Sils Maria
I thought I would bring you the peace of Sils Maria, for a moment.
It is a hamlet, high up in the Swiss mountains. The name Sils means something like “green meadow” and Maria, in this case, comes from “Meierei” which means dairy farm, because there used to be one there.
Another, smaller hamlet, called Sils Baselgia (named for its church), is so close by that, together, they make up a single village and municipality.
The whole village is called Sils Im Engadin and, as a local tourist website explains, it has “two hearts, one soul”. Its realm includes three alpine pastures, a valley and even a third hamlet that no one seems to pay much attention to.
(You might want to enlarge this map. There is at least one goat having a picnic on it…)
Of course, you likely already know something about all this given that it was such an important place for Nietzsche. Especially as he stayed there for seven summers.
His room was on the upper floor, above a tea and spice shop, in the Durisch property (as was), here:
And here it is in Winter:
An old, late friend of mine grew up on a tea plantation, in Ceylon, and he always said that the scent of tea was so heavenly, so omnipresent, that it lasted in memory. I imagine for Nietzsche the tea in the shop, below him, was similarly fragrant to be close to.
His room there has been left exactly as though he just popped downstairs to buy spices, or has merely gone elsewhere to fetch a particular book.
The Nietzsche-Haus is a museum, today, and it has a library which holds one of the world's most extensive, multi-language, collections of books about him.
One of Nietzsche’s biographers would later describe the daily routine he had, in Sils Maria, in the summer of 1884:
“With a Spartan rigour which never ceased to amaze his landlord-grocer, Nietzsche would get up every morning when the faintly dawning sky was still grey, and, after washing himself with cold water from the pitcher and china basin in his bedroom and drinking some warm milk, he would, when not felled by headaches and vomiting, work uninterruptedly until eleven in the morning.
He then went for a brisk, two-hour walk through the nearby forest or along the edge of Lake Silvaplana (to the north-east) or of Lake Sils (to the south-west), stopping every now and then to jot down his latest thoughts in the notebook he always carried with him.
Returning for a late luncheon at the Hôtel Alpenrose, Nietzsche, who detested promiscuity, avoided the midday crush of the table d’hôte in the large dining-room and ate a more or less “private” lunch, usually consisting of a beefsteak and an “unbelievable” quantity of fruit, which was, the hotel manager was persuaded, the chief cause of his frequent stomach upsets.
After luncheon, usually dressed in a long and somewhat threadbare brown jacket, and armed as usual with notebook, pencil, and a large grey-green parasol to shade his eyes, he would stride off again on an even longer walk, which sometimes took him up the Fextal as far as its majestic glacier.
Returning “home” between four and five o’clock, he would immediately get back to work, sustaining himself on biscuits, peasant bread, honey (sent from Naumburg), fruit and pots of tea he brewed for himself in the little upstairs “dining-room” next to his bedroom, until, worn out, he snuffed out the candle and went to bed around 11 p.m.”
This is the old Hotel Alpenrose,
with a dining room worthy of being avoided by a philosopher:
And this is the Val Fex Glacier he sometimes went to see,
with this loveliness nearby:
In letters, Nietzsche wrote about the region with great affection saying,
“It is as if I had entered the Promised Land... I want to stay here for a long time.”
and,
“the loveliest corner of the earth: I have never been in more peaceful surroundings and all 50 conditions of my poor life seem to be fulfilled here”
When he famously said, “do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement” he was surely thinking of Sils Maria where he had walked often, and which had endlessly inspired him to write.
His landlord, Gian Rudolf Durisch, was worried that he worked too much, despite the glorious surroundings, and Nietzsche soon became known by the nickname “the hermit of Sils” because of his solitude.
This is a place where mountains meet the sky,
where the water keeps the clouds,
where time, itself, loses its own measure in the face of beauty,
where the flowers are tall and bright,
where the people are few and the houses seem to have slipped out of storybooks.
This is a place where you can sit alone, for hours, with only your own being.
Even the heart of the village is picturesque in all seasons:
Most of the houses were built in the 16th and 17th century. The spell of greater quiet the world would have known, back then, remains largely unbroken, too. There is little traffic to disturb it.
What traffic there is seems to run on oats and sugar cubes:
Less than a third of a mile from the Nietzsche-Haus is the St.Lorenz church which gives Sils Baselgia its name. It was first mentioned, in records, in 1356 and stands beside the River Inn.
The locals of Sils Maria have, recently, rebuilt an old telephone box into a library for people to visit. Their practical motto is: pick, bring, keep or exchange. You can take books for free, to return later or hold onto. You can also swap them again or leave behind your own books for other readers.
They have a bigger library, as well, with 22,000 books:
Since 1863 they have had a climatological measuring station to systematically collect information about the weather. Perhaps Nietzsche once stopped to admire it:
At the well-known Wauldhaus Hotel, which opened after Nietzsche’s visits (in 1908) there is an eccentric “backstage” museum that lets you glimpse into the past
The hotel also has this fantastic staircase. It reminds me of a much less grand one I once saw, in France. That staircase was in a far more ramshackle establishment whose inconspicuous doors opened right onto a busy street in Paris. The stairs were plainly carpeted and had rickety wooden bannisters but the staircase, as a whole, offered just as many twists and turns. My erstwhile childhood friend went to the bottom floor, I went to the very top and we yelled happily, to each other, across the floors between.
The Waldhaus also has a 1910 Welte-Mignon reproducing piano that plays by itself, and is “powered by suction”, like a hoover with ambitions. It sounds surprisingly like a proper piano, albeit with all the passion and tenderness rather taken out of it.
In this video, another piano brand uses the Welte-Mignon technology. It was the best representation I could find:
Besides the little museum at the Walhaus, there is another small museum, in Sils Maria, (below) dedicated to the works of local painter Andrea Robbi (1864-1945). Given that they were both there at the same time, he may have passed Nietzsche in the street or tipped his hat to him. The museum has special exhibits on village life, culture and local history.
There is so much to see nearby, and outside of Sils, too, but a special mention ought to go to Palazzo Castelmur, for evident aesthetic reasons.
It contains this rather impressive Grand Salon.
Once upon a time…
There is an old folktale about Sils Maria, from back when it was known as Seglias Majoria. In those days, it was a rest stop for weary travellers who had journeyed long over the Maloja pass. It was possible to change horses and catch up on sleep there. Travellers would make merry, befriend the locals, and buy barrels of salted lake trout to sustain them when they set out again.
Until, one day, the snow fell too heavily and snowed them all in. It didn’t stop falling for days and the snow banks rose higher and higher, gathering at closed front doors like unwelcome guests. Looking out of their windows, all any of the people could see was the blank, disorientating whiteness of a blizzard.
The weathervane must always turn, though, and when the sky became blue, and calm, the snow began to melt. It melted quickly, and as it did, the lake and the River Inn burst their banks, flooding the meadows and the slumbering forest. The swiftly rising water cut the people off from the rest of the world, again. This time it also cut them off from the storage cellars and their own food.
Luckily, in olden times, when myths and legends had not ceased to be believed in, yet, there were all manner of strange creatures still left to us. You will have heard of goblins, of course, but not of their near relations; the wildleutchen. What they looked like is all but forgotten along with the inevitably odd customs they kept, as a species. Their name, however, is very similar to the words “glow wildly”, in German. So, perhaps, they lit the forest with their light. Or slept on the mountains, like breathing lanterns in the dark.
When they heard about the snow and how the people of Seglias were starving, they became concerned. They were not quick creatures and they could neither fly nor swim but they came up with a daring plan. They packed as much food as they could into balls of larch needles, which they called silserkugeln, and then placed them on the water. The wind, who could be trusted with such a task, carried the silserkugeln across the overflowing lake, and to the starving people.
All of whom were saved.
Every autumn, when the larch trees lose their needles, you can still find these silserkugeln, if only you should look for them.
Nietzsche’s Sils
On one of his many walks in (and around) Sils, in August 1881, Nietzsche found himself along the shores of Lake Silvaplana. As he put it “6000 feet above sea level and far higher above all human concerns”.
According to Eric Weiner who wrote a book about philosophers which saw him tracing their own footsteps, Nietzsche had “just come across “a mighty pyramidal block of stone” when the thought of thoughts arrived unbidden – an earthquake of an idea that led to a rethinking of the universe and our place in it. The idea hit him hard and fast, heated and expanded to unimaginable size. Only later did it cool and congeal into these words: Imagine you are visited in the dead of night by a demon, who says to you…”
This was that stone:
And here is a photograph of how Sils Maria looked around the time Nietzsche visited it, too
His favourite beauty spot, nearby, was the Chastè, a wooded peninsula, almost a thousand feet long, and pointing into the blue waters of Lake Sils.
The consensus seems to be that it is the most magical of places and a jewel in the sapphire pendant of the lake. Here it is in three seasons; in the summer, in the first gold of autumn and in the height of winter.
Nietzsche wrote much of his greatest work in Sils Maria and there really seems to be some deep enchantment there. I keep imagining him out walking, with the clean Swiss mountain air in his lungs. All around him the sharp outlines of snowy peaks rise up to stand against the skyline. He is framed by their majesty as he moves along the pathways. He can smell alpine herbs and hear the types of bird that even the Swiss never quite managed to trap inside their famous clocks. It feels like a moment out of time, as the forest, the lake, and he, all coexist together.
Wildleutchen and all.
He once wrote that he so loved the Engadin that he hoped to die there. I think, instead, he still lives there. He turns up everywhere. For example, I’ve taken quite a shine to the Hotel Edelweiss, with its glorious, Art Nouveau dining room and uplifting orange and yellow exterior. Especially when it is covered in snow.
I was looking through the photographs, on their website, and it wasn’t long before I saw his likeness framed on the wall.
It turns out that not only did he dine there but it was often the starting point for his intrepid walks.
He is well-remembered in the place he cherished.
I think the peace of Sils Maria may be an inescapable loveliness.
Ever since I first heard about it and decided to write this, I have been carrying that peace around with me.
I hope it reaches all of you.
Note: I wrote this, originally, for a friend of mine, the excellent Francis Aaron, and he has encouraged me to publish it as others may be interested in Nietzsche, too, or they may love to see such a beautiful place.
Beautiful! Thank you for this, it made my day. And it put Sils Maria on my map, so hopefully I will see all this in person one day.
What a joy to read! Thank you ❤️