News
Life amid elemental forces
23 Sept 2024
What role does religion play in the Alpine world? A team from the Chair of Religious Studies and the History of Religion at the Faculty of Protestant Theology has investigated this question.
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View of Blüemlisalp group in the Bernese Alps
Photographer Marco Volken has captured the religious dimensions of the Alps with his camera.
© Marco Volken“Nothing but emptiness; utter emptiness; everything ceases to be, as if the world had never been created.” This was how Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, in his novel Derborence, described the moment just before falling asleep in an Alpine hut. The silence is followed by a muffled crash; a landslide buries the people in their beds.
Living amid the elemental forces of the mountains has left clear traces on Alpine religious history, says Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati, who holds the Chair of Religious Studies and the History of Religion at LMU. Chapels, crucifixes, and other symbols and rituals testify to a way of dealing with the grand imposing presence of mountains and the uncontrollable forces of nature.
The interdisciplinary research project “Border Crossings: Religion and the Alps,” which explores aspects of religion in Alpine locations between Italy and Upper Bavaria, is a rich collaboration between a wide variety of academic fields as well as photography, music, art, and film.
Literary works such as the Alpine novel by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, which is based on a legend from the Valais region in Switzerland, also bear witness to the important role of religion in the Alpine world – a circumstance that has been surprisingly neglected to date in the history of religion and religious studies, remarks Anna-Katharina Höpflinger, who workst at the Chair of Religious Studies and the History of Religion at LMU
More about the project
Grenzgänge. Religion und die Alpen (Border Crossings: Religion and the Alps)
The eponymous book arising from the project was published by Theologischer Verlag Zürich in August 2024. It was edited by Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati and Anna-Katharina Höpflinger from LMU, Boris Previšić from the Uri Institute for the Cultures of the Alps at the University of Lucerne, and mountain photographer Marco Volken. It was created in conjunction with musical compositions by Matthias Arter and Darija Andovska, played by the pre-art soloists ensemble, with Benita Meißner from the DG Kunstraum Diskurs Gegenwart art society, and with the filmmaker Lion Bischof.