Workshops
Workshop
Monte Verità:
A Nucleus of the Counterculture
Christopher McIntosh, D.Phil.
This presentation will offer an overview of the story of Monte Verità and its avatars. This story runs from the opening years of the 20th century when a group of idealistic young people, determined to create a community that would be a nucleus of a new and better social order, acquired a hilltop piece of land close to Ascona in Switzerland. They changed the name of the site from Monescia to Monte Verità (Mountain of Truth). On the initiative of three of the original settlers, Henri Oedenkoven, Ida Hoffman and Karl Gräser, a sanitarium was built on the property, providing patients with vegetarian food and offering them various alternative health treatments. Apart from the work of the sanitarium, there was a constant round of other activities: concerts, lectures, dance sessions, rituals and love affairs. Indeed, the ethos of Monte Verità is epitomized by the image of agile figures, naked or clothed in loose, flowing robes, dancing on a sunlit hillside. Those who visited Monte Verità or went to live there included the wandering poet Gusto Gräser, the sociologist Max Weber, the pioneer of modern dance Rudolf Laban, the dancer Mary Wigman, the writer Hermann Hesse, and the artist Fidus.
Workshop
Daphne du Maurier’s Novella Monte Verità
Paul Bembridge, M.Phil., and Marjorie Roth, Ph.D., DMA
“…in the mountains we come closest to whatever Being it is that rules our destiny. The great utterances of old were given from the mountaintops: it was always to the hills that the prophets climbed. The saints, the messiahs, were gathered to their fathers in the clouds.”
These words are taken from the 1952 novella, Monte Verità, written by Daphne du Maurier – a story which dramatizes a valid tension at the heart of the esoteric quest. It tells of Victor and Anna, a mountaineering couple, each in their own way drawn to climb the remote mountain, home to a mysterious sect rumored to be immortal. Anna finds its enigmatic presence irresistibly appealing to her sense of spiritual longing, but Victor finds it deeply disturbing. How will he react when she disappears on the mountain? In this immersive workshop, Paul will retell the story in abridged form, and Marjorie will relate it to Daphne du Maurier’s life and work, before throwing the discussion open to all who are irresistibly drawn to attend!
Workshop
The Siddhartha Effect:
Buddhism and the West from Antiquity to Today
Leonard George, Ph.D.
In 1889, Rudyard Kipling wrote “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” but it isn’t true. Hermann Hesse, who undertook a long retreat at Monte Verità, helped launch the 20th century fascination with Buddhism via his novel Siddhartha and other writings. C.G. Jung, arguably the most eminent participant in the gatherings at Eranos, sowed themes of tantric Buddhism into the foundations of transpersonal psychology with his study of Tibetan mandalas. D.T. Suzuki was among the foremost transmitters of Zen to the West through his popular books, which included lectures he gave at Eranos. The modern interface of Buddhism and the West is rooted in ancient contacts between Asian and Mediterranean cultures, and mutual influences continued throughout the histories of these regions. Contra Kipling, we will see that East and West have never been apart.
Workshop
Max Weber and Rudolf Steiner:
Spiritual Contemporaries in Ascona and
Dornach
Aaron French, Ph.D.
Max Weber (1864–1920), one of the most important sociologists of the 20th century, and Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the founder of Waldorf education and anthroposophy, are not often thought of together. However, these contemporaries share a history and a context, namely the esoteric and romantic circles in Switzerland. Weber visited Ascona in 1913 and 1914 where he encountered the famous Monte Verità sanatorium and its colony of artists, anarchists, writers, poets, and seekers. Steiner carried out his own activities in Dornach, where he established his imaginatively designed building, the Goetheanum (in homage to Goethe), to cultivate spiritual life in harmony with nature. Steiner lectured in Locarno, and it has been suggested that members of the Monte Verità vegetarian commune, including Henri Oedenkoven (1875–1935) and Ida Hofmann (1864–1926), attended the lecture and were inspired. This presentation explores these connections and the overlapping esoteric milieus of Ascona and Dornach.
Workshop
Monte Verità and the Back to Nature Movement (1900-1925)
Ludwig Max Fischer, Ph.D.
The artists and visionaries who gathered around the Mountain of Truth found the ruling ideology of material “progress“, chauvinism, secularism, urbanization and colonialism harmful to body, soul, spirit and social harmony. As advocates and practitioners of a more natural lifestyle, they attempted a complete, holistic reform of prevalent conditions, or a Lebensreform (“life reform”). Their emphasis on social equality, anarchy, free love, nature cure and vegan, raw, homegrown food, paved the way a half century later for the organic food movement, the hippie rebellion and the civil rights movements. We will explore German naturopath Arnold Ehret’s fasting and diet reform and his clinic near Ascona (Steven Jobs was an Ehretist), the social anarchism of Gusto Graeser, the Jugendstil paintings of Fidus, and Rudolf von Laban’s dance revolution. We’ll also look at the influence of Lebensreform on the Californian natural living movement in the 1920s and beyond, as expressed by the pioneers who opened the first raw food restaurant in the U.S., Eutropheon, in Los Angeles in 1917.
Workshop
The Bauhaus Hotel at Monte Verità:
Transparency and the Esoteric
Maria Prieto
This talk explores the intersection of architecture, esoteric philosophy and environmental consciousness. We’ll focus on Emil Fahrenkamp’s Bauhaus Hotel at Monte Verità (1927-1929), an exemplar of modern architecture influenced by hidden spiritual traditions. Fahrenkamp’s design creates a spatial environment that invites the material and immaterial realms to coexist. The hotel, with its open spaces, vast windows, flowing terraces, use of natural materials and integration with its surroundings, dissolves the boundaries between interior and exterior, offering a new way of perceiving the built environment as an active participant in the processes of healing and transformation. By considering the Bauhaus Hotel through this lens, we can see how esoteric philosophies have shaped architectural practices and offer a blueprint for ecological and spiritual conviviality in times of profound planetary crises.
