The SRF spy drama “Davos 1917” is a series as powerful as an avalanche

Simone Meier

She’s a war whore. A ‘Griaghuara’, says a young woman from Davos to her heavily pregnant sister who has just returned home. The pregnant woman is called Johanna Gabathuler (Dominique Devenport), worked in recent years as a Red Cross nurse in a field hospital near Verdun, was allowed to perform operations herself due to a lack of staff and lived a much freer life. than women live at home. Sex with patients included.

Meanwhile, Johanna’s sister (Anna Schinz) and her father tried to save the dilapidated spa in Davos. Because in 1917, in the middle of the First World War, many wealthy guests stayed away and empty beds were taken up by war wounded. The urgently needed cash injection is missing. Johanna must now arrange this by marrying a powerful council member. Of course, he is not allowed to know anything about Johanna’s child. The child needs to be organized.

Until the wedding, Johanna is allowed to work in the spa’s own clinic, together with the prominent doctor Mangold (David Kross). She has no fear. At the front, she has seen, repaired and amputated everything a human body can do. She also reads the pacifist bestseller ‘Launch Your Weapons!’ the Nobel Peace Prize winner Bertha von Suttner. But life in the spa soon presents her with much more difficult operations. Because the luxurious plague house is not only a wellness center for more or less lung patients, but itself a theater of war, diplomatic, but occasionally also very tangible.

Arms dealers meet spies from all countries involved in World War I, honorable diplomats turn into dangerous traitors, and those who are not yet corrupt are made corrupt. There is no good life on the Magic Mountain and behind some biographies there is a very different life.

The Germans, English, Russians, French and Belgians plot with and against each other, the Entente against the Central Powers, the Objects du désir are secret lists, nuclear warheads, decoding equipment and ways in which Germany could be weakened from the south. The Germans, in turn, wonder how they can exploit a Russian named Lenin for their own benefit.

There are believed to have been 150,000 spies active during World War I, says historian Jakob Tanner, and they all had countless helpers. Information was not only conveyed directly, as in the series, but also through major international organizations such as the Catholic Church. Or about the injured of various warring parties who ended up in a sanatorium in Switzerland. The Swiss achievements of ‘neutrality’ and ‘democracy’ act as the silver platter on which the information deals are signed like Coke lines.

Of course, Thomas Mann’s novel ‘The Magic Mountain’, set just before the First World War (a hundred years old in 2024), is an idol of ‘Davos 1917’. After all, Mann essentially invented the myth of Davos as a melting pot of an ailing international haute volée, animated by conflicting ideologies and ideas. One of the main characters in the series seems to come straight from Mann’s novel, namely the tuberculous German Countess Ilse von Hausner (Jeannette Hain), a dangerous, refined, elegant figure. She is the perfect twin sister to Mann’s mysterious Russian Madame Chauchat (yes, her name means “chaud chat”, hot cat).

The countess, who becomes Johanna’s teacher, not only has a fictional sister, but also a historical role model, namely the spy Elsbeth Schragmüller. She headed the espionage department against France at the German intelligence service and was commander of the Dutch dancer and spy Mata Hari. Already in the 1930s she provided the inspiration for a novel and several films, in 1940 she died of tuberculosis and her brother became an important SA man. Behind the figure of Johanna are several Red Cross nurses who went to war out of compassion combined with an insatiable thirst for adventure.

The historic Hotel Schatzalp in Davos, whose facade, terrace and servants’ entrance are often seen in “Davos 1917” (the interior shots were taken in an old sanatorium in North Rhine-Westphalia), is considered by “Zauberberg” fans to be a the hotel where Mann’s novel could have been set. But while Mann’s hotel was a bubble populated by so many refugees from the world about to burst, in “Davos 1917” the fate of the world is very actively negotiated, decided or prevented. It is extremely exciting, always completely dramatic, avalanches, explosions, murder, manslaughter, poison, everything is used.

The spectacle costs: At 18 million francs, of which SRF covers 7 million, the six-part series is the most expensive series production that SRF has ever been able to afford or could not afford on its own. After the second largest production partner Sky left, everything was in jeopardy, a new one had to be found and ARD stepped in. Now “Davos 1917” is becoming a major pre-Christmas event in Switzerland and Germany.

You can accuse ‘Davos 1917’ of playing no role in Switzerland outside of sanatorium society, at most complementing the fact that there is no sign of the economic imbalance that resulted in the violence-soaked general strike a year later. ‘Peace’ made this more nuanced. But the team behind ‘Davos 1917’ opted for an American narrative style, for ‘a kind of western in the middle of the Alps’ (director Jan-Eric Mack), for major conflicts, tension, action and of course a bit of party. splendor à la “Babylon Berlin”, there is no shortage of nude dancers or opera arias. The series was polished for the largest possible international market.

The ambitious undertaking is likely to succeed. Because “Davos 1917” is perfect a nanosecond earlier: story, appearance, cast, that’s all there is to it, with a few exceptions (yes, there are, surprisingly, especially among the prominent names…), Devenport, always noble Hain, Kross and Schinz are fantastic. It’s sharp, lean and quickly told, you just wish so much airtime wasn’t wasted on horseback rides in the snow, they’re as unnecessary as the endless drone flying over landscapes in “Wilder”.

Speaking of snow, it is real and ubiquitous and caused such exhaustion that Dominique Devenport developed pneumonia. And because David Kross insisted on a slim silhouette when trying on his suit in the summer, there was not enough room under his clothes for sufficient thermal underwear and heating pads in the winter. The snow doesn’t just hide landscapes and corpses. The snow also erases all vanity.

“Davos 1917” (six parts) is available from December 15. can be seen in full on Play Suisse, from December 17, 8:05 PM, on SRF 1 and from December 20. on ARD.

Director: Jan-Eric Mack, Anca Miruna Lăzărescu and Christian Theede. Screenplay: Adrian Illien, Thomas Hess, Julia Penner and Michael Sauter, died in 2023.