Swiss Review 4/2018

9 Swiss Review / July 2018 / No.4 holidays in the Bernese Oberland from 1879. Many of his paintings of the Alps were produced here and he often used the same routes and viewing points as the tourists. He ex- plored the area around Interlaken on transport links which were new at the time. The cog railway up to the Schynige Platte took him to the “viewof Lake Thun and Lake Brienz”, and when the mountain railway from Lauterbrunnen up to Mürren opened in 1891, it provided access to a new at- traction not just for tourists but also for the artist – the postcard subject of the “Jungfrau”. Hodler paid his first visit here in 1895 and then returned in the summers of 1911 and 1914. During those two seasons, he painted the Jungfrau massif in a total of thirteen different works. There are, of course, differences in terms of colour, contrast, texture and atmosphere. However, one thing does not change in the thirteen versions. Hodler stood in the same spot as the tourists and painted different paintings from various rail- way stations. He used the railway to frame the Jungfrau as he wished. This is the paradox that has always dominated not only the painting ofmountain scenery but also tourism. It prom- ises unique experiences but at the same time inevitably transforms them into a technically mediated and staged product. This irrefutably casts doubt over the difference be- tween “authentic” and “artificial” experienceswhich is con- tested with such zeal in the current debate on new attrac- tions in the mountains. Events and thrills do not receive good press today. But that is precisely what the Alps have been about from the outset and since the earliest fervour for the mountains: ex- hilaration and thrills. Shortly after 1700, the English essay- ist Joseph Addison went on a journey through Europe and when he stopped at Lake Geneva and took in the giant mountains before him– this world of rock and ice – he was filled with a feeling that would later become a key selling point for the tourism industry: a kind of quivering sensa- tion, “a pleasant sort of terror” at the force of nature. Finally, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who through his “Re- turn to Nature” became famous and the benchmark for an authentic, deep soulful experience of themountains, gave an account in his “Confessions” in 1781 of a remarkable hike in the Alps of Savoy. At Chailles the route took him into a rock face and “far below the road cut out of the rocks a lit- tle stream rushes and foams in some fearful precipices, which it seems to have spent millions of ages in hollowing out”. The road itself is modern and “along the side of the road is a parapet to prevent accidents”, wrote Rousseau, and then the great philosopher was overcome with the same desire that people seek today in the steep face of the Schilthorn. He was exhilarated and looked into the abyss. “Leaning securely over the parapet” he could “be as giddy as he pleased”. Rousseau’s path is a “Thrill Walk”. The par- apet is the structure that makes his experience of adven- ture possible – comfortable and without risk: “I am very fond of the feeling of giddiness provided I am in a safe po- sition,” he wrote. DANIEL DI FALCO IS A HISTORIAN AND CULTURE JOURNALIST WITH THE “BUND” NEWSPAPER IN BERNE The Hotel Pilatus Kulm beneath a starlit sky in an advert for the Pilatus Railway Photo: Severin Pomsel Swiss Alpine Museum, Berne: “Beautiful Mountains: A Point of View” runs until 6 January 2019. An accompanying postcard book with texts by Bernhard Tschofen and other authors is available to buy. (Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess)