With her novel, Johanna Spyri has made an invaluable contribution to Swiss cultural and literary history. Heidi is one of the most widely read books in the world. The story has been translated into over 55 languages and its global fame and topicality have remained unbroken to this day. Heidi is world literature.

Johanna Spyri was born on 12 June 1827 as Johanna Louise Heusser as the 4th child of 6 children of the doctor Johann Jakob Heusser-Schweizer and the poet Meta Heusser-Schweizer in Hirzel, region Zurich, a place with forests, rolling hills, and the Alps in the backdrop.

After finishing school in her town Hirzel, Johanna attended the „höhere Töchternschule“ (higher school for daughters) in Zurich, where she received three years of foreign language and music lessons. This was followed by a longer stay in Yverdon in western Switzerland. From 1845 onwards she taught, her younger sisters and drove her autodidactic literature studies.

In 1852, at the age of 25, Johanna married the lawyer Bernhard Spyri. She had known him since childhood. Bernhard was a very busy man. He was often on the go and often worked late into the night. Her only son, Bernhard Diethelm, was born three years after the wedding.

Johanna, who is close to nature, was not entirely happy in the city. She therefore stayed several times with her friend from the youth Ms. Anna Elisa von Salis-Hössli in Jenins, in the Bündner Herrschaft (Canton of Grisons), from where she went on various excursions and found inspiration for her Heidi story in Maienfeld.

After one of these walks with her childhood friend, she told to the husband of her friend of the youth, Colonel Jakob von Salis, "[...] she now has the basis for a new story, Heidi [...]" (Thürer 1982, p. 69).
Old locals said that at that time a girl lived in the Village above Maienfeld, who inspired Johanna Spyri for the figure of Heidi with her happy and cheerfully manner.

Shortly before the end oft he year 1879, her book "Heidi" was published, which was immediately a great success. In 1881, the second volume titled "Heidi can use what she has learned" was published. The story of Heidi has been translated into over 55 languages and has a circulation of over 60 million copies.

The famous story is often read all over the world and is one of the most read books in the world. The story of Heidi is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for countless films, animated series, theaters, musicals and much more.

Johanna Spyri was committed to the needy and the sick into old age. Even as she grew weaker over the years, she did not complain and did not mention the waning powers or death. Rather, she tried not to make the acquaintance suspect that it could end. Johanna Spyri died at the age of 74 on 7. July 1901 in Zurich. However her legacy lives on, as her book has captured the hearts of many, and conveys fundamental values of a idealistic world, which many long for.