HALLER, ALBRECHT von. - Writer and scientist, b. in Berne on 16 Oct. 1708, d. there on 12 Dec. 1777. An eminent anatomist and physiologist, he also concerned himself with mathematics, philosophy, and politics.
As a writer he owes his fame to the poem Die Alpen (1729), in which he fashions the “myth” of the good Alpine mountaineer, a happy man whom ignorance preserves from the evils of the city, a true pupil of nature. The poem is an important stage in pre-Romantic naturalism, which denies original sin, Redemption, and ascent to God through Grace. In H., indeed, “man’s natural goodness, which finds its reward on earth in natural happiness, is the first, mythical form of a doctrine of the immanence of values” (Antoni, V. BIBLICA.).
BIBL.: A. Farinelli, A. von H., in L'opera di un maestro, Torino 1920, p. 224 ff. (with the preceding bibliography on p. 349); S. d'Irsay, A. von H., Lipsia 1930; C. E. Engel, La littérature alpestre en France et en Angleterre au XVIIIe et XIXe siècle, Chambéry 1930, see index; M. Hochdoerfer, The conflict between the religious and the scientific views of A. von H., Lincoln (Nebraska) 1932; C. Antoni, La lotte contro la ragione, Firenze 1942, p. 16 ff. Precise indication of the more recent bibliography in J. Körner, Bibliographisches Handbuch des deutschen Schrifttums, Berna 1949, pp. 202-203. Massimo Petrocchi