CredoLGT JournaL on WeaLTh CuLTure

CurIoSITY | XVII 2013

CreditsPublisherh.S.h. Prince Philipp von und zu Liechtenstein, Chairman LGT Group

Advisory boardThomas Piske, Ceo LGT Private Bankingnorbert Biedermann, Ceo LGT Bank Ltd.heinrich henckel, Ceo LGT Bank (Switzerland) Ltd.

Editorial office, LayoutSidi Staub (executive editor)LGT Marketing & Communications

Picture editorLilo Killer, Zurich

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Picture creditsCover, pages 4, 6, 7: Sascha ZastiralPages 2, 5, 8, 9: Ian BakerPage 10: pixelio, clipdealerPages 11–14: Polaroid frame: 123rFPage 11, left: alja KirillovaPage 11, right: nicola ScevolaPage 12: Sacha BatthyanyPage 13: ruth FendPage 14: Dennis euckerPages 16–17: Illustration Markus roostPages 18–25: Simon CornwellPages 22, 24: Bradley GarettPages 27, 28, 30: Julian SalinasPage 29: Illustration Markus WysPage 32: Princely CollectionsPage 34: Christian BreitlerPage 35: Magdalena WeyrerPage 36: Pius TheilerPage 37: Manfred Schiefer

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Contents | Credo XvII 2013

Curiosity 02

36 18

32

02

10

15

18

26

32

34

36

Portrait | Ian BakerThis American explorer of the Himalayas succeeded where many before him had failed: he discovered the gates of paradise.

Portfolio | Children’s questionsWhat do they really want to know or understand, and where do they get the answers? We asked children from Chongqing, New York, Beira, Zurich and Moscow.

Essay | Lifelong learningeducation specialist Salman Ansari knows the secret of keeping a zest for lifelong learning.

Report | Urban explorersThe explorers of today no longer travel to distant continents. They travel into the past and find their “terra incognita” on their own doorstep.

Interview | Barbara HohnThis 74-year-old scientist knows that groundbreaking dis-coveries only happen when we give free rein to our curiosity.

Masterpieces | Peter FendiA young girl peeks through a keyhole. Curiosity? No, just cautiousness. But to realize this, you have to look very carefully.

Literary choice | Christoph RansmayrIn 1872 a seafaring expedition was caught in pack ice for two long winters. A hundred years later, an inquisitive Italian retraced the journey to the far north made back then by his great-great-uncle.

Carte Blanche | Pius TheilerHis invention won a special prize at the “Schweizer Jugend forscht” competition. And he only wanted to know how a handy camming device might function.

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CREDO | 01

Editorial

Is curiosity addictive? The American neuroscientist Irving Biederman believes

he has found out why we human beings are so full of curiosity and a thirst for

knowledge: in the moment of discovery, when our curiosity is satisfied, our

body sets free its own opiates in the brain. The resulting feeling of elation is

what motivates us to strive continually for new knowledge.

One thing is certain: without curiosity, mankind would not be where it is today.

The search for knowledge and understanding – condemned as a vice before

modern times – is regarded today as a virtue that stimulates progress and

prosperity. A virtue that becomes even more important in times of crisis.

That’s no doubt why US President Barack Obama urged the American people

to display greater curiosity in his first inaugural address.

We have taken a peek over the shoulder of people for whom curiosity is a

way of life. For example, there is a researcher whom the National Geographic

Society has declared one of its “Explorers for the Millennium.” Then there’s

a scientist who has retained her spirit of curiosity well beyond the age of re-

tirement, and an urban explorer who investigates abandoned buildings and

disused factories. And of course a number of children and young people

also have their say here, for by virtue of their age they enjoy the privilege of

innocent curiosity.

This issue of CREDO is also a plea for you to remain curious yourselves!

For as Goethe already knew: “Whoever is not curious will learn nothing.”

I wish you a fascinating reading experience!

H.S.H. Prince Philipp von und zu Liechtenstein

Chairman LGT Group

Dear Readers,

02 | CREDO

Portrait | Ian Baker

Text and photos: Sascha Zastiral

There are some places that are deeply rooted in our

belief system but that hardly anyone has ever seen. One

such place is a legendary region in the heart of Tibet’s

Tsangpo Gorge. American Ian Baker has succeeded

where many past expeditions have failed: the Himalayan

researcher has made it right to the gates of paradise.

One of the greatest explorers of our times lives in an unassuming

row house in Bangkok. Tall metal gates shield the inhabitants of

the small side road in the city’s Ekkamai district from the out-

side world. Some two dozen identical-looking houses line the

street on both sides. They have large, gothic windows and bal-

conies reminiscent of the European Renaissance – the typical,

slightly kitschy mix of styles that is common in Asian countries.

Ian Baker – US citizen, Himalayan researcher, author and

explorer – stands on the driveway to his home. A few years ago,

the National Geographic Society named him one of its seven

“Explorers for the Millennium.” Baker is slim and wears his

medium-length black hair in a ponytail. He has a well-groomed

full beard and wears a black collarless shirt. Only the wrinkles

around his eyes betray his 55 years.

Discovering a lost paradise

CREDO | 3

Ian Baker: He knows the Himalayas from countless expeditions.

04 | CREDO

When asked about the house, Baker readily explains that

he actually likes being anonymous in sprawling Bangkok. When

he returns from expeditions to the Himalayas – as he has done

recently, after traveling for two months in the tiny kingdom of

Bhutan – he often stocks up on enough food to last him a week,

saying that he enjoys not having to go out for a few days. “In a

way, coming back, the house here is a sanctuary,” says Baker.

Baker discovered his fascination for the Himalayas at an

early age. He took his first trip to Nepal as a 19-year-old art

student at Middlebury College in Vermont. In the third year of

his degree, he decided to fly to Nepal to study religious scroll

paintings. “I fell in love with the country straight away,” he says.

“It was very much like coming home.”

The hidden gorgeIt was at that time that Baker first heard of the “Beyul”: legend-

ary places hidden deep in the Himalayas that play an important

part in traditional Tibetan beliefs. The legend of Shangri-La, de-

Portrait | Ian Baker

scribed by Briton James Hilton in his 1933 novel “Lost Horizon,”

takes these beliefs as its basis. And Ian Baker’s sensational dis-

covery, which years later was to make him famous, also has a

connection with such a place, shrouded as it is in myth.

“He said that they were

places that were from

earth but at the same time

beyond geography.”

After studying for degrees in religion and literature in London

and Oxford, Baker moved to Nepal in 1984. Over the years that

followed, as part of a university program, he organized seminars

and language courses for US students in Nepal and Dharamsala,

the small town in northern India that houses the residence of

the Dalai Lama in exile.

At this time, Baker could not get the story of the “Beyul” out

of his head. During an audience with the Dalai Lama in the late

1980s, he learned a bit more about them: “He said that they were

places that were from earth but at the same time beyond geog-

raphy,” Baker explains. According to many Buddhist writings,

these places are valleys of heavenly beauty that can only be

reached by undertaking the most arduous of journeys. Pilgrims

who attempt to go there tell of extraordinary experiences, while

those who try to enter these places by force risk failure or even

death. “All of that was very appealing to me when I heard of that

when I was just 19 years old. That is what has remained, the fas-

cination to document those hidden lands.”

According to legend, one such place can be found in Pemako.

Here, the Tsangpo River, whose source lies over 1000 miles to

the west on Mount Kailash, cuts a great arc around Namcha

Barwa, a mountain rising over 25 000 feet, before flowing

south toward India, where it becomes the Brahmaputra. Some

researchers believe that the gorge it flows through is the

deepest in the world. And even by the late 20th century, a

section of this gorge some six miles long still remained com-

pletely unexplored.

Countless past attempts to uncover the gorge’s last secrets

failed. As early as the end of the 19th century, the British colo-

nial rulers of India launched several expeditions. The explorers

Souvenir from the Himalayas – a chod drum.

CREDO | 05

believed that they would find a giant waterfall at the heart of

the gorge that could rival Africa’s Victoria Falls in terms of size.

“It was a geographical grail for the expanding British Empire at

the time,” says Ian Baker.

But it was not only the difficult terrain and the unpredictable

weather that made the region such a challenge: many of the

tribes that inhabited Pemako at the time were hostile to stran-

gers. The first expedition to find the legendary waterfall in 1890

ended with the members of the expedition being impaled on

spears and beheaded by tribesmen.

The last British expedition in 1924 also ended in failure. Try

as they might, the researchers were unable to penetrate the last

few remaining miles in the inner region of the Tsangpo Gorge.

Although the explorers did discover a small waterfall, which

they named the “Rainbow Falls,” they failed to find the mighty

waterfall of legend. After returning to London, the explorers

told the Royal Geographical Society that the stories of the giant

waterfall at the heart of the Tsangpo Gorge were most likely to

be nothing but a myth.

Barking dogs in Middle EarthThe political upheaval of the 1930s and 40s in neighboring

countries put Pemako firmly out of the reach of Western re-

searchers. The region, which today lies in the disputed border

zone between China and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh,

remained closed to foreigners for over 50 years. Not until the

1990s did it once again become possible to travel into the region

from the Chinese side.

Ian Baker seized the first available opportunity to explore

the gorge. “Back then, I didn’t believe in the slightest that the

waterfall actually existed,” he says today. And initially, it was

not even that important to him. “What fascinated me was the

fact that this several-mile-long section was still undocumented

Ian Baker in the Tsangpo Gorge with local hunters.

06 | CREDO

and unknown.” He also found the idea of going there “absolutely

captivating” due to the many myths and legends surrounding

the place.

He joined a group of adventurers planning to explore inside

the Tsangpo Gorge. Accompanied by hired porters, Baker set

off in April 1993. All the team had to help them find their way

were the records of a Buddhist lama who had visited the region

in the 18th century. After several weeks in the deepest wilder-

ness, the expedition risked ending in disaster: the explorers

had almost run out of food, and the porters were refusing to

go any further.

“It was very much like

coming home.”

Baker managed to persuade them that the next village

could not be far off. They snared wild animals to eat. From the

towering peaks high above them, avalanches crashed down the

mountainside. Heavy rain prevented any progress for days on

end. Then, finally, the adventurers came upon a snow-covered

pass that would allow them to reach Pemako. Shortly afterward,

they heard the sound of dogs barking.

“We came upon two hunters. They were utterly shocked;

they had never seen anyone coming from our direction.” The

hunters took the group to their village, a further two days’

journey away. Here, Baker says, they came across two bear

cubs. Hunters had killed the mother and had brought the cubs

with them back to the village. “This place was like Middle Earth

in ‘The Lord of the Rings’!” Aside from a few knives, pots and

primitive weapons, the place showed few signs of being in the

20th century. “There was this intoxication of being lost in such

a primordial world, like how the earth was when it was young.

You just wanted to get lost. You wanted to disappear.” Baker

laughs. “Dangerous. I guess it was my particular psyche that

worked that way.”

A secret key to paradiseAs far as the waterfall was concerned, the explorers drew a

blank. The local people dashed their hopes, claiming that the

innermost part of the steep gorge was impenetrable and that

there was also no waterfall there. After a few days, the team

turned back, defeated for the time being. But as things turned

out it was not to be their last visit to the area.

Portrait | Ian Baker

However, Baker remained bewitched by the magic of Pe-

mako, and the thought of the last few unexplored miles turned

into a complete obsession. “There has to be something, even if

there is no waterfall. Why would the Tibetans describe it as a

gateway to a lost paradise?”

In the years that followed, Baker returned to Pemako six

times with different companions to study the region and make

further headway. Each time, he was thwarted by the extremely

difficult terrain or the unpredictable weather. Eventually, a local

lama let him into a secret: he told Baker that he had to go on a

pilgrimage to a certain mountain in the region, where he would

find the key to unlock the innermost part of the gorge.

Lost in the cloudsBaker set to work. In 1995, he undertook a six-week expedition

to the mysterious mountain. “It was like being in a Harry Potter

story,” he says today. And indeed this trip was to bring him

Collectors’ items covering three centuries in Asia: a scroll painting, ...

CREDO | 07

... wall hangings from Nepal and Tibet as well as artistically decorated furniture from the whole region of the Himalayas adorn Baker’s house.

closer to his goal: when Baker returned to the Tsangpo Gorge,

the villagers were impressed that the foreign explorers had

respected their traditions. “They said: ‘OK, now you’ve been

initiated, we’ll tell you how you can get down there,’” Baker says.

Hunters led Baker and his companions across snow-covered

passes, landslides and steep slopes to a ledge from which they

could see the Rainbow Falls that had been described by the

expedition of 1924. Then, from the depths of the gorge more

than half a mile below him, Baker heard a thundering noise and

saw swirls of spray. Whether there really was a waterfall down

there, Baker could not see for sure. He decided to take climbing

equipment with him on his next trip.

Back in the USA, Baker presented his project to the National

Geographic Society. Straight away, the society’s leading lights

embraced the idea of supporting the researcher’s quest to find

the legendary waterfall. They engaged documentary maker

Bryan Harvey to accompany Baker. The group also included

Baker’s close friend Hamid Sardar, and Ken Storm Jr., who had

been part of Baker’s first expedition to Pemako back in 1993. In

late 1998, the men set off.

In Pemako, hunters took the group across snow and densely

thicketed slopes, deeper and deeper into the gorge. The weather

was mostly extremely poor. “We couldn’t see a thing and were

simply lost in the clouds.” For virtually the whole time, the men

were unable to see the source of the thundering noise far below.

Down into the thundering depthsIt took several days of difficult descent using professional

climbing gear before Baker and his team caught sight of their

goal: the waterfall they saw was nearly 100 feet high and thun-

dered deafeningly into the depths below. And there was more:

on the other side of the gorge, some 30 feet above the water, was

an oval-shaped entrance, about 20 feet in size, leading into a cave.

08 | CREDO

“Actually, it was amazing when you realize that the things that

even I had written off and that 75 years earlier had been dis-

missed as a romance of geography and a mythological marvel

suddenly turn out to be real!” says Ian Baker. “And the fact that

there is this tunnel that goes into the rock is just mind-boggling.”

The adventurers found themselves in strange surroundings.

“You’re in a subtropical world suddenly. You’re looking up at

an area with hanging glaciers, but you’re in an area where

there’s wild banana trees and tropical foliage,” Baker explains.

“So you’re in this place where every geographical zone is com-

pressed into one.”

However, the men were unable to get to the mysterious

tunnel on the other side of the gorge. Baker tried all he could

think of to find a way over to the other side, he explains today.

There was no way of bridging the raging torrents of the Tsangpo.

According to prophecies from centuries ago, the waterfall

conceals the way into a hidden paradise. Baker is still asking

himself the same question: “Would the tunnel simply have come

to an end after 60 feet or could we have walked along it for

days?” Even now, he still does not know the answer.

A turning pointShortly after the Chinese authorities found out that foreign ex-

plorers – and not a Chinese team – had been the first to discover

the legendary waterfall in the Tsangpo Gorge, China banned

foreigners from the region. “Since then, I’ve tried to go back,”

says Baker. As a foreigner, however, he has no chance. “We

partly succeeded because we discovered it on the terms of the

people who live there,” Baker concludes. “The fascination was

to follow this Tibetan treasure map.”

In the days following his discovery, he slowly began to

realize that his life would change dramatically, he says today.

You can still sense how overwhelmed he was by what came

next. The media acclaimed Baker’s discovery as a sensation.

He gave countless interviews in New York, Washington and

Hong Kong. “Then people were coming up to me...,” Baker

says, taking a deep breath. “It was insane! They were offer-

ing me 60 000 dollars, 100 000 dollars to take them there.”

Of course, he refused the lot, he adds. “But I understood

how dangerous it can all become.” Well-known publishers

were suddenly lining up, bidding against one another for

a book deal. Baker signed a contract with Penguin Books,

which published “The Heart of the World” in 2004, a detailed

account of Baker’s expeditions to Pemako between 1993

and 1998.

Hidden promise in the magic of plantsBaker is currently busy preparing for his next expedition,

which he plans to launch later this year. He will be returning to

the Pemako region but entering it from the Indian side this time.

Once again, he hopes to get to the bottom of a great mystery:

together with a Bhutanese plant collector, Baker will travel to an

isolated region that, according to tradition, is home to five plants

with magical powers. One of them, Baker explains, reputedly

allows people to remember their past lives. Another harbors

the power to transform them into wild animals. “We don’t

know what kind of plants they are,” says Baker. “But they’ll

be psychoactive for sure.”

Portrait | Ian Baker

The Dalai Lama wrote the foreword for Baker’s book about the Tsangpo expedition.

Sascha Zastiral is the Bangkok correspondent for the Weltreporter network,

a group of freelance correspondents based all around the world, and has

reported from South and Southeast Asia since 2007. He writes regularly for

the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” among other publications. His articles have also

appeared in “Der Spiegel,” “Stern” and “Geo.”

“There was this

intoxication of being lost

in such a primordial world.

You just wanted to get lost.

You wanted to disappear.

Dangerous.”

The task is unlikely to be easy this time around either: the

people living on the mountain on whose slopes the mysterious

plants are said to grow are thought to be hostile to strangers.

Once again, Baker will have to use all his skill and imagination to

reach his goal.

And this is the guiding principle behind his expeditions, he

explains: the journey is as important as the destination itself.

This is entirely in keeping with a motto of the Tibetan pilgrims

that he embraced a long time ago: “Whatever happens, carry it

along the path.” Thus, with hindsight, Baker is almost happy

that he was unable to discover what lay beyond the mysterious

tunnel mouth he saw opposite the waterfall on the other side of

the Tsangpo Gorge. “It’s important to still have places in the

world that keep us dreaming.”

Ian Baker in front of the mystical waterfall, the gateway to a lost paradise.

10 | CREDO

Why?How come?

It’s child’s play, isn’t it? Not exactly. When children

ask questions, things really get interesting. We’ve

asked around a bit. Just out of curiosity.

Portfolio | Children’s questions

CREDO | 11

Are there things that you’d really like to know?

We’re going on vacation soon, to a country called Croatia. They

say it’s always warm there and there’s a beach. My Daddy says

people there speak another language that we can’t understand.

Why do they talk differently?

What do you think?

My Daddy says: people speak differently in every country in the

world, and in Croatia people speak Croatian.

Does your Daddy know everything?

Of course.

And if there’s something he doesn’t know, who do you go to

and ask then?

My teacher. She’s very nice, but very strict too. She was pregnant

for a long time and now the baby is here. She always explained

exactly how everything works and how the baby grows in her

tummy and manages to survive. For example, she told us that

when she eats something, the baby eats too. That always inter-

ested me. Now I know.

Do you have other questions? I could try and answer them

for you.

I want to become an artist because they always wear great

clothes. What do you have to do to become an artist?

You have to be able to sing well, or draw, play an instrument.

Something like that.

I like to dance. But now I’ve remembered what I always wanted

to know. Why is it always so cold here? I don’t understand. My

Mommy says that all the time and she curses when she says it.

Maybe …

Well?

Maybe it’s so cold here because it’s always warm somewhere

else. The sun can’t be everywhere.

That sounds logical.

What does that mean, “logical”?

“Logical” is what grown-ups say when they mean: “That

makes sense.”

Ah.

“Why is it always so

cold here?” Sonya

Leora, six years old, Harlem (New York), USA

Mother: teacher, father: artist

“Why are there flying

squirrels?” Leora

Sonya, seven years old, Moscow, RussiaFather: journalist, radio presenter, mother: illustrator

12 | CREDO

Portfolio | Children’s questions

Leonin, what questions are bothering you at the moment?

Lots.

For example?

Why does the TGV train from Zurich to Paris always leave from

platform 15? Who decides that? I don’t understand.

And otherwise?

I’d like to know where words come from. Why is a table called a

table and not just “Hawaii”? And if a table were called “Hawaii”,

what would Hawaii be called? Who can decide what things are

called? Grown-ups always say: “That’s just the way it is.” But I

want to know and it won’t let go of me. My Mommy then says I

should think of something else, but I can’t get these questions

out of my head. Why don’t we stay in the air when we jump up?

Who invented soccer? Or last week: we were in the zoo and on

the way back we found a dead swallow on the ground. I put

leaves over it, so it wouldn’t get wet, it was raining so much. But

if it’s now dead, where is it?

Do you know what curiosity is?

My mother explained it to me. It’s when you absolutely want to

know something. That’s called curiosity.

Exactly. Would you say you’re a curious kid?

I think so.

What would you absolutely like to know?

I want to know how you make movies. I don’t understand that.

I always watch movies on our DVD player and ask myself:

“Where do all the pictures and the sounds come from?”

And otherwise?

Why are there flying squirrels? I’ve never seen one, but a friend

of mine told me they exist. But how are squirrels supposed to

fly? They’ve got no wings.

What do you think?

Maybe they fly with their tail or maybe they have paper wings.

Are there any other questions that interest you but for which

you simply can’t find an answer?

Yes. How do you make babies? I asked my Mommy but she said

it was too complicated to explain to me.

Does it make you angry that she won’t explain it to you?

No. I just want to get big very quickly so I’m like a grown-up and

understand everything.

Who do you go to when you have questions?

To my Dad, he really knows a lot.

Does he know everything?

No, sometimes he only knows part of the answer and then he

says to me: “Let me think about that, then I’ll tell you the rest.”

What have you been learning recently?

I’ve learned to swim.

Are you interested in grown-up things? Do you understand

everything that your parents talk about and do?

No. I only understand a little. Can I go out and play again now?

“Why do people have hairs

in their nose?” Leonin

Leonin, eight years old, Zurich, Switzerland

Mother: student of German, father: photographer

CREDO | 13

What do you think?

In heaven. But then it came from there. Under the ground,

perhaps. I don’t know.

What do you do when you want to find out things like that?

I ask Daddy or Mommy. Or my teacher. I once asked her: why do

people have hairs in their nose? And she thought it was so that

all your snot doesn’t drop out. Is that right?

Is there something that you’ve learned recently that really

impressed you?

What? I don’t understand.

Something that you’ve learned in school, maybe, and where

you thought: “That’s really cool!”

We’ve been looking at the world. It’s a ball. I didn’t believe it

because when I look out of the window it’s all flat and you can

see right up to the mountains. So there’s nothing round there,

is there? I found that pretty cool. Back when I was little, I had

lots more questions because I knew less. Now I know a lot more

so I ask less things. How is it when you’re grown up, do you then

know everything?

Are there things that you don’t understand but would like to

know about?

When Mommy and Daddy talk about adult stuff, I hardly under-

stand them. Then I ask what they’re saying and they say I

shouldn’t stick my nose in it.

What would you like to know?

When do we learn about fractions in math? I would also really

like to know how my cousin learned Japanese. Lots of games

come from Japan and I’m envious that he can understand them.

What do you do when you don’t understand something?

I look it up in a dictionary or I ask Mommy. The kids in my class

haven’t got a clue either.

Is there anything that’s really impressed you recently?

Hm ... a girlfriend of Mommy gave me a Barbie that I hadn’t ever

seen before. It was really impressive with lots of clothes and ac-

cessories. Here it is! (fetches the Barbie doll) I was very excited

on my first day at school about making lots of new friends. I was

very shy when I had to go to the principal.

Is there anything you would like to know about countries

abroad?

What language do dogs bark in? And do parrots abroad still

speak Chinese? What time is it now in America? My Daddy ex-

plained that it’s night there when it’s day with us. How much

money do you earn in America? And what about the song “Big

City” – do you sing that too?

Are there differences between Chinese people and foreigners?

Foreigners say “hello” and Chinese say “nihao.” That’s the big-

gest difference. And Daddy says foreigners eat their food raw.

Italians eat ginger as if it were fruit. The parents of one of the

kids in my class say that. And you’ve got a high nose.

“Is it true that people

die if they swim in the

Dead Sea?” Xia Jiayi

Xia Jiayi, nicknamed “Bebe,” seven years old, Chongqing, China Father: engineer, mother: university administrator

14 | CREDO

Regarding “Big City,” did you know that your hometown is

the biggest in the world?

I didn’t know that. I only know that Russia is the biggest country

in the world.

Do you know how many people live in Chongqing?

At least 1300! More? Let me guess, maybe a million? Still more?

The number for China surely has hundreds of digits. Let me tell

you something, auntie: blue whales are much bigger than us

people.

What would you like to know about your hometown?

I want to know why it’s so hot. I’ve heard that Chongqing is the

hottest of the three hot cities in China. Is it true that people die

if they swim in the Dead Sea?

What would you really like to know? What do you want to learn?

How you bake cookies. Especially the “Maria” cookies, they are

my favorites.

And otherwise?

I’d like to know what the sun does when it goes down.

Who could give you an answer to that?

Hm, maybe ... my teacher?

Is there something that he’s already taught you and that you

think is really great?

Yes. We’re learning about children’s rights. I think it’s great that

they exist. Here lots of kids live on the street, but really they

should be able to live with their family and in a house. They’ve

got a right to that! And all children have a right to have enough

food and to go to school and to learn something. But there are

lots of people who make children work. Sometimes it’s even

their own children. So that they can have something to eat. Then

it’s very complicated. The children do the work that really a

grown-up should be doing. And then they can’t play anymore

and can’t go to school.

Is there a place that you’d like to visit one day?

Yes, the public pool! I’d like to go to swimming lessons with my

Mommy.

Is there anything else that interests you? Perhaps about

boys?

I’d like to know why they’re always arm-wrestling. Even though

they’re not strong at all (laughs).

Portfolio | Children’s questions

“What does the sun do

when it goes down?” Joia

Joia, eight years old, Beira, Mozambique

Parents’ occupations: research staff at the Catholic University

CREDO | 15

Essay | Lifelong learning

As we move towards a knowledge-based society, it is

never too early to start promoting children’s learning.

Or so you might think. Yet education specialist Salman

Ansari takes a very different view: he argues that edu-

cation is basically useless unless the acquisition of

knowledge is fueled by natural curiosity.

A person’s eagerness to learn and gain new experiences is more

pronounced in early childhood than at any other stage of life. The

driving force behind this thirst for knowledge is curiosity, or in-

quisitiveness; a craving for all things new, a desire better to un der-

stand ourselves and the world at large and to explore our own

limits. To maintain this sense of curiosity, it is important to encour -

age this appetite for discovery and stimulate the imagi nation, to

strengthen and develop the personality, to impart knowledge to

children in a way that is appropriate for their age and – above all

– to link new insights to previously acquired knowledge.

How to keep curiosity alive over an entire lifetime is a burn-

ing question in our ever more complex society. Nowadays, the

skills we acquire at school and in training are no longer any-

where near sufficient for making sense of our increasingly ex-

tended working lives. The assertion that the foundations for life-

long learning must be laid at an early stage therefore requires no

further explanation, nor does the fact that we all have a natural

inclination to learn. What does require an explanation, however,

is what prevents us from learning, what makes us reluctant to go

to school and weakens our sense of curiosity. This is an issue

that concerns the quality of our learning environment.

Grasping conceptsThere is a direct link between a child’s learning and the applica-

tion of acquired knowledge. Children who devote themselves to

the painstaking process of learning to walk, for example, will

practice this activity tirelessly until they have mastered it. It

would never occur to a child to suddenly give up, however many

failed attempts are made in the process. Any offers of help from

adults are often vehemently refused. There are plenty of similar

examples that illustrate this point. Learning is initially based on

sensory experiences: children are eager to understand, feel,

touch, smell and listen – and they want to try out all these things

in their own way and at their own pace. Adult intervention is

often perceived as disruptive and can lead to excessive levels of

anxiety and demoralization in the long run.

Investigation and integrationYoung children are unable to decide for themselves which learn-

ing experiences further their intellectual and emotional devel-

opment and which do not. It is up to parents, significant figures,

educators, developmental psychologists and neurobiologists

to investigate this. Ultimately, every action in which we are

un able to engage on an emotional and creative level is reduced

Stimulating knowledge

16 | CREDO

to simply going through the motions or done for the sake of pure

amusement and does not leave any lasting impact on or estab-

lish connections in the mind.

Another barrier to learning is created when teachers and sig-

nificant figures try to impose their own ideas and life experi-

ences on children. The extent to which curiosity can be contin u-

ously reignited and maintained depends largely on whether the

significant figures in a child’s life are able to recognize the child’s

point of view and state of intellectual, emotional and linguistic

development and integrate this into well-thought-out concepts.

IdentificationAs a teacher, I am keen to encourage kindergarten children to

tell me about all sorts of things and to express themselves with

the help of familiar images from their world when they talk to

me. This enables me to find out what they already know and how

they learn about the world and to understand the children’s

thought patterns.

Since they are in the company of other children, they also

learn to listen to what others have to say, what experiences they

talk about and what linguistic forms they use. In doing so, they

become curious about one another and learn to understand

what the others are saying – they share their knowledge. Dif-

ferent ideas, beliefs and views can only be expressed once a

dialog has been established.

Allow me to give an example: today I brought in leaves from

various trees and shrubs found on site for each child in the kin-

dergarten. Their task was to sort the leaves according to similar-

ity, and they quickly identified matching pairs. We compared the

leaves and tried to describe their shape, which is not an easy

task, but they still managed to find a number of adjectives to de-

scribe them, such as “oval,” “round,” “smooth,” and “jagged.”

Then we went out and looked for the trees that the leaves

came from – in our case, chestnut, oak and copper beech. We

examined and touched their bark and branches and recognized

the clear differences between them. The bark varied between

smooth, gray, gray-green, silvery-green, black-brown and

cracked, while the branches might be springy, rigid, bent or

green-brown. The children were astonished to find that there

was so much to discover and describe in a single tree.

ExperimentationWe asked ourselves how trees take up water – was it through the

leaves or the roots? One child believed that plants would only

“drink” water from their roots. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“When you water a plant, you don’t water the leaves,” was the

answer. Then we imagined how nature would look after heavy

rainfall, and together we came to the conclusion that the leaves

would not grow any thicker and the grass would look the same.

We took the leaves into the common room, and I suggested

putting drops of water on them so that we could watch and see

Essay | Lifelong learning

CREDO | 17

whether they would gradually absorb them all the same. Each

child was given a beaker of water, and in actual fact the drops

did not penetrate the leaves, although they did make them glis-

ten beautifully. Then we raised the question of which materials

“drink” water and which do not. The suggested materials were

paper, aluminum foil, a cotton towel, greaseproof paper and a

chamois leather cloth, so we gathered these items and carried

out an experiment. The children discovered that cotton can

“drink” water, but aluminum foil cannot. By now they were al-

most sure that plants can absorb water through their roots and

distribute it to the stem, branches and leaves, although they did

not ask how the water can rise up to the tops of large trees.

This example is intended to give an impression of the endless

variety of topics available and the possibilities for consolidating

this knowledge over the next few days or in years to come. There

are no right or wrong answers here; we are feeling our way, just

as people have always felt their way further and further towards

understanding phenomena that seem incomprehensible at first.

We consider every solution put forward and test it together.

“What do you mean?” is an important question that a teacher

must always ask to prompt further explanation or reflection.

MotivationOne kindergarten teacher who took part in one of my training

events came to the realization that it can be very easy to strike

out in new directions if you adjust your point of view – even just

a little. In this case, the children were given dried beans, juniper

berries, peas, lentils, corn kernels and raisins and were tasked

with comparing them, naming their properties – and expanding

their vocabulary in the process, and learning how to estimate

proportions in size and quantity.

Many of them had never heard the word “raisin” before. Two

of the children debated whether raisins and grapes had anything

in common. The kindergarten teacher immediately intervened

and explained that “A raisin is a dried grape.” This action was as-

sessed in the discussion later on, and in a subsequent interview

the kindergarten teacher said: “It suddenly became clear to me

that this is what I have always done. I gave the children a direct,

explanatory answer to a question. Now I realize that giving child-

ren such direct answers to their questions stifles their curiosity.

However, responding with the counter-question ‘What do you

mean?’ encourages them to think about the question more deeply

and to come up with their own thoughts about a phenomenon.”

This realization is a prime example of lifelong learning and

the opportunities that are open to us if we, as adults, discover

the world together with the children.

Salman Ansari was born in India in 1941 and has worked in Germany since

the 1960s. A graduate in chemistry and an expert in education, he has

taught at the Odenwaldschule and is now in great demand as a lecturer. He

recently published a book entitled “Rettet die Neugier! Gegen die Akademi-

sierung der Kindheit” (“Give Curiosity a Chance! Arguments Against the

Academization of Childhood”).

18 | CREDO

Entering uncharted territory

Report | Urban Explorers

CREDO | 19

They climb up skyscrapers, spend nights in disused

bunkers and explore abandoned castles: this is what

it is like to go on expeditions with urban explorers,

the adventurers of the modern world.

“How much further?” shouts Tom.

“About 200 meters,” replies Simon, “maybe more.” He looks at

his floor plan. “We’re right underneath the kitchen.”

“You said that ten minutes ago,” says Tom.

“Stop panicking and keep crawling.”

It is seven-thirty on a Saturday morning, and most of the

inhabitants of Colchester, a small town north-east of London,

are still fast asleep. Some will soon shuffle into the kitchen in

slippers, make themselves coffee, toast and eggs for breakfast

and gaze out into the rainy sky. Simon, Tom and Mark are crawl-

ing along the damp heating duct of a former mental asylum, ten

meters below ground, looking for the laundry room. “Once

we’ve reached the laundry,” Simon had said in the pub the

evening before, “then we’ll be in. There’s a wastewater drain

there we can pry open.” And they were all excited at the pros-

pect, giving one another pats on the back and ordering another

round of beers. At that moment, none of them – apart from

Simon – gave any thought to how difficult it would be to find

their way through the musty ducts of a hundred-year-old

hospital in total darkness.

“I hate this duct,” says Mark, cursing to himself. The trio

have spent most of their time on hands and knees, their faces

just a few inches above the loamy ground – an experience that

is all the more unpleasant when they come across a dead rat

blocking their path. Or the rotting carcass of a fox.

Ten meters below the Eiffel TowerMark, who has fallen back slightly, shouts from behind: “That

white dust there – do you think that’s asbestos?” Simon and Tom

stop in mid-crawl. Asbestos? Their breathing is the only sound

to be heard. Along with ferocious security guards and vicious

dogs, asbestos is one of the things Simon cannot stand. He

seems to ponder this for a moment and run through everything

he knows about the hospital in his mind: its history, the type of

construction, the materials, the entrances and exits. Then he

shakes his head. “It’s plaster. Let’s keep crawling.”

Simon, Tom and Mark had never met before this expedition.

At Colchester station, their rendezvous point, they recognized

each other by the builders’ hard hats dangling from their back-

packs and their dark hooded sweaters. Simon Cornwell, aged 42,

works for a software company in London. Tom Nelson, who is

ten years younger, is an architect and author of science fiction

novels, while Mark Simmons, aged 25, is a philosophy student.

Their paths do not cross during the week, but at the weekend

they become what they call urban explorers, climbing through

disused subway tunnels, swimming in subterranean rivers

and discovering forgotten caverns and abandoned buildings.

Equipped with old maps obtained from the land registry, they

set out in search of uncharted territory – terra incognita –

spurred on by sheer curiosity.

“I often wonder what

it’s like on the roof of

the Tate Modern.” Mark Simmons

“I often wonder what it’s like on the roof of the Tate Modern

or ten meters below the Eiffel Tower,” says Mark, sitting in the

pub with his mouth full of chicken on garlic bread, “and then I

set off, because it drives me crazy if I don’t do it.” These are the

kind of questions children would ask, although that is not to say

that they are childish: after all, it is questions like these that got

mankind to the moon.

Text: Sacha Batthyany | Photos: Simon Cornwell and Bradley Garrett

20 | CREDO

They drive in Simon’s car from the pub to a location near the

hospital and sleep for a while before fastening on their head-

lamps and getting going. Simon uses a piece of metal to raise a

manhole cover, lets the other two go ahead of him and slips

down the hole, closing the cover from inside with a loud clang –

this is the moment when they leave the real world of Colchester

behind them: the coffee shops where pale-looking children sit

eating cinnamon buns, the red-brick houses, the meticulously

pruned gardens where the first tulips are coming into bloom. As

they shut the manhole cover, it is as if they are entering another

dimension: this is the world of the urban explorer.

Just like sailors of old making landfall after weeks at seaIt all started – as these things so often did – in San Francisco,

when a group of performance artists called the San Francisco

Suicide Club set about redefining urban spaces at the end of the

1970s. They lived on roofs, slept on bridge piers and held parties

in the sewage system. They were hippies, and this was an era of

social movements. Everyone in San Francisco was either for or

against some cause or another, and many campaigns eventually

fizzled out. The term “urban explorers” did not re-emerge until

the mid-1990s, when the Canadian Jeff Chapman – better known

by his pseudonym “Ninjalicious” – started publishing a fanzine

entitled “Infiltration” both in printed form and online from 1996

onward. He used it to describe urban expeditions and visits to

places where people would not normally venture. He later went

on to write a book, “Access All Areas,” which is now regarded as

the “bible” among the urban explorer community, with Chap-

man hailed as their hero.

Chapman devised a code that urban explorers should adhere

to: do not break anything, never smash a window to get into a

building – this is what distinguishes them from thieves and van-

dals. In this spirit, today’s urban explorers have adopted the un-

written rule that they must “take nothing but photos and leave

nothing but footprints” as their own. Chapman died of cancer in

2005 at the age of 31, a few weeks before his book was pub-

lished, yet his followers continue to grow in number. These en-

thusiasts meet virtually through online forums such as “28 Days

Later” and “Urban Exploration Resource,” share their experien-

ces, supply one another with maps, offer tips, and issue war-

nings about the police, rusty nails – or, of course, asbestos.

Urban exploration is like mountaineering: there are risks in-

volved and fatal accidents happen. The forums report, for ex-

ample, that a Russian drowned in London’s sewers because he

failed to take into account that the Thames is a tidal river.

An other man, this one British, is said to have fallen from a ladder

and is now thought to be confined to a wheelchair. Yet the sen-

sation of discovering something new and seeing places no one

else would ever see outweighs any doubts. “There is nothing

better than sitting on the bus after an expedition,” writes

Vanishing-Girl, a well-known forum member. “I like to pick some-

one out, a really arrogant businessman on his way to the office for

example, and think to myself: ‘You have absolutely no idea where

I’ve just been: on top of Big Ben, in one of Churchill’s disused war

bunkers, or 20 meters below ground right under your bed.’”

“Take nothing but photos

and leave nothing

but footprints.”

Codex of Urban Explorers

Report | Urban Explorers

“Welcome to Severalls,” says Simon Cornwell, the leader of the expedition into the disused sanatorium north-east of London. “Abandoned rooms are full of life,” says Mark – a student of philosophy and an enthusiastic urban explorer.

CREDO | 21

“We’re here. This is the laundry,” says Simon. He shines his

headlamp upward and climbs up the ladder. “Are you sure?”

Mark responds, but Simon has already pushed the hatch open

with his back and climbed out. Mark and Tom follow him. They

brush the dirt off each other’s pants and take a look around, just

like sailors would have done 600 years ago when they finally

made landfall after weeks at sea – only instead of palm trees and

mysterious species of birds, Simon, Tom and Mark are met with

the sight of old boilers and walls covered in fungal infestations,

with wallpaper hanging off in strips. “Welcome to Severalls,”

says Simon, and you can tell from his voice how proud and ex-

cited he is. If he knew the other two better, he would hug them.

Instead, Tom hands out cans of lukewarm beer.

“I was born with the adventurer gene”Severalls Hospital is situated on the outskirts of Colchester, and

between 1913 and 1997 it housed up to 2000 patients and 900

staff. It was virtually a small village in itself, built in a red-brick

Victorian style, with its own chapel and a kitchen the size of a

theater. Yet Severalls has simply been left to rot and silence now

reigns where some 3000 people used to live. There is decay

every where. The site is surrounded by an electric fence with No

Entry signs and cameras positioned at every corner. “That is

how it has to be,” says Simon. “If any old tourist could get into

the building, it would lose its appeal for me.”

Bursting with energy, Simon, Tom and Mark rush down the

long corridors, taking photographs and reading yellowed patient

records that have carelessly been left lying around. They pick up

children’s shoes and speculate about what the child who once

wore them might be doing today. They clamber under the roof,

sit on the beds and pause in old padded cells to imagine what it

used to be like there. They take the same approach as an ethnog-

rapher or an archeologist – yet above all they are adventurers.

Simon delivers monologues on the conditions in the “mad-

houses” at the beginning of the 20th century, where mentally ill

people were often admitted in handcuffs and effectively im-

prisoned for years on end. “They started using electric shock

22 | CREDO

Report | Urban Explorers

Bradley Garrett, geographer, wrote his doctorate on urban exploring and inspected over 300 abandoned sites. In 2012 he was in Detroit (photo at right), and two years earlier in the Abbey Mills Pumping Station for foul water in London (photo above). Garrett: “For some of us this urge to explore things is simply too great. Curiosity wins.”

Simon Cornwell’s favorite occupation is exploring shafts (see photo below).

CREDO | 23

therapy to treat patients in the mid-1940s,” he muses, and a mo-

ment later his face lights up like a child’s as he manages to open

a locked door. They scramble down the shaft of the old kitchen

dumbwaiter as if it were a playground.

“Whether I like it or not, I was born with the adventurer

gene,” says Simon. “I always have this urge to go out and see

places that spark my curiosity. This isn’t prohibited in England.

As long as you don’t damage anything, you can venture wher-

ever you like, with the exception of military facilities. My wife

can barely stand it. When we go on vacation, I don’t see beaches:

I see bunkers, shafts and abandoned lighthouses, and I wonder

what it is like in there.”

“Visually, the world

as we know it

bores me.” Mark Simmons

Simon describes himself as a “guerilla historian,” because he

is interested in documenting the decay of the places he visits.

For others, urban exploration is all about the pure adrenaline

rush, while some crave the distinctive atmosphere that lingers in

these forgotten places. Mark, the philosophy student, calls it “the

esthetic of decay.” In today’s towns and cities, where everything

is so clean, slick and ordered and one Starbucks looks the same

as the next, he finds such places fascinating: “Visually, the world

as we know it bores me: Paris, London, Rome – it’s a homogen -

ous mass. I like things that are simply there next to each other,

with no one to clear them away: a chair, a cup, an old doll – lots

of little stories.” According to Mark, abandoned spaces are full of

life. While he is busy taking photographs of old electricity gener-

ators, Simon is looking for the shower rooms on the old floor

plans and Tom is taking notes for his next science-fiction story,

they hear dogs barking – quietly at first, then getting louder.

Tom: “The security guards must have heard us.”

Simon: “Let’s get out of here. Through the duct.”

Mark: “I hate this duct.”

“We are not hippies”It would be hard to find anyone more intensively involved in

urban exploration than Bradley Garrett. The 32-year-old Ameri-

can, who sports a goatee, once ran a skateboarding store in L.A.

but now teaches at the prestigious Oxford University. He has

just completed a doctoral thesis on urban exploring, having

spent two years following the adventures of a group of young

explorers. “In the field of ethnology, it is quite common to live

among the people you are studying and to follow them wherever

they go. This is known as ‘going native.’ You can go hunting with

the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea, but you can also go

exploring with a group of young people in the subway tunnels of

London, which is what I did.”

According to Garrett, they investigated 300 places, including

ruins, tunnels, skyscrapers and churches. In April 2012 they

made their way to the top of the Shard in London, Europe’s tall-

est building at the time, and the pictures they uploaded onto the

Internet attracted a great deal of media attention. “We went up

there because we wanted to know what it was like, but also be-

cause we wanted to show what is possible in a city where hun-

dreds of thousands of CCTV cameras are supposed to be provid-

ing security. London is a fortress, an apparently impregnable

city, but it was child’s play for us to climb buildings and explore

subway tunnels in spite of the heavy surveillance. We stayed

overnight in disused bunkers and navigated the sewage system

– an architectural masterpiece in itself – in a rubber dinghy.”

Garrett believes that the security implied by the cameras is

pure fiction. “I have already offered my services to the police. I

know every weak spot in the city. I’m like a hacker, except that I

work on the ground rather than on a computer: I know how to

get in and where to find the best places to hide, but the police

weren’t interested in my help. They thought I was crazy.”

“Too many security guards.

Forget it.” Simon Cornwell

Garrett is keen to point out that urban explorers are not

dreamy hippies who do not know what to do with their time. On

the contrary, they are liberal-minded people who believe in tak-

ing personal responsibility. “Most of them have an academic

background, enjoy photography and are committed environmen-

talists. Their penchant for exploring new places is also a reaction

to the restrictions imposed on public spaces.” Everywhere you

go, you are bombarded with warnings: don’t do this, don’t do

that, don’t go in here, don’t go in there. “The government would

prefer it if we all spent our time in front of the television, stayed

at home and didn’t cause any mischief. But some of us have this

urge to discover things, and it is simply too strong to resist.

Curiosity wins. We have to get out. We have to keep on going.”-

24 | CREDO

“Cut from the same cloth as Cook or Scott”Garrett is not remotely surprised to find that so many urban ex-

plorers live in Britain. “It is an island, surrounded by the sea.

There is a more pronounced sense of wanderlust here.” He

points out that Britain has a long tradition when it comes to ex-

ploration: Henry Morton Stanley, who explored Africa, James

Cook, who sailed the Pacific Ocean three times, and the polar

explorer Robert Scott are just a few of its illustrious adventur-

ers. The desire to venture into underground tunnels is, accord-

ing to Garrett, the same as the urge to sail oceans or scale moun-

tains. “What we lack is public acceptance. People regard us

as jokers, but we are actually cut from the same cloth as Cook

or Scott.”

It is six o’clock on a dark, cold evening. Most of the people of

Colchester are sitting in their comfortable armchairs and watch-

ing one of those TV talent shows that seem to be broadcast on a

loop, while Simon, Tom and Mark are once again crawling

through the heating duct, past the dead rats, the fox and the

white dust. They have spent a whole day investigating the prem-

ises of what was once Severalls Hospital, spread over more than

a square kilometer, thinking about the patients who lived there

in the last century. The sound of barking dogs jolts them back to

reality.

They are tired and hungry. Their pants and jackets are cover-

ed in sludge. Mark, who is once again lagging behind slightly,

calls to the others: “There is apparently one of those turbine fac-

tories from the fifties that were top secret at the time. Near

Guildford.” They keep crawling. “Have you heard of it?” Simon

pauses: “The testing site for jets? Is that what you mean? No

chance. We’d never get in there.” Mark: “Are you sure?” Simon

stops and turns around, his headlamp shining straight into the

others’ faces. “Too many security guards. Forget it.” Tom says:

“I’m up for it.” They carry on crawling in silence. Just before

they reach the exit, Simon says: “All right then. I’ll get hold of

the plans.”

Report | Urban Explorers

Blank spots on the mapAcademic and urban explorer Bradley Garrett’s four dream destinations:

1. Kwangmyong: The subway system in the North Korean city of Pyong-

yang uses trains from pre-unification Berlin. There are a number of

stations that are not accessible to the public. These are known as

ghost stations, and one of them is called Kwangmyong.

2. Fordlândia: A ghost town south of Santarém in Brazil. Henry Ford

acquired a piece of rainforest here in 1928 with the intention of

cultivating rubber. Now much of the settlement has been swallowed

up by the jungle.

3. Metro 2, Moscow: Rumor has it that, from 1935 onward, the Soviet

dictator Joseph Stalin planned and partially built a secret metro

network for himself and the Soviet elite. There is said to be one

line connecting to an airport and another that leads to the city’s

Ramenki district, where various underground bunkers were sup-

posedly built.

4. The torch on the Statue of Liberty: There is said to be a ladder inside

the arm of the statue that takes you up to the top of the torch. If

that turns out not to be true, you could run a rope from the crown

to the torch and climb across.

Further readingBradley L. Garrett: “Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City

from Tunnels to Skyscrapers.” The book is due to be published in

October 2013. Sacha Batthyany is the editor of “DAS MAGAZIN,” the weekend supplement

of the Zurich “Tages-Anzeiger.”

CREDO | 25

Simon Cornwell, a pioneering urban explorer: “I see myself as a guerilla historian. I document decay.”

26 | CREDO

Interview | Reinhard Schulze

Interview: Mathias Plüss | Photos: Julian Salinas

Researchers have to be allowed to play

Interview | Barbara Hohn

Even plants have a memory, as the biologist Barbara Hohn found out. Such

groundbreaking discoveries only come about when scientists give free rein to

their curiosity.

CREDO | 27

CREDO: Professor Hohn, what is it that drives researchers?

Barbara Hohn: The origin of science is curiosity. When I was a

student and first heard of the structure of the genetic material

DNA – which had only recently been decoded – it fascinated me

straightaway. I wanted to hunt for basic biological principles. I

wanted to know how nature functions.

And that curiosity stays with you throughout your life?

Yes, that is correct. However, I have noticed that my cu-

ri osity horizon is becoming broader the older I get, and I am

be com ing increasingly interested in other research fields too,

like art, nature and people. But I do also try to stick to my

own topics.

You are 74 years old. Have you never thought of stopping?

The question never arose for me. I can’t simply switch science

off. That doesn’t mean that there is nothing else in my life – I

have a home, a garden and five grandchildren.

Some people say that their grandchildren help them to stay

mentally active. You probably don’t need that.

It’s a different kind of “active” – rather a physical kind. It’s tiring

to keep those wild beasts in check! (laughs) But the kids are

really sweet.

Do you look after them regularly?

Not regularly. It’s perhaps a bit egotistical, but I have to be

Molecular biologist Barbara Hohn: she just can’t switch science off.

28 | CREDO

Interview | Barbara Hohn

flexible: sometimes I’m here, sometimes I’m not. I go to semi-

nars, travel to meetings. Because I want to keep in touch with

the scientific mindset.

You’ve been working for 35 years here at the Friedrich

Miescher Institute in Basel. Is it a good place for you?

Oh yes. We’ve got decent basic funding, and a refreshing intel-

lectual spirit predominates here.

The Institute belongs to the Novartis Foundation. Is it at all

possible to research independently here?

We have the freedom to research whatever we want. Otherwise

the good people would have left long ago. People realized that

nothing of interest can emerge if you constrict researchers. And

I’ve also always kept my colleagues on a long leash.

Has it worked out for you?

Yes. I gave them a free hand and as a result they often came up

with great ideas. We repeatedly stimulated each other. Only

rare ly did I put a stop to anything – because young people should

be able to develop. And they’re all grateful to me for it. I’m still

getting letters from former colleagues all over the world.

Just how do you make discoveries? You can’t exactly hunt

for what you don’t know.

There’s a nice expression in English, namely “serendipity”: the

chance discovery of something for which you weren’t even look-

ing. For that you naturally need a little freedom to maneuver.

You have to be able to play a bit.

And do the discoveries then come automatically?

Not automatically. You need intuition to divine what could be

interesting and what not. Whenever a former Chinese colleague

of mine came across something unexpected and I asked him

whether he didn’t want to pursue it, he used to answer: “Well,

that would be a little difficult.” Which roughly means: No – be-

cause the Chinese are known for not saying “no” directly.

An other colleague remarked on this with the words: “You have

to pick the flowers on the way.”

Is curiosity really the sole motive of a scientist? Don’t some

just want to pursue a career?

Of course some scientists have a certain craving for re cognition.

And some are so success-oriented that curiosity and creativity

get left by the wayside. But on the other hand you have to un-

derstand that the pressure to publish is incredibly intense to-

day. If you apply for a position and haven’t got any publications

in respected journals, then you won’t make a good impression. Barbara Hohn in her garden: “You have to pick the flowers on the way.”

CREDO | 29

This naturally means that researchers are stuck in a straight-

jacket and have to keep publishing something all the time.

Does this perhaps mean good people are lost along the way?

I once had a very good student who fell through the cracks. She

was incredibly interested in research. She was always saying:

“That interests me,” and she had outstanding ideas. But her am-

bitions were centered only on research. Her career did not inter-

est her. And that’s not enough to get on. That would perhaps

have worked in the Middle Ages if you had a patron to support

you. But today we have to live from what we research.

You have published in the most renowned journals. One

of your research results got worldwide attention in 2006:

together with your team, you proved that even plants have

something along the lines of a memory. What was this,

exactly?

In our experiments we were able to show that plants increase

their recombination rate when they are affected by a pathogen.

To put it simply: when it’s under attack, the plant gives its

genes a good shake.

The biological significance behind this is perhaps that new genes

or combinations of genes are formed that might just lead to an

increased degree of resistance against the pathogen. What is

real ly astonishing is that the descendants of the affected plants

still have an increased recombination rate, sometimes into the

fourth generation. So the plants “remember” that their parents,

grandparents or great-grandparents were afflicted.

And that is what is meant by a “plant memory”?

Yes. This kind of memory also exists in animals, by the way. It’s

always a matter of environmental influences having an impact

not just on the current generation but on its progeny. Put sim-

ply: what you learn can also be passed down.

How did you come to science in the first place?

I originally studied chemistry – and that was because of my

chem istry teacher in Vienna. I was at a girls’ high school in

the 19th district and the chemistry teacher gave really excit -

ing lessons.

Wasn’t it rather unusual for a girl to study chemistry back

in the 1950s?

That’s right. There were just a few of us students who were girls.

There’s a story about that: when I told my mother that I wanted

to study chemistry, she had no idea what to think of it because

she was an artist. She sounded out the people she knew until

finally, with a few detours, she found a chemistry professor. I

spoke with him for a while, and then he said to me: “But I still

don’t understand why a young, pretty girl should so want to

study chemistry.” (laughs)

And that made you really want to study it?

Yes, that comment was a challenge to me. In that sense, it was

something positive for me.

Did people put many obstacles in your way later on?

It wasn’t always easy. My husband went to the famous Stanford

University in 1967. When I also applied for a job there, it turned

Passing on what you learnThe “plant memory” discovered by Barbara Hohn also occurs in ani-

mals. For example, some mother rats lick their young, while others do

this only rarely. If the baby of a non-licking mother is added to the lit-

ter of a licking mother, it will itself later become a mother who licks its

young. This licking behavior is thus adopted and even passed on to the

next generation.

30 | CREDO

Interview | Barbara Hohn

out that the Department of Biochemistry wasn’t accepting any

women. So I ended up in the Department of Pathology. In 1971

we moved to the newly founded Biozentrum of the University of

Basel. But it wasn’t easy here, either – women had only just got

the vote in Switzerland.

You started in chemistry, but over the course of your career

you’ve delved ever deeper into biology.

My husband and I were among the very first molecular biologists

anywhere. At first I was busy with viruses most of all, and with

the question as to how they package their genetic make-up.

Later you turned to bacteria and plants. Some of your re-

search results still play an important role in agriculture

today. Was that your goal?

No, I have always pursued my research out of sheer curiosity.

The applications are then usually completely unexpected. Such

as the agrobacterium tumefaciens on which I have researched a

lot myself.

It’s a soil bacterium that can infect plants.

It’s a highly subtle thing! It inserts part of its genetic make-up

into the DNA of the plant so that it will produce food for the bac-

terium. The genes that have been transferred are at the same

time responsible for the plant developing tumors. When that

was discovered, it never would have occurred to anyone that it

might one day be useful.

How is it useful?

You can use the bacterium as a gene shuttle by taking away the

tumor genes and replacing them with other genes. Thus you can

create transgenic plants that are very important in agriculture

all over the world today – in maize, wheat and rice. If you insert

the right genes, then you can get the plant to produce its own

pesticides, for example.

Genetically modified organisms are not exactly popular

in Europe.

No, and that’s a delicate topic. And yet transgenic plants can

make a contribution to ecologically friendly agriculture: if the

plant produces its own pesticides, then you need less poison.

Apples are sprayed with pesticide up to twelve times a year here

in Switzerland! For me, the resistance to such genetically modi-

fied crops is not really comprehensible.

Are there no dangers at all?

I know of not a single case in which genetically modified plants

had any dangerous consequences. It can happen that pests

become resistant to the poison produced by a transgenic plant.

That’s only natural, that’s evolution. But then nothing speaks

against deciding to implant another new gene in the plant.

Last year a French study was published, claiming that gen-

et ically modified maize caused tumors in rats.

That was a disaster! The statistics were wrong and the rat family

used was in any case prone to develop cancer. You can’t do that.

The real scandal is that a journal actually published this com-

pletely spurious study.

Do we really need genetically modified plants?

People have it good here, so they think that they don’t need

them. But surpluses don’t exist everywhere. We have to carry

out research into transgenic plants, if only to help people on

other continents. But most people don’t think so far. The media

with their biased reporting have sadly been playing a negative

role in all this.

CREDO | 31

Mathias Plüss, born in 1973, is a freelance science journalist.

Barbara Hohn was born in Klagenfurt in 1939 and studied chemistry in

Vienna. As a molecular biologist she was active in research at Tübingen, Yale

and Stanford before moving to Basel in 1971. She first worked at the uni-

versity there and then, from 1978, at the private Friedrich Miescher Institute

for Biomedical Research. She officially retired in 2004 but continues to work.

In 2010 she was awarded the Ludwig Wittgenstein Prize of the Austrian

Research Association in honor of her exceptional scientific achievements.

In recent years you have been awarded numerous scientific

prizes. What do they mean to you?

Of course I’m happy about them. On the other hand, you have to

ask what a 74-year-old woman scientist is supposed to do with

such a prize. Young people are more in need of support.

32 | CREDO

The peek through the keyhole

Masterpieces | Peter Fendi

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CREDO | 33

Dr. Johann Kräftner is the director of the Princely Collections of the House of

Liechtenstein and from 2002 to 2011 was director of the LIECHTENSTEIN

MUSEUM, Vienna. He is the author of numerous monographs on the history

and theory of architecture.

It is a little scene of great suggestive power. It features a young

girl who awakens our own curiosity as she peers through a

keyhole. Her white blouse leaves her shoulder uncovered, and

while her hair is pinned up, a wisp of it gently flows downwards.

She is dressed in an undergarment that leaves her arms and legs

bare, and she is wearing house slippers on her feet. The girl

seems quite agitated. What might she have seen?

The artist Peter Fendi (1796–1842) gives us no answer to

this question in his genre painting of 1834. Instead, the physical

presence of the girl awakens provocative expectations that we

endeavor to satisfy with our wandering gaze. A hand brush leans

against the door, and there are water and a sponge in a bowl

next to it. Has a parlourmaid interrupted her work in order to

take a cheeky peek into the private sphere of her masters?

Such a reading has presumably been prevalent since the

painting was made, right down to our own time. We can observe

this in the variant titles that have been assigned to this painting

and to a second, quite similar one. It was bought for the Princely

Collections in 2005 by Prince Hans-Adam II von und zu Liech-

tenstein and its initial title was “The Inquisitive Parlourmaid.”

The Belvedere Gallery in Austria owns a version of it from the

year 1833, for which it lists the alternative titles “The Inquisitive

Girl” and “The Eavesdropper.”

But if we look more closely, we realize that such an interpret-

ation – probably not wholly unintended by Fendi – is a result of

one’s own desire. For then we notice the items in the back cor-

ner of the room. To the left, a coat and a hat with a ribbon have

been thrown over the back of a chair, and a woman’s black boots

lie next to it. To the right of the chair there stands a table with a

water jug and a candle, while a front door key hangs on top of a

white towel over the door hinge. And indeed – are these really

the lock and fittings typical of a door in the interior of a house?

In 2005 an Austrian art historian took a closer, unbiased look

at this little genre painting and came to the conclusion that the

parlourmaid must have been disturbed while at work in the

foyer of the house. The general disorder we can see prompts her

in her “maidenly caution” to take a peek to see who the guest

might be who stands outside the front door, awaiting permission

to enter. Since then the work has been entitled “The Cautious

Parlourmaid.”

Still enchanted by the grace that the girl radiates, the obser-

ver might now feel inspired to imagine that she is expecting a

secret visitor. This charming ambivalence between the virtue of

prudence and the sin of a secret dalliance maintains our curios-

ity. And the small format of the painting also seems to support

an ambiguous interpretation. Like any miniature, it demands of

the observer that he take an inquisitive yet cautious step closer

to it. The painter Peter Fendi here follows the historical models

of Dutch genre painting, but also the French artist Jean Siméon

Chardin, of whom four such miniature masterpieces were held

by the Princely Collections in the 19th century; they, too,

en gaged with domestic everyday scenes. However, Fendi’s

technique is quite individual, and he remains devoted to the

idea of transparent color application such as is characteristic

of watercolors.

Curiosity is not just thematized in artworks: it was and re-

mains one of the major reasons for our engagement with art and

for collecting it. It allows us to open up doors to whole new

worlds – and this has been true of the Princely House of Liech-

tenstein for hundreds of years. The Latin concept of “curios-

itas,” which since Antiquity has been passed down to us in phil-

osophy and is derived from “cura,” brings all these facets

together: curiosity and a striving for knowledge of the world, but

also the qualities of care, endeavor, heedfulness and interest.

Happy is he who knows how to maintain this view of the world in

all its sensual and intellectual richness.

34 | CREDO

Literary choice | Christoph Ransmayr

There are books that make you want to wrap up warm. “The

Terrors of Ice and Darkness” is one of them. The debut

novel by Christoph Ransmayr, one of the literary greats writing

in German today, first appeared in 1984. Before it had become

fashionable to base stories around the tales of explorers and

their fates, his book brought to life the North Pole expedition,

begun in 1872, of Carl Weyprecht and Julius von Payer in a mas-

terful mix of reconstruction and fiction so atmospherically vivid

that the reader cannot help the occasional shiver.

Yet even permanent ice cannot temper curiosity, just as van-

ity and passion will not ebb away on the fringes of civilization.

Ransmayr tells the story of the Austro-Hungarian expedition,

which spent two whole winters trapped in pack ice between 1872

and 1874. He recounts the trials and tribulations of a journey that

culminated in the accidental discovery of the group of islands

now named “Franz Josef Land,” the crew’s unstinting efforts to

get their ship, the “Admiral Tegetthoff,” back to open water, and

finally their utterly improbable return on foot across the ice.

The author skillfully blends his factual account with the

story of his fictitious friend Josef Mazzini, who, on discovering

that his great-great-uncle Antonio Scarpa was part of the origi-

nal expedition, travels to the far north over 100 years later to

retrace the adventure in every detail. The Italian Mazzini, who

uncovers the original documents describing the polar journey,

sees his research as a backward-looking “game with reality” and

sets out on the trail of the Arctic seafarers. Unlike his heroes,

however, Mazzini does not return from the ice but vanishes

among the glaciers of Spitsbergen.

The urge to explore

CREDO | 35

Ransmayr resurrects some unforgettable characters: Carl

Weyprecht, the expedition’s commander at sea, is the epitome of

the fearless pioneer, a man who keeps his cool even in the most

difficult situations. By contrast, Julius von Payer, in charge on

land, is obsessed with the idea of an undiscovered paradise and

sees himself as its ruler, simply because he was the first to set

foot there. The most fascinating aspect of the expedition, how-

ever, is that each one of its participants experiences it in a dif-

ferent way.

Ransmayr described his book as a novel and himself as a

chronicler. By quoting repeatedly from the diaries and accounts

of the crew of the “Admiral Tegetthoff,” the author brings to-

gether the views and experiences of men with completely dif fer-

ent backgrounds, professions and beliefs. These original docu-

ments in particular help create something magical because the

reality that emerges does not reflect a sober account but rather

a tale bordering on the fantastic.

With “The Terrors of Ice and Darkness,” Ransmayr, the com-

passionate chronicler of that “unimaginable sensation” he distills

from the stories handed down to him, proves that elucidation

and enchantment are by no means mutually exclusive. By not

only taking the historical figures seriously but also sticking to the

rules of his story, he highlights the huge gulf between the Arctic

of today and that experienced by Weyprecht and von Payer.

Astonishingly, Ransmayr himself had never traveled further

north than Copenhagen when he wrote his novel. In a subse-

quent newspaper interview, he revealed that he had known

nothing about pack ice, polar night, or the immense desolation

of these landscapes. He did not make his first trips to the region

until nearly 20 years later. When he wrote “The Terrors of Ice

and Darkness,” the Franz Josef Land archipelago was a restrict-

ed zone and part of the Soviet Union. Whatever he was able to

say or write about the ice at that point he had learned from arch-

ives, libraries and documentaries or by talking to polar explor-

ers. This tremendously absorbing novel thus not only illustrates

the dramatic limits that nature can impose on the human desire

to explore but also shows the triumph of literary curiosity over

the author’s experience.

Christoph RansmayrChristoph Ransmayr, born on March 20, 1954, in the Upper Austrian

city of Wels, grew up in Roitham near Gmunden on the shores of Lake

Traunsee. After studying ethnology and philosophy in Vienna, he

worked as cultural editor of the Viennese magazine “Extrablatt” while

also writing for journals including “TransAtlantik,” “Geo,” and “Meri-

an.” Ransmayr became a freelance writer in 1982, publishing his book

“Strahlender Untergang” (“Triumphant Extinction”) in the same year.

The work was reissued in 2000 with the added subtitle “Ein Entwäs-

serungsprojekt oder die Entdeckung des Wesentlichen” (“A Drainage

Project, or the Discovery of the Fundamental”). “The Terrors of Ice and

Darkness” (1984), his first novel, brought him numerous awards. In

1988, he published “The Last World,” a novel about the Roman poet

Ovid, who fell from grace in the year 8 AD and was exiled to Tomis on

the Black Sea, where he died nine years later. Following the major suc-

cess of this book, Ransmayr embarked on extensive travels. In his third

novel, “The Dog King,” published in 1995, he creates an alternate uni-

verse with echoes of post-war Germany and Austria. Since then, Chris-

toph Ransmayr has published several volumes of essays and a book on

storytelling, “Die Verbeugung des Riesen. Vom Erzählen” (“The Defer-

ent Giant. On Storytelling”) (2003), as well as a number of plays. His

fourth novel, “Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes” (“Atlas of a Fearful

Man”), appeared in 2012.

Felicitas von Lovenberg, born in 1974, is head of the literature section at the

“Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and hosts the TV program “Literatur im

Foyer” for SWR in Germany (Southwest Broadcasting Company).

36 | CREDO

Carte Blanche | Pius Theiler

Recorded by: Manfred Schiefer

Being free to explore the world yourself is more import-

ant than formal learning, believes Pius Theiler, multi-

award-winning young scientist and inventor of the

πCam, speak: Pi Cam. Having this freedom not only

fueled his urge to make new discoveries, it also gave

him an unshakeable belief in his ability to find a so-

lution to any problem.

My brother and I did a lot of experimenting when we were little.

Particularly the vacations we spent in a house on the edge of the

woods; that was a time for exploring and experimenting. Like all

children, we were fascinated by fire. We made charcoal or tried

to get metal to melt. All this experimenting was our own idea.

When we failed to make charcoal and were left with ash instead,

we kept tinkering. Finally, we discovered that you have to

weaken the burning process by limiting the oxygen supply. We

then tried it in cans, and it worked.

It also took us some time before we managed to make our

first aluminum casting, in the fireplace of our vacation home. We

had more setbacks than successes. But nobody stood in the way

of our desire to achieve our goal. In hindsight, that was much

more important than being given any conscious encouragement.

My parents didn’t support us with any special programs. Rather,

they gave us the freedom to gain experience by ourselves and

acquire knowledge in this way. None of our questions prompted

them to criticize our ignorance. That gave us the courage to

delve further into the things that interested us. That’s something

I’m still benefiting from today. When we did metallurgy at uni-

versity, I was able to link the theory to the experience I had

gained as a child.

Scaling new heights

CREDO | 37

Scaling new heights

I feel our society has become very comfortable and doesn’t

want to take any risks. But without the courage to make mis-

takes, you can’t develop as a person. Because ultimately it’s the

mistakes we make that move us forward.

If I build something that works straight away, I don’t learn

anything new. So for me it’s more exciting to develop something

that doesn’t work right from the start. Because although I have

to deal with setbacks, if I don’t give up and find out why

something isn’t working, then ultimately it’s not a defeat but

an experience that increases my knowledge.

When I laminated the carbon-fiber-reinforced bow for the

first time when developing my πCam camming device, the result

looked a bit like a banana with fibers protruding like the quills of

a hedgehog. The second attempt, although better, only with-

stood one-fourth of the calculated load in the stress test. While I

was developing the πCam, I would have had no shortage of rea-

sons to give up. But each failure leads me to ask “Why?” – and to

an answer that I am curious to find out. I have had this confi-

dence ever since my early experimenting and tinkering around

enabled me to gradually expand my knowledge and experience.

Following a harmless fall while rock-climbing, I wanted to

create a camming device for my final high-school project – and

in the process I learned much more than I had ever dreamed

would be possible. And not just in terms of the specialist skills

that I can now put to good use at university. As I didn’t have the

technical knowledge, I had to get help from experts. This taught

me not only how to approach people but also how to present an

idea convincingly. To meet the deadlines for the high-school pro-

ject and for the creation of another two, improved prototypes

for the national and the European young scientist competitions,

I had to speed up my product development. I learned to concen-

trate on the fundamentals to achieve my goals and developed

the feel for interdisciplinary working that you need to have.

The prizes that I won for developing the πCam weren’t the

motivation behind my work. I had asked myself why nobody had

come up with a sensible, handy camming device like it before,

which other climbers are bound to have missed too. I was cu ri-

ous to see how it might work.

Pius Theiler was born in 1992 in Stans, Switzerland, the son of an architect

and a landscape gardener. Winner of a special award at the “Schweizer

Jugend forscht” competition, he caused a stir at the EU Contest for Young

Scientists in Helsinki in 2011 with his π Cam (pronounced “pi cam”). His

handy camming device for rock climbers won no fewer than four prizes, a

degree of success previously only achieved by those working in teams. Since

2012, Pius Theiler has been studying mechanical engineering at the École

Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is supported by the Swiss

Study Foundation as part of its “Univers Suisse” program, which is funded

by the Sophie and Karl Binding Foundation. The Swiss Study Foundation

supports particularly talented students at universities and universities of

applied sciences throughout Switzerland.

38 | CREDO

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Contents | Credo XvII 2013

Curiosity 02

36 18

32

02

10

15

18

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32

34

36

Portrait | Ian BakerThis American explorer of the Himalayas succeeded where many before him had failed: he discovered the gates of paradise.

Portfolio | Children’s questionsWhat do they really want to know or understand, and where do they get the answers? We asked children from Chongqing, New York, Beira, Zurich and Moscow.

Essay | Lifelong learningeducation specialist Salman Ansari knows the secret of keeping a zest for lifelong learning.

Report | Urban explorersThe explorers of today no longer travel to distant continents. They travel into the past and find their “terra incognita” on their own doorstep.

Interview | Barbara HohnThis 74-year-old scientist knows that groundbreaking dis-coveries only happen when we give free rein to our curiosity.

Masterpieces | Peter FendiA young girl peeks through a keyhole. Curiosity? No, just cautiousness. But to realize this, you have to look very carefully.

Literary choice | Christoph RansmayrIn 1872 a seafaring expedition was caught in pack ice for two long winters. A hundred years later, an inquisitive Italian retraced the journey to the far north made back then by his great-great-uncle.

Carte Blanche | Pius TheilerHis invention won a special prize at the “Schweizer Jugend forscht” competition. And he only wanted to know how a handy camming device might function.

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CurIoSITY | XVII 2013