Mendelssohn in Switzerland
On four occasions, Mendelssohn traveled through Switzerland for a longer period of time, probably covering approximately one thousand kilometers on foot. The first time as a 14-year-old with his family and several servants coming from Berlin, another time during the summer of the century with great floods and the last time deeply saddened after he had learned of the death of his beloved sister Fanny. Mendelssohn wandered all over Switzerland, some places were dear to his heart and he visited them several times. From his correspondence we learn that he learned some yodeling in Switzerland, which “sounds rough in the room, but outside, in the early morning and bright weather, to the ringing of the cows in the valley, beautiful and enthusiastic”. Mendelssohn was also a talented draftsman; a total of more than 300 works of art by him have survived, several dozen of them with motifs from Switzerland.