The story of the girl Heidi from the Swiss mountains became a world bestseller as soon as it was published at the end of 1879.

Johanna Spyri's Heidi novels have been translated into seventy languages, and the total circulation is estimated at sixty million.

So many countries have their own Heidi reception history, but Israel's is special.

Because the book had long since arrived in Palestine and was firmly anchored in the cultural memory of many German-speaking Jews before it was translated into Hebrew two years before the founding of the State of Israel and was also a success in this language.

Hannes Hintermeier

Feuilleton correspondent for Bavaria and Austria.

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An exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Munich traces this success story.

Initial thesis: For many emigrants and refugees, Heidi was one of the last narratives they took with them from their Central European homeland, the Alpine region.

And with it the memories of fresh mountain air, snow and ice.

This could lead to attacks of Swiss disease (morbus helveticus), a medical condition for homesickness.

Why Frankfurt became Venice

When the book was published in 1946 by the Mordecai Newman publishing house in Tel Aviv, translated by Israel Fishman, it was called "Heidi Bat HaAlpim" (Heidi, Daughter of the Alps).

Later it became a "daughter of the mountains".

Since the language of the perpetrator's country seemed inappropriate, Goatherd Peter became Pierre, the Sesemann family was called Gérard, instead of Frankfurt, Heidi was transplanted to Venice, in later editions only to a "big city".

At least the governess Fräulein Rottenmeier kept her name.

Such interventions were common at the time, explains curator Ulrike Heikaus, which is why Munich was replaced by Zurich in the translation of Kästner's novel Das Doppel Lottchen.

In the case of Heidi, however, the content continued because the Christian message and references to God were deleted or changed without further ado.

Great liberties were taken not only in terms of content, but also in the illustrations.

The Matterhorn keeps popping up on book covers as an iconic but locally misplaced massif – Valais instead of Graubünden?

Since the 1930s there has been a language battle in Israel, which Hebrew was bound to win.

And so, in the young state, Heidi becomes a role model for the many thousands of children and young people who live as orphans in kibbutzim or youth villages.

That Spyri didn't explicitly call her character an orphan - for free.

With her positive world view and her way of openly embracing the whole world, Heidi meets the state's educational goals.

Finding a new family in the community, looking ahead, these are values ​​that are urgently needed in the post-war years.

And the further in time the Shoah advanced, the closer the translations came to the original.

Heidi is a hit on the Israeli book market.

The catalog bibliography lists 47 editions since 1946.

Not all of them can be seen in the exhibition, but there are enough to give an impression of how volatile the Heidi picture was.

One of the most original exhibits is a letter dated February 23, 1880, which Johanna Spyri wrote to her first illustrator, the Munich painter Friedrich Wilhelm Pfeiffer.

The artist is best known today for the horse paintings he painted on behalf of King Ludwig II.

With his drawings for the first edition, he shaped the archetype of the girl with the straw hat, the boy with the goats and the grandfather.

Even available as a board game

Originally dark-haired in the book, Heidi is portrayed as predominantly blonde.

However, no illustration can match the popularity of the Japanese animated series, which began its triumphal march around the world in 1974.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Heidi encompasses every form of media delivery, whether in film, on stage, as a poster, record, coloring book or board game.

Today, Heidi fans meet online to present themselves in Heidi poses.

The exhibition is a takeover from Kilchberg, Switzerland, and was created in cooperation with the Heidiseum project, which was founded in 2018 and aims to process Spyri's estate scientifically and as a museum.

The show was redesigned for Munich.

In the semi-darkness of the hall, showcases are grouped along the walls and enclose displays and billboards.

Exhibiting literature remains an ongoing challenge;

In terms of the protagonist being negotiated, one would have wished for the presentation to be a little more lively.

Heidi in Israel.

A search for clues

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In the Jewish Museum Munich;

until October 16th.

The catalog (Wehrhahn Verlag) costs 22 euros.