Gusto Graeser

' 'Gustav Arthur Gräser'  (* February 16 1879 in Kronstadt, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary; † 27 October 1958 in Munich), also  'Gusto Gräser' '', was a German-Austrian artist and drop-out. He is considered the father of alternative movements. His brother Karl Gräser] (1875-1920) was one of the founders of the reform settlement Monte Verità in Ascona, where Gusto also lived initially. His brother Ernst H. Graeser (1884-1944) was a painter and graphic artist.''

life
The son of a district judge and senator, born in Kronstadt, came from a devout and learned family of Transylvania. Three bishops of the Evangelical Church are among his ancestors. At the age of fifteen, Gustav Gräser left grammar school and began his apprenticeship. In 1896 he won a gold medal at the World's Fair in Budapest with his carving work. Since 1897 he studied art in Vienna. For a short time he joined in 1898 the artist community  Humanitas  of the life reformer and painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach on the  Himmelhof  in Vienna, which strongly influenced him. However, because he did not want to bow to the authoritarian style of his master, he returned to Transylvania. There he created in a few weeks the programmatic idea painting  The love power . In reversal of the biblical myth of the fall, a naked human couple flees from the burning industrial world into a paradisiacal existence in peace with nature. The painting is now in the Museum Casa Anatta on Monte Verità.

In 1899 he broke off all family and social bridges and from then on he lived on a journey across Europe. He made contacts with philosophers, artists and reformers such as Rudolf Steiner, Gustav Landauer, Erich Muhsam, Alois Riehl, Ernst Horneffer, Gustav Naumann ], Ferdinand Avenarius, Friedrich Naumann or Georg Kerschensteiner. Early on, he became a figure of poetry, as "Blüthner, the Evangelimann" by Gustav Naumann, as "the peasant thinker Heinrich Wirth" and as "the forest man with the third eye" at [Hermann Hesse ]], as a 'fool in Christ' 'at Gerhart Hauptmann. He lived on lectures and selling his self-printed poetry. In 1900, like his brother Karl, he was one of the founders of Monte Verità in Switzerland. After a short time, however, he already broke up with the other founders of the project and returned to traveling. However, he returned to 1909 always back to the mountain. From 1916 to 1918 he lived with his family on the estate of his brother on Monte Verità.

In 1906/7, the brothers jointly organized an art exhibition in Locarno. From her emerged Ascona's first picture gallery in the house of Karl Grasses. Since 1903 Gusto had a cave and a forest meadow, which had given him the municipality of Losone as a gift. As a migrant poet, natural saint and hermit, grasses soon became a magnet for seekers and reformers from all over Europe. In his rocky grotto in the forest of Arcegno in 1907, the young Hermann Hesse lived with him, grasses introduced him to the wisdom teachings of the East. Together they read the  Bhagavad Gita  and the  Tao Te King  of the Lao Tzu. Another of Gräser's students became the American Raymond Duncan, brother of the dancer Isadora Duncan, in Paris in 1900. As a versatile artist, poet and communal founder, he brought the Gräser lifestyle into the circle of his friends Gertrude Stein, Henri Matisse and Picasso carried on. Gräser himself, with his moonshine dances in the Arcegno forest, provided the impetus for modern expressionism, which began with Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman from Monte Verità. In Ascona, the grass-friends were known as "balabiott" (nude dancers), but their dance is said to have been more religious and reminiscent of the dervish dances of the Sufis. His compatriot Rudolf von Laban, who wrote a series of expressionist-ecstatic dance dramas in Ascona and performed with his student group, took up this tradition. The highlight of his work was the "Sun Festival" of August 1917, whose midnight part was celebrated in front of the rock grotto Gusto Grasses. Contributors or spectators were the Dadaist artists Marcel Janco, Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings.

After dance performances and recitations in Schwabing, Gräser moved in 1911 with his wife and seven children in a self-made caravan, on the roof a wooden snake, from Munich to Berlin. "Out! Out! Out! "was written in giant letters on his lush green car. In the circle of Wandervogel, Gustav Landauer and Gustav Wyneken, he became a leading figure in the political transformation of the youth movement. In particular, the left-wing fascist wing of Freideut's youth (Max Hodann, Jakob Feldner) campaigned for him. Grass was often attacked, repeatedly arrested and expelled, so in 1912 from Saxony and 1913 from  Baden. 1915 he was deported to Austria, where he was sentenced to death as a conscientious objector but was confused after three days on death row Ideas afflicted "in a lunatic asylum. After his release, he returned to his family on the Monte Verità. There he became the model for  war opponents from all over Europe, who gathered in Ascona around him. Among them are the dancers Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, the playwright Reinhard Goering and many others. He had his strongest effect on Hermann Hesse, who spread the image of his friend throughout the world in the master figures of his poetry. In 1918 grasses from Switzerland, then from Bavaria and again from Baden were expelled. In 1920 he moved with a "new band" of young men and women who had gathered around his friend Friedrich Muck-Lamberty, singing, dancing and playing through northern Bavaria and Thuringia: a legendary "Children Crusade" or "Crusade of the Love ", which was elevated to legend by Hermann Hesse in his story 'The Morgenlandfahrt'. For the second time expelled from Bavaria, he came to Berlin in 1927, where he worked in the Anti-War Museum of Ernst Friedrich and held long series of "public talks" at Alexanderplatz. Around 1930 he lived in the reform settlement  Grünhorst  near Berlin, which became a meeting place for the youth movement and the  Biosophischen Bewegung  around Ernst Fuhrmann. From there he moved in a donkey car with his son-in-law Otto Grossöhmig (1909-4 December 2005) He died in 1958 completely lonely and unnoticed in the Munich district Freimann. His poetic work, which had remained unprinted, was saved from destruction at the last moment before it was destroyed. It is today in the city library Munich and in the Monte Verità archive Freudenstein.

His idiosyncratic poetry of the Tao Te King, which he handed over to Hesse in 1918, is based on the translations of Alexander Ular, Richard Wilhelm and Julius Grill. It is a confession of his Weltanschauung, which he represented with great consistency.

Hermann Hesse found his friend and master in Gräser, his main works since 1903 bear witness to this discipleship. In the seals Gerhart Hauptmann s also found grasses track. Thomas Mann defended him in the 1920s with the words: "This man is pure in heart". In the Alternative Movements of the 1960s / 70s, grasses were rediscovered and recognized as role models and leaders in ecological awareness. As such, he also influenced Joseph Beuys and other modern artists. The American cultural historian Martin Green sees him as the " Gandhi of the West". Its founding, Monte Verità, is known as the "cradle of the alternative movement" and the "Grail of the Modern".

works

 *  Ivy leaves . Poems. Vienna 1902.
 *  A friend is here - open!  Pamphlet, Berlin 1912.
 *  Heimat.  Pamphlet, Berlin / Birkenfeld 1912.
 *  Hints to the recovery of our life . Proverbs and poems. Ascona 1918.
 *  Sign of the coming . Seven lithographs with text sheets. Dresden 1925.
 *  Necessity . Drawings and poems. Lithography portfolio. Dresden 1926.
 *  Beechnuts. A publication . Berlin 1930.
 *  Wortfeuerzeug . Proverbs and poems. Berlin 1930.
 *  Tao. The healing secret . Pandora's Box, Wetzlar 1979, ISBN 3-88178-032-7, and Umbruch-Verlag, Recklinghausen 2008, ISBN 978-3-937726-04-5.
 *  AllBeDeut. Our Speech Sounds - Secret Keys to Uncovering Our World . German Monte Verità Archive Freudenstein 2000.
 *  Earth's star time. A selection from the late work . Edited by Hermann Müller. Umbruch-Verlag, Recklinghausen 2007 and 2009, ISBN 978-3-937726-02-1.
 *  Wanderer's Poems . Edited by Frank Milautzcki. Publisher in rehearsal room 3, Klingenberg 2006.
 *  The power of love . Oil painting in the museum Casa Anatta on the Monte Verità, Ascona

Literature

 * Adolf Grohmann:  The Vegetarian Settlement in Ascona and the so-called Naturmenschen in Ticino. Presentations and sketches . Hall 1904; Edizioni della Rondine, Ascona 1997.
 * Harald Szeemann (ed.):  Monte Verità - Mountain of Truth. Local anthropology as a contribution to the rediscovery of a modern sacral topography . Electa, Milan 1978.
 * Ulrich Linse:  Barefoot prophets. Redeemer of the twenties . Settlers, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-88680-088-1.
 * Ulrich Linse:  Ökopax and anarchy. A History of Ecological Movements in Germany . DTV, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-10550-X.
 * Martin Green:  Mountain of Truth. The Counterculture begins, Ascona, 1900-1920 . University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1986, ISBN 0-87451-365-0.
 * Hermann Müller: 'Gusto grasses. From life and work. Fragments of a biography . Grasses Archive Freudenstein, Knittlingen 1987, ISBN 3-924275-16-5.
 * Gordon Kennedy:  Children of the Sun. A pictorial anthology from Germany to California, 1883-1949 . Nivaria Press, Ojai, California, 1998, ISBN 0-9668898-0-0.
 * Hermann Müller:  "Now approach Erdsternmai!" Gusto Gräser. Green Prophet from Transylvania.  Umbruch-Verlag, Recklinghausen 2012, ISBN 978-3-937726-07-6.
 * Hermann Müller:  Himmelhof. Prime cell of the alternative movement, Vienna 1897-1899 . Umbruch-Verlag, Recklinghausen 2011 and 2012, ISBN 978-3-937726-08-3.
 * Elisabetta Barone (ed.):  Pioneers, Poets, Professors. Eranos and Monte Verità in the Civilization History of the 20th Century . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2252-1.
 * Ulrich Holbein:  Drum TAO wind into Winterland. Three radical natural prophets: Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, Gustav Nagel and Arthur Gustav Grasses . (The Green Branch 260). Green Force, Löhrbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-922708-05-6.
 * Ulrike Voswinckel:  Free love and anarchy. Schwabing-Monte Verità. Drafts against the established life.  Alliteraverlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-86906-027-9.
 * Hans Bergel:  Gustav Arthur Grasses. The laughing apostle . In:  Crossroads. Thirteen life pictures . Reeg, Bamberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-937320-38-0, p. 9-25.
 * Christian Blankenstein:  Gusto Grasses - the European Gandhi.  In:  The memory-worthy of Yesterday and their traces in today. 15 Portraits from Austria.  Bautz, Nordhausen 2011, ISBN 978-3-88309-103-7, pp. 146-160.
 * Kaj Noschis:  Monte Verità. Ascona et le génie du lieu . Lausanne 2011. ISBN 978-2-88074-909-5.
 * Pamela Kort / Max Hollein (ed.):  Artists and Prophets. A Secret History of Modernity, 1972-1972.  Catalog of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Snoeck Verlag, Cologne 2015. ISBN 978-3-86442-116-7.
 * Hermann Müller:  experimental field of the coming. Grünhorst.  In Christiane Barz (ed.):  Simple. Naturally. Life. Lebensreform in Brandenburg, 1890-1939.  Berlin 2015, pp. 130-135.
 * Peter Watson:  The Age of Nothingness. A history of ideas and culture from Friedrich Nietzsche to Richard Dawkins . C. Bertelsmann, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-570-10223-7.
 * Ulrich Holbein:  Five pretty radical natural prophets.  Synergia Verlag, Basel 2015. ISBN 978-3-944615-43-1.
 * Oliver Prange:  The Sun Festival.  Roman. Zurich 2016. ISBN 978-3-905931-70-9.
 * Stefan Bollmann:  Monte Verità 1900. The dream of alternative life begins.  Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2017. ISBN 978-3-421-04685-7. (The illustration contains numerous errors and distortions, especially concerning Gusto Grasses and Hermann Hesse.)
 * Volker Weidermann:  Dreamer. When the poets took power.  Cologne 2017. ISBN 978-3-462-04714-1.
 * Udo Bermbach:  Richard Wagner's way to life reform.  Würzburg 2018. ISBN 978-3-8260-6470-8.

theater

 * Rast, Christina and Ensemble: ! I am talking! Join me!!! A search for salvation . A four-person piece by Gusto Gräser, Otto Gross, Louis Häusser and Gregor Gog. World premiere on May 17, 2007 in the theater ramp stuttgart.
 * Peuker, Oliver and Falkenstein, Ute:  Artists, Colonies, Communities - Rises between Weyerberg and Monte Verità . Worpswede 2010.
 * Hendricks, Newell:  Ascona ... the counterculture begins . Opera in three acts, premiered at the Sanders Theater Boston on January 29, 1993. It features Otto Gross, Lotte Hattemer, Gusto Grasses, Mary Wigman, Erich Mühsam and other.
 * Macras, Constanza:  The truth about Monte Verità . Dance performance. Schauspiel Leipzig in cooperation with euro-scene Leipzig, November 2013.
 * Gschwend, Hanspeter:  Monte Verità. Sogni di un'altra vita. Dreams of a different life . Open Air Play on the Monte Verità, Ascona, 16. 7. - 27. 8. 2016.

movie

 *  "The biggest bird can not fly". Ascona. The utopia of another life.  Film by Wilfried F. Schoeller. Hessischer Rundfunk, 1978.
 *  The hermit of Monte Verità. Gusto Gräser - Naturmensch und Philosopher.  Documentary, Switzerland 2006, 50 min., Written and directed by: [Christoph Kühn (Director) | Christoph Kühn]], Production: Schweizer Fernsehen, Erstsendung 31. Juli 2006, Review:
 * Colomer, Henry:  Monte Verità . Documentary, broadcast in Arte on December 10, 1997, 8:45 pm, and more often.
 * Alfio di Paoli and Teo Buvoli:  Il monte di Hetty . Documentary on the Monte Verità and Gusto Grasses, sent in RSI la due on 2 November 2009, 9pm.
 * Andrea Biasca-Caroni and Julian Martin:  La Caverna della Libertà. Studio sull'incontro tra l'eremita Gusto Grasses e lo scrittore Hermann Hesse sul Monte Verità ad Ascona . Video in YouTube, March 6, 2012.
 * Julia Benkert:  Sanatorium Europe - le refuge des écrivains . Documentary about Riva and Monte Verità, 60 min. In ARTE, June 28, 2017; in the Hessischer Rundfunk, October 25, 2017, 00:23.

Weblinks

 * Web portal on the life and work of Gusto Gräser with further links to the detailed biography, archive material, pictures etc. (www.gusto-graeser.info)
 * The Tao Te King of Grasses
 * Gusto grasses in the literature portal Munich
 * Radio Feature
 *  Life reformers, preachers and Jesus imitators: Wait to the Messiah  Contributed by Thilo Schmidt to [[Deutschlandradio Kultur] on April 24, 2019.
 * Radio Feature
 *  Life reformers, preachers and Jesus imitators: Wait to the Messiah  Contributed by Thilo Schmidt to [[Deutschlandradio Kultur] on April 24, 2019.

itemizations
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