Enter Thomas Mann’s mythical novel Magic Mountain (1924) is not an easy task, but it is very easy to start and try to climb it. To be accommodated there, there is no better place than the scenography from which it was conceived, at an altitude of 1865 meters above sea level, 300 meters from the top of the city of Davos, in the no less mythical Hotel Schatzalp. “A modest young man walked in the open air from Hamburg, his hometown, to Davos Platz in the canton of Graubünden. I’m going to come for a visit for three weeks,” Mann wrote.
In 1900, the successful Davos resort entrepreneur Willem-Jan Holsboer contributed to the construction of the building, which was entrusted to the architects Max Hafeli and Otto Pflegard, who were on vacation. modern de guide (un modern art moderate, but they look at Mackintosh more than at Victor Orta) following the canons Belle Epoque which highlights the design of this part of Europe. Conceived to work in a sanatorium, it remains today as it was when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature when he arrived in 1911 with his wife Katya, who was suffering from tuberculosis.
The novella, which at first was short, like Death in Venice, if it expanded (as long as the stay of the main character Hans Castorp in the sanatorium, which between pitot and flautas would last for years), until in 1923 Mann brought it to its final point. It will be published in a year, making it 100 years old next year in 2024. Those lonely years in Schatzalpa would have been a sweet death sentence for all those readers of Thomas Mann who: enfermos literature, since they can only be installed in a hotel in conjunction with this book, which deals with the great social, moral, political and philosophical questions of the twentieth century, so people must wander through the halls, at the tables in the garden, and also around the Komedor. , in which places you can read pages in the same places where others are watching the film.
This hotel, which was a sanatorium from 1900 to 1953, was inspired by the novel’s Berghof, a fictional sanatorium that details the details of what is now the Waldhotel (another ancient 1911 sanatorium converted into a hotel) where Katja and Thomas Mann also remained, located between the center of Davos and Schatzalp. It’s easy to imagine the writer’s steps along an insurmountable path (somehow named Thomas-Mann-Weg), which once snaked through the forest between benches with views of the valley and panels with phrases from the novel: “What was life? Not if it’s sanded. He no doubt knew about her, how alive she was, but he did not know what she was. Entonses, what is life? It was warm… it was not material and it was not spirit. It was something between the two, a phenomenon born of matter, like the arch of an iris in a waterfall and like a llama.”
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Thus, from 1911, Thomas Mann came into contact with those sick people of different nationalities who were then writing a novel, who began to seek treatment in the famous sanatoriums of Davos, hoping for the favor of clean air, sweeping through the impressive and vital preservation of naturalness. It looked like that of Hans Castorp, who went to visit the first Joachim Ziemsen: “Along the path on an easy, fast slope there passed a vertical corner of the forest, there, for a month, which advanced slightly, with a façade oriented to the southeast – a large structure, which, thanks to the miradors and balconies, was somewhat sharp and porous, like a sponge, capable of illuminating its first lights.”
Magic Mountain yes, probably junto a In search of lost time th A man without attributes a total novel of 20th century principles; a formative novel about the decline of nations that grew in the 19th century on the impulse of illustration and were devastated by war. Art, music, the occult, death, illness, love… Mann tried to start everything, starting with the novel’s river, with characters whose psychological depth he never ceased to study. However, the Schatzalp from which it fictitiously emerges is a full-fledged hotel that, since its inception, has retained its Alpine essence, period furniture and cosmopolitan character.
Today, a trip to Schatzalp is not free of poetry; it can be reached by the Standseilbahn funicular, which from the center of the Swiss city returns directly to the hotel pedestal. This four-minute passage alone is enough to understand why Thomas Mann called this enclave the “Zauberberg” (magic mountain), and that in no other place is the atmosphere of the novel felt as in the garden, on a natural platform, it seems, filled. This is a preview of a technique that will no doubt please the most ardent followers of the Secession, just as the floral vidrieres in the drawing room demonstrated, 123 years after its creation: this is where the architects wanted to increase their decorative commitment modern art.
Schatzalp has been operating as a hotel for 70 years as a reference point for cultural tourism at European level. Keep the clinical aura at the door too; in the old sanitarium director’s office (where I imagine Dr. Behrens from the novel), which remained untouched and is today a television room; in the XRAY line, which stores the name of the room where patients receive doses of X-rays; last year sun loungers the originals, which are placed on each of the balconies, and where at other times patients even come to spend the night. Also in the 1900 elevator, the clock that illuminates the steps and goes three minutes ahead indicates the time when a person needs to connect to the funicular, and, above all, on the lower floor, where there is an important complete library for medical books in different languages.
Mitad resort de Montagna, Mitad National Monument, Schatzalp: there is no possibility of remaining neutral. Ese Eire vintage the opportunity to travel all the time at any speed, as on its charming star, the Summer Toboggan Run, which allows – between mayonnaise and octura – to descend the trineo with 500 meters of curves and adrenaline, among the shouts, laughter and applause of old people. In the end, the day blossoms like nature in the botanical garden that Hans Castorp so enjoyed, his insatiable streak of dating leading to, yes, an acquaintance with Claudia Chausha, a symbol of erotic desire.
As with the architecture and design, this hotel continues to be relevant and will remain relevant in 3023 because in many cases the classic is no longer modern. In 2008, it was named “Historic Hotel of the Year” by the International Monuments and Sites Council. In 2014, Sorrentino filmed one of his great films here: The youth, which I also called the realized magic mountain. It’s impossible to be here and not think of Harvey Keitel, Michael Caine or Rachel Weisz when discussing these habitats, enjoying the scenes on the terraces or leading a fictional orchestra of animals and vegetation in the mountains. The protagonist, who holds as the central character the very script according to which each miracle takes place in the film in the television room. Also in 2016, French director Nicole Garcia set part of the plot of her film in the same hotel. Gabriel’s dreamBrilliantly interpreted by Alex Brendemuhle and Marion Cotillard, helpless by love in these habitats.
So, when you open the windows and go up to the terrace, you, like Harvey Keitel, connect with the hypnotic channel of vegetation. In this panel there is no noise of noise, only the whirlwind of the wind, the templanza of snow and the views of mountain peaks dressed in white, the moon or the green colors of the despair of spring nature that we enjoy. so much for architects and designers modern art principles of the 20th century.
Alpine cuisine establishment
In the famous village near Klosters, idealized by Greta Garbo, Sean Connery or Prince Carlos (where he came to admire), there is an inevitable restaurant: Chesa Grischuna, an institution of alpine cuisine in Grisons. The interior of this restaurant, decorated with paintings and frescoes by Ludwig Bahr, Hans Schöllhorn and, among others, Alois Carigier, those who will gain great fame illustrating the character of the children’s book, today the most famous in Switzerland, “Schellen Ursli”, is an unrivaled combination of Madeira artesanía, regional architecture and rustic style (highastyle). At the entrance to Cesa, a book of photographs by Fabrizio D’Aloisio recalls the illustrious clients who never stopped coming to this place: William Faulkner, Robert Capa, Lauren Bacall, Grace Kelly…
I called this major work by James Salter. Light years (1975), the main character Nedra decides to go alone to Europe to get a divorce, and one of them goes to Davos, where she is introduced to Harry Poll, a man “immersed in the daily bustle”, with a lot of lips and a great love of wine. When Nedra tells her the hotel she’s staying at, Pall makes it interesting:
– Davos… you know that this is the city you are coming from. Magic Mountain…Where do you think you have dinner? I took him to Cesa, which is my favorite place in Europe.
And he is not from outside, allí Pall pide Dôle, dry wine suizo, and Nedra answers:
– I like the restaurant.
About a person like Nedra, who always cooks and also cooks fillet in rodah with rosti (remember this name: Geschnetzeltes Kalbfleisch Zürcher Art with ButterRösti). And si Nedra, at the end of dinner, if you feel safe “with some pagan saying”, we are the same.
In the early fifties, between the discovery of streptomycin and the development of drugs against tuberculosis, the era of seaside resorts continued dramatically. This happened when some sanatoriums began to be converted into hotels. The Waldhotel also has accommodation where you can record how they lived in the era of Mann and Castorp. In the same home, interesting theater work takes place every day through virtual reality shows. In it, the young men Thomas Mann and Hans Castorp ask the viewer philosophical questions (only in Germany), inviting them to reflect on life, death, illness, mentioning such characters as the Italian Settembrini, who so often saw Hans de leaving this refuge. Only at the end of the novel does Hans take the initiative, but not at the direction of his friend, to the call of irrationality, the call of the truth of war. “In the first half of the year, the mentor found her busy with mistakes, and then, from the very moment of his defeat, Hans Castorp saw himself stuck in a torbellino of collapsed matches, when the truth gave a signal.”
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