Bodmer_Publication

A Word of Welcome
Gerold Lauber, City Council, Head of the Department of Education and Sport
When preparing his expedition to North America in 1832, the German natural
scientist Prince Maximilian of Wied signed on the young Zurich landscape painter
Karl Bodmer. He was employed to record the journey in images and faithfully
depict the land, its flora and fauna, and its peoples. How meticulously Bodmer fulfilled
this assignment and how significant his work remains to this day is evidenced
by the present exhibition at the North America Native Museum and this catalogue.
A plaque on his birth house at Oberdorfstrasse 15 indicates that Karl Bodmer
was born in the old part of the city of Zurich on 11 February 1809. Only very few
people know that shortly before his confirmation he and his family moved to
Riesbach, which at the time still was on the outskirts of Zurich. Here they settled
on Südstrasse, only a stone’s throw away from the present location of the museum.
Neither was the City Council aware of this fact when it decided to move the old
Indian Museum to its new location in the Riesbach district. The museum was
reopened in 2003 under the name North America Native Museum. It has a special
Bodmer Room where, ever since, the Bodmer prints held by the City of Zurich since
1961 are shown in changing sequence.
During the journey from 1832 to 1834, Karl Bodmer befriended several Indians
and actually wanted to stay in America for good. But due to health reasons and
upon Prince Maximilian’s wish he returned to Europe. Three years later word
reached him that a smallpox epidemic, introduced by whites, had killed off more
than five hundred people of the Mandan tribe, among them many of his friends.
The news shattered him and he was in deep mourning for several months, after
which he never went back to America.
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