Book: 1900

This book tells a unique and still moving story that I would like to recommend to you. It is the story of Monte Verità, a small mountain on Lake Maggiore in southern Switzerland.

At the beginning of the last century, in 1900 to be precise, famous and unknown, lovable and strange people, men and women, met here. They wanted a new, original life. They were looking for something that still moves them today. They were looking for happiness for themselves and at the same time wanted to live in a community. No one should be forced to do anything. They wanted to be healthy and preserve their environment. Here, in such movements, the beginnings of alternative medicine also lay. And Monte Verità was the center of all these movements. There was also a well-known natural healing sanatorium on the mountain.

The book is made up of short stories that are very well researched. This creates a colorful picture of life on the mountain, as if it were a novel. This makes it a relaxing read and you learn something about the way of thinking that made our nutritional supplements possible.

Yours, Dr. med. Alexander Michalzik

The pleasure of body, free love
and individualism

- Publisher information -

In ›1900‹, Peter Michalzik paints a rich, multi-voiced panorama of the beginning of the last century. He brings us the exciting thoughts and lives of well-known personalities in an impressive and highly vivid way.

Whether the fascinating Richthofen sisters or the hallucinating Friedrich Nietzsche,

Whether the hermit-like Hermann Hesse or the sleepless Max Weber – they all rethought life and created a counter-culture that is still effective today.

Reform pedagogy and body cult, psychology and free love, pacifism, wellness and vegetarianism – all of this was discovered by civilization-critical artists, intellectuals and visionaries over a hundred years ago.

So it is the inspiring story of the glory, decline and survival of a great quest for happiness on a mountain in the south that the author tells us here.

Press reviews of this book:

» A fascinating reading book in which one discovers parallels to the present at every turn. «
Thomas Ribi, NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG

» To drop out and lead a better life - a wish shared by many more than 100 years ago. On Monte Verità in Switzerland, aesthetes and philosophers sought to make it a reality. Peter Michalzik describes this early dropout scene. «
Andrea Gerk, DLF KULTUR

» As if it were a novel. «
Hannelore Schlaffer,
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG

» Peter Michalzik impressively and vividly conveys the exciting thoughts and lives of well-known personalities who influenced their time. «
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND

» In ›1900‹, Peter Michalzik draws a vivid panorama of the past century. «
KÖLNER ILLUSTRIERTE

PETER MICHALZIK

Peter Michalzik, born in 1963, studied German, philosophy and theater studies in Munich and was a theater critic and editor in the arts section of the Frankfurter Rundschau. He published biographies on Gustaf Gründgens, Siegfried Unseld and Heinrich von Kleist.

DuMont's most recent publication is ›They are naked‹ (2009), a book about contemporary theater. Peter Michalzik works at the Mozarteum Salzburg and is a visiting professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main, where he lives with his family.