THE TELEGRAPH: Heidi, the quintessentially Swiss mountain girl who lived with her grandfather in the Alps, may in fact have been German.
The original Heidi book was written by a Swiss author, Johanna Spyri, but scholars claim that she borrowed heavily from a book written 50 years earlier by a German, Adam von Kamp.
The suggestion of literary plagiarism - or at least heavy borrowing of characters, setting and plot line - in one of the classics of Swiss literature has set off an unseemly squabble between the alpine neighbours.
It has also fueled the traditional animosity among German-speaking Swiss towards what they regard as the "arrogance" of their big northern neighbours in Germany.
Peter Buettner, the researcher who has come up with the claim, has a foot in both camps - he is German but based in Zurich. Swiss Heidi may in fact be German >>> Nick Squires | Thursday, April 29, 2010
*es Meiteli = ein Mädchen in Swiss-German. In English it means ‘a girl’.
