Journal of Religion in Europe Journal of Religion in Europe 6 (2013) 1–18 brill.com/jre Tolstoyans on a Mountain: From New Practices of Asceticism to the Deconstruction of the Myths of Monte Verità Yme B. Kuiper Department Comparative Study of Religion, University of Groningen [email protected] Abstract The decades before the Great War were a period of exciting cultural creativity and great social upheaval. Both men and women cultivated a great range of interests in ethical, feminist, mystical, spiritualist and sexual ideas and practices. Max Weber referred to this diversity as a ‘department store for worldviews’. Recent historiogra- phy has dubbed this period ‘the age of nervousness’ or ‘the quest for purity’. New fascinations held many people in their thrall: the culture of the body and, more specifically, the Life Reform movement. Some felt inspired by their ethical hero Count Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer and pacifist. Tolstoyan colonies based on his philosophy of back-to-nature simplicity were founded in several European countries. One of the places where Tolstoyans experimented with new practices of asceticism was the Monte Verità near Ascona, a village on the Lago Maggiore in the Swiss region of Ticino. This article deals with the transformation of this Tolstoyan colony into a nature cure sanatorium, inspired by ethical and aesthetic values. As a case study it addresses crucial, but ambivalent, aspects of modernity in the ‘natural’ life of nude sunbathing, vegetarian meals, walking barefoot, living in wooden light-and-air cabins and free love marriages. However, this microcosm of Belle Époque Europe has also been the subject of much mythification. The article argues that these forms of myth-making reveal different narratives and models of identification. Deconstruction of Monte Verità myths reveals their popularity as counter-culture narrative (discourse) in the historiography of the 1970s. During the last decade, a comparison between the elitist, artistic lifestyle experiments on Monte Verità and trends in our modern, mass culture (referring to ‘personal authenticity’ or to Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self’) seems to be gaining in influence. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/18748929-00604007 PG3298 PG3298 0002069192.INDD 1 10/25/2013 7:47:56 PM 2 Y.B. Kuiper / Journal of Religion in Europe 6 (2013) 1–18 Keywords Belle Époque Europe; Life Reform movement; vegetarianism; asceticism; nude sunbathing; free love marriages; Gesamtkunstwerk; myths of Monte Verità; prac- tices; narratives; discourses; counter-culture; Leo Tolstoy; Max Weber; Michel Foucault The dynamics of European culture around 1900 and the delight people took in experimenting have fascinated many scholars. In retrospect, the years between 1890 and 1914 were called the Belle Époque, the Beautiful Era. It was a period characterized by optimism, political stability, new technological and medical discoveries as well as rising expectations about the emancipa- tion of the working class and women. Young men and women with a bour- geois background started to experiment with a wide range of ethical, aesthetic, feminist, mystical and spiritualist ideas and practices. There was also a new fascination for the culture of the body, expressed in practices such as sports and gymnastics, but also in vegetarianism, abstention from tobacco and alcohol, nude sunbathing, hydrotherapy, yoga, hiking and free expressive dance. Nevertheless, among the main trends of their times, Sigmund Freud also identified a discontent with civilization, while Max Weber saw the impending threat of the iron cage of bureaucracy.1 The Belle Époque was both an exciting and disturbing period in European history. One of the biggest bestsellers about the political and ‘civilized’ elites of the Belle Époque is undoubtedly Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, published in 1966.2 This valuable study is based on a narrative of an early twentieth-century European society that was not in decay but struggled with “new tensions and accumulated energy” in such a way that the shadows of war and death were already manifest and the coming disaster unavoidable. However, more recently Philip Blom’s historical magnum opus The Vertigo Years. Change and Culture in the West 1900-1914 (2008) uses another grand narrative, more experimental and inspired by cultural history than that of Tuchman, which in my view is a more fruitful one. 1) Joachim Radkau, Max Weber. Die Leidenschaft des Denkens, Munich: Hanser 2005 (English edition: Max Weber: a biography, Cambridge: Polity 2009). The key argument of Radkau’s biography is that ‘nature’ provides the vainly sought missing link between Weber’s life and work; cf. Peter Thomas, “Being Max Weber,” New Left Review 41 (September-October 2005). On Freud see Georg Markus, Sigmund Freud. Die Biographie (Munich: Langen Müller, 2006). 2) Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War: 1890-1914 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966). PG3298 PG3298 0002069192.INDD 2 10/25/2013 7:47:56 PM Y.B. Kuiper / Journal of Religion in Europe 6 (2013) 1–18 3 Blom chronicles the period 1900-1914 year by year, not only referring to the follies of politicians and diplomats and the absurdities of nationalist politics – as did Tuchman in abundance – but in addition to high culture, such as painting, dance and music, also addresses issues such as technol- ogy, education and sexuality in detail. Some pillars of a culture of moder- nity were already developed in early twentieth-century Europe, such as the emancipation of women, mass shopping and popular media: “The Vertigo years had much in common with our own day, not least their openness. (…) In a large part, the uncertain future facing us early in the twenty-first century arose from the inventions, thought and transformations of those unusually rich fifteen years between 1900 and 1914, a period of extraordi- nary creativity in the arts and sciences, of enormous change in society and in the very image people had of themselves.”3 Writing from a perspective of a history of mentalities, Blom invites the reader to suspend all knowledge of the events of the post-Great War era and to follow him in his task of unravelling the world of the Belle Époque from within. Blom recently said that what struck him while writing his book was that around 1900 you find dynamics and uncertainty in every corner of European culture and society.4 A Case Study of Modern Asceticism Blom’s observations of prewar Europe brings us to the topic of this essay: a case study of a new, ‘modern ascetic’ community of men and women, living in a colony on a hill near the tiny Swiss village of Ascona on Lago Maggiore in the Italian-speaking region of Ticino.5 During the Belle Époque these young people were deeply involved in the Life Reform (Lebensreform) movement. They were inspired by their ethical hero of the New Life, Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), the most famous Russian writer, pacifist and social 3) Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years. Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, YEAR?), 3. 4) See also Joachim Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität: Deutschland zwischen Bismark und Hitler (Munich: Hanser, 1998). This study extensively reveals the dominant discourse and treatment of ‘nervous disturbance’ under the Second Reich. 5) On the concept of ‘modern asceticism’ and body culture see: Evert Peeters, Leen van Molle and Kaat Wils (eds), ‘Introduction’, in: Beyond Pleasure. Cultures of Modern Asceticism (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011), 1-18. PG3298 PG3298 0002069192.INDD 3 10/25/2013 7:47:56 PM 4 Y.B. Kuiper / Journal of Religion in Europe 6 (2013) 1–18 reformer of the time. Among his admirers he had the reputation of being the ‘Man of Truth’. In several European countries, colonies were founded on the basis of the philosophy of life that Tolstoy preached in his later writ- ings, often interpreted as “living in harmony with nature”. The founders of this Swiss colony of idealists – a colony based on the principles of mutual cooperation and free marriage partnership – shared the practices of vege- tarianism, new forms of dress (wearing Reformkleidung), abstention from tobacco and alcohol, nude sunbathing and walking barefoot. In the eyes of the local press and population, but also of tourists passing by, they were a kind of naturalistic human being (Naturmenschen, naturale degli uomini), living on the hill of Monescia, from which one had a beautiful view of the lake and the surrounding mountains. However, as we will see, ancient repertoires of asceticism were quietly reformulated by these colonists in such a manner that at one and the same time they fitted within the idiom of modernity and could still function as a critique of dominant bourgeois culture. It appears that these modern forms of asceticism were no longer only practised for the sake of communal ideals but perhaps even more for the sake of personal authenticity. Do we meet here practices that Foucault once characterized as “technologies of the self”?6 Soon after settling on the hill in November 1900 the group decided that the colony would also function as a health resort for visitors who were tired of the pace of city life. They embarked on constructing light and airy wooden cabins and establishing gardens for food production and meadows for sun therapy. At the end of 1901, they founded a nature-oriented sanato- rium as a commercial venture, which they named the Individualistic Cooperativa Monte Verità with the Italian name being a homage to Tolstoy, the Man of Truth.7 By the end of 1904 the colony opened the doors of its Community House, an impressive flat-roofed building in stone with electricity and running water. It was built in the Jugendstil, expressing 6) Peeters, Beyond Pleasure, 8-9; M.