Robert Louis Stevenson

"Like an easy conversation." This is how Robert Louis Stevenson described how easy it was for him to complete his first novel, "Treasure Island." But it wasn't always so smooth. For several months beforehand, he had been racking his brains over the ending of his pirate story. Without success. Stevenson traveled to Davos a short time later to recover in the now world-famous high altitude climate. He had his manuscript with him. Was it the rural culture and the healthy Alpine air that got his brain waves back in shape? The fact is that his writer's block suddenly disappeared shortly after he arrived and Stevenson started writing again. One chapter a day.

The novel has been made into a film over 20 times and translated into several languages. The end of the novel has some parallels to Davos. For example, the protagonist Jim Hawkins wants to invest his share of the treasure in his education. A mentality that applies to Davos today more than ever.

The first high school was founded in Davos in 1878 and Carl Dorno opened the first research institute right after the turn of the century. In 1928, Albert Einstein opened the Davos university courses, which were able to mobilize internationally recognized personalities from politics and science. In 1972, the Davos region founded the "Forum Davos" foundation with a number of Davos personalities - with the aim of "promoting scientific studies, academic training and the transfer of knowledge, particularly in the overlapping fields of natural sciences, engineering, medicine and the humanities". The Knowledge City of Davos was established as an association on June 30, 2004.