The "Monte Verità" (literally Hill of Truth) in Ascona has an important historical background: at the beginning of the 20th century, a colony was founded which preached the return to nature.

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. (Walter Segal [1])

The hill near Ascona was seen as an artist landscape par excellence. Between 1926 and 1958 about 35‘000 visitors from Switzerland and many other countries came to see that magic mountain or to live on it. The Ticino-people saw them mainly as a crowd of weird fools. Henri Oedenkoven, for long years owner of the Monte Verita, took a fee. In this way tourists could do sightseeing and watch the vegans take their raw food on the meadows.

You could see Vegetarians,Pacifists, Nudists, Freemacons, Feminists, Theosophs and Bohemiens but above all artists.

A large number of artist, anarchist and other famous people have been attracted by this hill, e.g. Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Erich Maria Remarque, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Iwan Goll, Claire Goll, Klabund, Tristan Tzara, Oskar Schlemmer, Friedrich Glauserş Marianne Werefkin, Alexej von Jawlensky, Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber, Else Lasker-Schüler, Stephan George, Isadora Duncan, Carl Eugen Keel, Paul Klee, Carlo Mense, Rudolf Steiner, Mary Wigman, Max Piccard, Ernst Toller, Henry van de Velde, Franziska von Reventlow, Rudolf Laban, Frieda and Else von Richthofen, Otto Gross, Erich Mühsam, Walter Segal Gustav Landauer, the Feminist and Pianist Ida Hofmann, Henri Oedenkoven, the brothers Karl and Gusto Gräser and Gustav Stresemann.

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