I
Between six and seven o’ clock in the morning, on 13th May
1839, I arrived in the world at Schoppernau, the last village
in the Bregenzerwald. What heavenly sights were to be seen,
and during what phase of the moon I arrived, my father did not
record. The day must have been a fine one, though, because
our labourers had been sent out to perform their first task in
the fields, which was muck-spreading.
My cries, however, were so pitiful, and I was obviously so
unhappy to have entered the world, that everyone was seriously
concerned that I wanted nothing more than to follow my brother
Josef—who had been born two years earlier—up into heaven,
where I too would turn into a little angel.
Even my godmother would not have liked that because, thanks
to my little brother, she already had what every godmother
longs for—an innocent advocate to plead her case before God.
My father, however, was even more concerned about the
sickly child. He felt no desire at all to go muck-spreading. After
breakfast he actually sent the labourers home with a full day’s
pay, and the hard-working, stingy neighbours could say what
they liked.
Later, when I grew and thrived and behaved like any normal
child, apparently he often used to say he thought it was a bad
omen that the moment I arrived, I caused so much trouble that
I’d kept him away from his work and shattered his daily routine.
He was afraid that I would never become a proper farmer. This
would make him very unhappy. If not by farming, how else
could any poor person earn a living amid these mountains in
the gloomy confines of the Ach Valley?
Oral tradition has it that the Felder family is descended from
a Magyar prisoner who swiftly became extremely popular during
his captivity. It appears that he moved from the Swabian side
of Lake Constance to the mountains, where he lived from 924
until 954, because he had fallen so deeply in love with a girl from
the Black Forest that he preferred to run away with her and live
under a German name, in what was then the still-uninhabited
Bregenzerwald, rather than share the fine fruits of hard German
labour with his uncivilized fellow countrymen. Of course, evidence
of all this would be difficult, if not impossible, to find.
Nevertheless, it is a strange fact that this tale alone has rooted
in people’s minds the firm belief that we came originally from
the Black Forest. And so even today, anyone whose shirt bears
a name beginning with F—that is to say, Felder—is regarded as
a peculiar outsider, a maverick from birth.
It may well be that this actually caused some Felders to
become peculiar mavericks, because anyone who has been
condemned or marginalized by public opinion, and who is not
totally lacking in self-esteem, may all too easily try to oppose
this almighty force which for so many constitutes the one and
only guide for life.
Of the many children whose birthdays my grandfather
had recorded on the last page of our 300-year-old Lives of the
Saints, my father was the oldest survivor. At a very early age,
he had to take over from his ailing father the difficult and
physically demanding task not only of managing the large,
unwieldy farm, but also of running the household. This was
made all the more arduous by the fact that my grandfather
was generally believed to have pawned every object he could
lay his hands on. The old records appear to offer very little
evidence to the contrary. The thickness of the line that my
father drew through each paid-off debt suggests just how much
blood, sweat and tears it cost him. On the other hand, his hard
work increasingly earned him the trust of the villagers and
the respect even of those who because of their financial and
family status were, not unjustly, known as the “aristocracy”.
And so the man who initially had been looked down on by
everyone must have felt a good deal better about himself. All
the same, he remained faithful to the poor, hard-working girl
who had for so long remained faithful to him, and therefore it
was in vain that those born with silver spoons in their mouths
now smilingly invited him to enter their fine houses. He was
fiercely independent, and for ten years he worked tirelessly, so
that he would be able to bring his bride into a household that
was fit for purpose.
This finally happened in 1836, just after Easter, when Jakob
was thirty-one and my mother five years older. On the back
of an old expired bond, in my father’s handwriting, is a list of
all those who attended the wedding feast. There is also a note
that his first child was born in 1837, but the Heavenly Father
had quickly taken him to be one of His angels. This was all the
more reason for the fearfulness with which they nursed me,
and Aunt Dorothe, my godmother, has often told me how after
practically every meal they would add to their prayer a special
Paternoster for me.
It is from this aunt—my father’s youngest sister—that I have
learnt most of what I know about the first years of my life. She
lived with us and was my nursemaid when my mother was
helping my father out in the fields. She herself suffered from a
disease that affected her limbs, and so she could only do things
like embroidery or very light farm work. Looking after me
might well have been too much of a strain on her at times, but
she always took great pleasure in whatever she was able to do.
For someone who had been used to living and working in the
open air, it was a real comfort to spend the seemingly endless
summer days with me.
Once I had learnt to walk, she would watch each step with
the anxiety of the sick person who, in the light of her own
weakness, sees stress and danger in someone else’s every movement.
This anxiety increased still further when my ever-watchful
observer discovered that I was short-sighted. What was initially
just a small white spot in my right eye began to get bigger. At
first it remained a family secret. My pious mother said that only
God could help, and during the sleepless nights before my birth
she had offered up many a Paternoster and even whole rosaries
for me. Because she had long since known that her child would
become like the man from Tannberg who had been blinded by
the snow. The sight of him had so terrified her that she could
never forget him.