![Still from the latest film adaptation of Gotthelf’s The Black Spider.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/die-schwarze-spinne-still-ascot-elite-300x225.jpg)
The forest of the Black Spider
Gotthelf’s novel “The Black Spider” explores themes of greed, conflict and the power of the plague. But the author also voices his frustration over unchecked forest clearance in his home canton of Bern.
![Jeremias Gotthelf (1797-1854).](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/jeremias-gotthelf-gbe-28066-lm-152262-256x300.jpg)
![Manuscript for The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf, 1842.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/manuskript-schwarze-spinne-245x300.jpg)
My castle is ready, but one thing is still missing: summer is coming and there is no shady path out there. In one month you are to plant me an avenue of trees; you are to take a hundred full-grown beeches from the Münneberg, with branches and roots, and you are to plant them for me on Bärhegen, and if a single beech is missing, you shall pay for it with your property and your blood.
![Residence of the fictional knight Hans von Stoffeln. Sumiswald Castle in an etching from 1744.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/das-schloss-sumiswald-in-einem-kupferstich-von-1744-300x197.jpg)
![In the drawing Die Schwarze Spinne (chalk on paper, undated), the artist Franz Karl Basler-Kopp (1879-1937) shows the scene in which the mother protects her child from the avenging spider.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/basler-kopp-franz-kar-283x300.jpg)
![View of the Ofen Pass area, where the forests were ruthlessly cleared in the 19th century – the remains of the clear-felling are clearly visible in the centre of the photograph – and where the National Park was created in 1914.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/ofenpass-abholzung-300x260.jpg)
Trailer for the Swiss feature film "Die Schwarze Spinne", 2022. AscotElite / YouTube