The Auerbach

Before the internet killed my TV, I used to watch a sports show called “Schwab uf Tour” (or was it Freestyle?) on the Swiss channel Star TV, in which host Marco Schwab was practicing and commenting on any kind of extreme sports. Besides the talking, which was complete nonsense, Schwab impressed me with one particular quality. Wherever he could, he did reverse somersaults into any kind of water. He jumped from cranes (10 meters), from power stations (14 meters), bridges (very high). A reverse somersault is a flip where you jump forwards and move backyards at the same time (the perfect image for our times?). The English word originates, at least according to Wikipedia, from the obsolete French word sombresault, Provencal sobresaut; and Latin – supra, over, and saltus, jump (done with copying). In German you call it, way more beautiful, an “Auerbach”. The Brockhaus encyclopaedia (read the related article in the Süddeutsche) tells us (or told us) that the name Auerbach originates from the German gym and sports teacher Wilhelm Auerbach, which I didn’t find more information on (sorry). 15 years ago, when I started doing my first attempts (clearly to impress girls, which worked – and works – quite well) almost nobody knew what an Auerbach was. It came out of nowhere, it hurt (usually). These days, Auerbach has become the norm, not the exception (you walk to the Bellevue in Zurich, and they guys there will give you some evidence). Yet, it has kept some of its romantic. One and a half year ago I went to see an exhibition of Lucien Freud in the National Portrait Gallery in London where they exhibited an incredible painting by Freud of Frank Auerbach, an English painter born in Berlin. Maybe he was a relative of Wilhelm Auerbach, the sports professor. I don’t know. Summer’s gone, the Auerbach will rest.

The author doing an Auerbach Positano (Amalfi Coast) at the Cinque Terre coast