Die Schöpfungsgeschichte des Adolf Wölfli

Adolf Wölfli, born in the canton of Berne in Switzerland in 1864, spent 35 years of his life in the psychiatric institution Waldau after having been admitted in 1895 following multiple convictions for sexual offences against minors. While confined in his cell, Wölfli filled entire rolls of paper and countless books with drawings and texts. The story of his life was woven around figures, images and visions of a world of his own making – he developed his personal story of the creation. Ultimately, this work ran to over 25 000 pages of closely written text illustrated with over 1600 drawings ranging from the enigmatically erotic to the hermetically cryptic – by then, Wölfli had gained fame beyond the borders of Switzerland. Since then, the ‘kompliszierte Wärk’ [complicated work] as he termed it himself has continued to fascinate scholars of literature and art: exhibitions and academic studies were devoted to this phenomenon of a logical universe constructed down to the finest details, enabling its creator who gave himself the name ‘Skt. Adolf II’ in 1916 to leap into a completely new identity.
Ingomar Grünauer approaches the phenomenon of Wölfli on three parallel unfolding ‘plot’ levels. The real level is the cell housing Wölfli whereas the second level represents a backward-looking view into his inner self: figures from the time prior to his admission to Waldau plague him, repeatedly provoking memories from the past which disturb and torture him, causing him to flee into his own world, his universe. The ‘real’ persons from his biography are transformed into beings of his creation: unreal for us as voyeuristic observers, these are tangible figures for Wölfli for whom this dream is the only real comforting concrete truth.