Heidi- and Johanna Spyri Archives

The collection consists of the two Heidi- and Johanna Spyri Archives located in Zurich with their incomparable and valuable collections and documents. For more than a century, Johanna Spyri’s Heidi novels, first published in 1880 and 1881, have made an incredible journey throughout the world in the last 140 years. They are among the most widely read, translated and adapted literary classics. The impact the books had and still have on children’s literature and culture and on popular media worldwide is paramount, but they have also become an important element of everyday culture including practices of experiencing nature in the mountains as well as literary tourism. Most importantly, there is no fixed meaning attributed to Heidi, but a variety of different meanings, changing and evolving through history. Heidi can be read as the ideal romantic child, but also, in a more contemporary way, as a mediator between urban and rural life or even between the human and the non-human.