The Guardian and His Poet

This movie shows the true story of an unusual friendship between the Swiss author Robert Walser (now considered as one of the most important German language writers of the 20th century), and the Zurich critic, editor and patron of art, Carl Seelig. Born in Biel on April 15, 1878, Walser, as a poet almost completely forgotten by the outer world, spends the period from 1933 to 1956 as a chronic schizophrenic in the Appenzell – Ausserrhoden mental home in Herisau, Switzerland. From 1936 on, Carl Seelig visits the poet two or three times a year to go on a day’s walk. In 1940, Seelig — without Walser’s knowledge — becomes the latter’s guardian. The friendship lasts until the writer’s death in the year 1956.