Elisabeth Tonnard

“A child without mother or father, with no brothers or sisters, who belonged to no one and had no home anywhere, came to the idea of running off, all the way until the end of the world.” Robert Walser, from ‘The End of the World’

The End of the World is an artist book in literary format about Robert Walser’s final walks and silences.

It transports the reader to the last 23 years of Robert Walser’s life, which were spent at a psychiatric institution in Herisau, Switzerland. From his arrival there in 1933 to his death in the snow on Christmas Day 1956, Walser ceased writing. On Sundays he would take long walks, a contrast to the weekdays filled with sorting tin foil at the institution’s workshop and making crossword puzzles in the common room.

The book draws on excerpts from Walser’s asylum file and on photographs that I took at the graveyard in Herisau where Walser is buried. The photographs show scenes depicted on the gravestones surrounding Walser’s grave. The dreamy landscapes and paths encountered there seemed like a continuance of Robert Walser’s walk to me.

The layout of the book mirrors the repetitive nature of Walser’s days, weeks, years at the clinic – and blank space is treated as a meaningful element.

The book concludes with an afterword, overview of sources and biographical sketch.

The initial research was made possible by a residency at the Jan Michalski Foundation, in Montricher, Switzerland. The book production was made possible in part by grants from the Jaap Harten Fund and from the Mondriaan Fund, both in Amsterdam.

Published by Elisabeth Tonnard
Leerdam, The Netherlands, 2025

208 pages, size 11,5 x 18 cm, 23 photographs
Design, photography, translations: Elisabeth Tonnard
Printing and binding: Wilco Art Books, Amersfoort, The Netherlands
Lithography: Benno Slijkhuis
Printed in duotone offset on Munken Print Cream
Paperback cover of Colorplan paper, cold-glue binding

ISBN: 9789080788435

Edition of 350 copies

Priced at € 37,50 plus shipping (€ 5,- in The Netherlands, € 8,50 elsewhere). Order here or by contacting me.

Read a review (in Dutch) by Jack van der Weide on Tzum, or by Johan Velter on Sfcdt.

It seems simple (though it definitely is not), but it brings the reader closer to Walser’s final years than any treatise or biography. Jack van der Weide, Tzum, October 4, 2025 (transl. ET)

Included in the collections of Bodleian Library (special collections at Weston Library), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Bower Ashton Library at UWE Bristol, Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature, John M. Flaxman Library at School of The Art Institute of Chicago (Joan Flasch collection), MoMA Library, National Library of The Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek), Tate Library, The New York Public Library, Robert Walser Center (Bern), Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (Munich).