Monte Verità

Monte Verità (literally Hill of Truth) is a hill (350 meters or 1,150 feet high) in Ascona (Swiss canton of Ticino), which has served as the site of many different Utopian and cultural events and communities since the beginning of the twentieth century, having started out as a popular destination for Wandervogel hikers during the Lebensreform period.

In 1900, Henry Oedenkoven, the 25-year-old son of a businessman from Antwerp, and his companion Ida Hofmann purchased a hill in Ascona which had been known as "Monescia" and established the "Co-operative vegetarian colony Monte Verità". The colony was established first on principles of primitive socialism, but later championed an individualistic vegetarianism and hosted the Monte Verità Sanatorium, a sun-bathing establishment.

The colonists "abhorred private property, practised a rigid code of morality, strict vegetarianism and nudism. They rejected convention in marriage and dress, party politics and dogmas: they were tolerantly intolerant."

Anarchist physician Raphael Friedeberg moved to Ascona in 1904, attracting many other anarchists to the area. Artists and other famous people attracted to this hill included Hermann Hesse,Carl Jung, Erich Maria Remarque, Hugo Ball, Else Lasker-Schüler, Stefan George, Isadora Duncan, Carl Eugen Keel, Paul Klee, Carlo Mense, Arnold Ehret, Rudolf Steiner, Mary Wigman, Max Picard, Ernst Toller, Henry van de Velde, Fanny zu Reventlow, Rudolf von Laban, Frieda and Else von Richthofen, Otto Gross, Erich Mühsam, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, Walter Segal, Max Weber, Gustav Stresemann, and Gustav Nagel.

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