Walter Robert Corti

Walter Robert Corti, the founder of the Pestalozzi Children's Village, was a very sensitive young man, interested in nature, science, and the human being. He was a great admirer of his father, a chemist who had taught him the fascination of nature and science. During a hiking trip with his parents, the adolescent Corti found a letter in a World War I army coat. The letter was from the parents to their soldier son. They were concerned about their son’s silence. This incident left a deep impression on the young Corti.  

Corti began to study medicine at the University of Zurich. Together with his colleague Marie Meierhofer he spent terms in Vienna and some German cities, before he had to give up his studies due to tubercolosis.  

Corti spent several years recovering, mostly reading and writing philosophy in the vacation home of his friend Marie Meierhofer, in Ägeri. Then he received an offer from the cultural magazine "Du". He accepted and started to work as an editor. Whilst he was preparing an edition on children during World War II, he came up with the idea of building a village where homeless orphans could receive an education and learn how to live peacefully together. His blueprint of a children’s village was published in August 1944 and led to an immediate and overwhelming response by the public.  

Corti also dreamed of founding an "Academy of Ethical Studies" and considered the Children’s Village as part of an even larger idea. However, the public wanted him to pursue his idea of a children’s village and expected him to come up with further details.

Corti managed to gather a group of people, each with special skills, who helped him realise the Children’s Village. The most important members were: Hans Fischli, an architect involved in the Swiss Exhibition of 1939, who designed the village, its houses and their interiors; Elisabeth Rotten, an internationally known and widely acclaimed pediatrician and peace activist who worked with Corti to develop the educational principles of the Children’s Village; and Marie Meierhofer, Corti's old friend and former study colleague, now working as a doctor for the Red Cross. It was she who was to travel to several countries to search for children in need and examine them properly.