland - (all too) obviously in the service of tourism-advertising
1965	Austrian film production starring Eva Maria Sieghammer as Heidi
1967/68	American production starring Jennifer Edwards as Heidy
1977	Japanese animated cartoon films (a television series consisting of 52 issues), very successful also in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
1979	German televion series (26 issues) starring Katja Polletin (Austria) as Heidi, Stefan Arpagaus (Switzerland) as Geissenpeter and Katharina Böhm as Clara
1988	Alienation of the subject matter: Michael Douglas produces Courage Mountain in Austria. Heidi and Peter are presented as a young courting couple during World War I
1992	Short television series by Walt Disney
2001	The recent Swiss Heidi film production by Markus Imboden keeps roughly to the traditional action frame, but modernizes the details radically - concerning both the psychology of the figures (the stubborn Geissenpeter has changed into a cool boy) and the hightech accessories (Heidi and Peter communicate via internet and mobile phone SMS [short message service, very popular among European teenagers]).
2001	Remake of the successful Japanese comic series of 1977