Dete leaves Heidi with Alm-Uncle

Dete leaves Heidi with Alm-Uncle in a handover that turns a journey up the mountain into a decisive separation. Dete presents the child as her grandfather’s responsibility after four years in her own care, then hurries away under the villagers’ reproaches. The scene establishes both the burden behind the transfer and the strong attachments that will form around Heidi in her new home.

The climb and the handover

On a clear June morning, Dete leads Heidi up the steep path from Mayenfeld toward the mountains. Heidi is a small child, apparently no more than five, bundled in several dresses and a thick red woollen shawl despite the heat. Her heavy mountain shoes make the ascent laborious. At Dorfli, Dete receives greetings and questions from people who know her, but she does not stop; she continues to the hamlet’s last scattered houses and then farther uphill.

When they reach Alm-Uncle, he asks curtly what the child has to do with him. He also sends Peter off with his goats, making clear that he wants no audience for the exchange. Dete answers that Heidi is to stay with him: she has, she says, done her duty for four years, and now it is his turn. Her claim is not merely that she has brought a child to a relative; she insists that Alm-Uncle is Heidi’s next of kin and must accept responsibility for her.

Alm-Uncle questions what he is supposed to do if Heidi becomes distressed and longs for Dete. Dete replies that this is his concern, recalling that Heidi was left in her care as an infant when Dete and her mother already had enough to manage. She now needs to earn her own living. The exchange exposes a conflict between kinship duty and the practical limits of care: Dete invokes her past service and need for work, while Alm-Uncle resists having a child imposed on him.

Dete’s departure and the village’s judgment

Dete is not easy in her conscience about what she is doing. Hot and irritable, she says more than she intended, accusing Alm-Uncle of having enough already on his conscience and warning him that he will answer if harm comes to Heidi. He rises and orders her to leave at once and not to return soon. The confrontation ends not in agreement but in a sharp dismissal.

Dete calls goodbye to Alm-Uncle and Heidi, then runs down the mountain. Her haste is driven by inward agitation, and she does not slow until she reaches Dorfli. People call from doors and windows to ask where the child is. As Dete answers that she has left Heidi with Alm-Uncle, the women reproach her for leaving a helpless child on the mountain. Their repeated expressions of pity follow her through the hamlet until she runs beyond hearing them.

The villagers’ response makes the handover a public moral dispute, not a private arrangement between relatives. Dete is distressed by what she has done, since Heidi’s dying mother had entrusted the child to her. Yet she steadies herself with the expectation that earning more money will eventually allow her to do something for Heidi, and with relief that she is free to take a good position farther away. Her departure therefore combines discomfort, self-justification, and a deliberate turning toward her own livelihood.

What the transfer sets in motion

Alm-Uncle’s acceptance places Heidi in a household and way of life sharply different from the one Dete has left behind. Later, when the village pastor challenges him over Heidi’s schooling, Alm-Uncle says he intends to let her grow up happy among the goats and birds, where she is safe and will learn nothing evil. The pastor counters that she is a human being who must not be left ignorant, and says she should attend school regularly the following winter. Alm-Uncle refuses. The dispute reveals that taking Heidi in does not settle what her upbringing should be: protection and freedom on the mountain come into conflict with the village’s expectation of formal education.

The relationship between Heidi and Alm-Uncle also develops beyond the initial resistance. During winter, Heidi asks to visit Peter’s Grandmother, who is blind and fears that her worn house may collapse. Heidi tells her that Alm-Uncle can mend it. When he brings Heidi to the hut, the grandmother mistakes the blows of his hammer against the walls for signs that the house is falling; Heidi reassures her that he is repairing it. Alm-Uncle works around the house and roof, using the nails he brought, and the repairs ease the grandmother’s fear and let her sleep more peacefully. Heidi’s visits become something the grandmother eagerly anticipates, while Heidi grows deeply fond of her.

That later care gives the original handover a lasting consequence. Heidi’s life with Alm-Uncle does not remain only a matter of shelter: it brings her into close relation with Peter’s family, and her attachment to the grandmother prompts practical action on her behalf. Much later, Heidi asks for the bed she slept in at Frankfurt, with its high pillows and thick coverlet, so that the grandmother will not have to lie at a slope or shiver beneath her shawl. What begins with Dete’s transfer of responsibility develops into a pattern in which Heidi notices another person’s hardship and seeks concrete help.

Significance of the separation

The scene sets competing forms of responsibility beside one another. Dete bases her decision on four years of care, the demands of earning a living, and Alm-Uncle’s kinship; the villagers judge her by the vulnerable child she leaves behind. Alm-Uncle’s anger does not erase that vulnerability, but the subsequent course of the story shows him undertaking care in his own way, from Heidi’s mountain upbringing to repairs that protect Peter’s Grandmother.

The contrast also gives Heidi’s childhood a distinctive beginning: she is moved not by her own choice but by the decisions and obligations of adults. Yet the handover does not determine her relationships in advance. The child Dete leaves behind becomes a source of companionship and comfort to an isolated older woman, while Alm-Uncle’s initially reluctant guardianship grows into sustained practical care. The departure is therefore both a rupture and the starting point for a wider network of attachment.