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Authors: Andrea Maria Schenkel
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Sometimes his wife is lying dead on the bed before him. On other nights the girl has taken her place, or the little boy.
He stands up, goes to the window, looks out into the cold night.
Maria Sterzer, age 42, farmer’s wife in Upper Tannöd
When my husband and Alois got back to our farm, they didn’t need to tell me anything. I could see something terrible must have happened from the way they were walking, long before they arrived. And when they were back sitting in our living room, both of them so pale, I knew it. You could read it in their faces, the horror. For the first few nights my husband kept waking up. The sight of the dead wouldn’t let him rest.
To think of such a thing happening right out here. You can hardly imagine it. Not that I’m surprised to hear old Danner didn’t die in his bed.
One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, so I don’t like to talk about those dead people. We live in a small village here, you know. Any kind of tittle-tattle gets passed on, so I’d rather not say much.
All I will say is, I didn’t like the folk at that farm.
Loners, every one of them, and the old farmer in particular wasn’t a good man. You couldn’t get close to them, and I didn’t want to either. I haven’t even spoken to them since that business with Amelie.
Amelie was a very nice girl. She was a foreign worker on the Danner farm. That was still in the war. They made the POWs and all kinds of other people do forced labor on the farms. We had one from France here, our Pierre.
The men were all away in the war, except for Danner, he somehow fixed it not to get called up. He was thick as thieves with the Party people back then.
There were strict rules about the treatment of the foreign workers. But I didn’t stick to them. Our Pierre worked on the farm. I could never have run the place all on my own with the small children and my mother-in-law, God rest her soul.
My husband was at the front, and later he was a POW; he didn’t come back until ’47. And thank God he did come back in the end!
Our Pierre liked working on the land. He came from a farm himself. Without him the place would have gone downhill fast, he worked as if the farm was his own. We all got on well. We didn’t have much ourselves, but we shared what little we had with him.
When a man works as hard as that, you have to treat him decently. I mean, he’s a human being, not a beast of burden. That’s what I said to themayor. I told him so to his face when he tried warning me off.
All he said was, “You’d better watch your step, Frau Sterzer, many people have been strung up for less.”
I even got an anonymous letter. They were threatening to report me. All the same, I did what I thought was right. I wasn’t letting them get me down, not them.
Amelie was in a bad way. They didn’t treat her well at Danner’s farm. The old skinflint gave her hardly anything to eat, and she had to work like an ox.
And she was a delicate little thing. She didn’t come of farming stock. She was from a city in Poland, I think it was Warsaw, but I don’t know for certain.
I felt so sorry for her, poor creature. Our Pierre said Danner was chasing after her. Pestering and molesting poor Amelie, Pierre said, he even beat her. She showed Pierre the bruises, and she cried.
Seems that Danner once even hit her with a whip in the farmyard. Just because she wouldn’t do what he wanted. She had bloody welts afterward.
And do you think Frau Danner helped her? She didn’t say a word. Far from it, she tormented and harassed poor Amelie herself the whole time.
I suppose if someone’s been knocked around all their life they’ll take the chance to knock someone else about if they get it.
Amelie couldn’t bear it at the Danner farm anymore. She couldn’t run away, so she hanged herself. Poor girl. She hanged herself in the barn. In the very same barn where they found Danner himself and his family.
That’s odd, when you come to think of it.
Old Danner
He stands up, goes to the window, looks out into the cold night.
Maria Sterzer, age 42, farmer’s wife in Upper Tannöd
When my husband and Alois got back to our farm, they didn’t need to tell me anything. I could see something terrible must have happened from the way they were walking, long before they arrived. And when they were back sitting in our living room, both of them so pale, I knew it. You could read it in their faces, the horror. For the first few nights my husband kept waking up. The sight of the dead wouldn’t let him rest.
To think of such a thing happening right out here. You can hardly imagine it. Not that I’m surprised to hear old Danner didn’t die in his bed.
One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, so I don’t like to talk about those dead people. We live in a small village here, you know. Any kind of tittle-tattle gets passed on, so I’d rather not say much.
All I will say is, I didn’t like the folk at that farm.
Loners, every one of them, and the old farmer in particular wasn’t a good man. You couldn’t get close to them, and I didn’t want to either. I haven’t even spoken to them since that business with Amelie.
Amelie was a very nice girl. She was a foreign worker on the Danner farm. That was still in the war. They made the POWs and all kinds of other people do forced labor on the farms. We had one from France here, our Pierre.
The men were all away in the war, except for Danner, he somehow fixed it not to get called up. He was thick as thieves with the Party people back then.
There were strict rules about the treatment of the foreign workers. But I didn’t stick to them. Our Pierre worked on the farm. I could never have run the place all on my own with the small children and my mother-in-law, God rest her soul.
My husband was at the front, and later he was a POW; he didn’t come back until ’47. And thank God he did come back in the end!
Our Pierre liked working on the land. He came from a farm himself. Without him the place would have gone downhill fast, he worked as if the farm was his own. We all got on well. We didn’t have much ourselves, but we shared what little we had with him.
When a man works as hard as that, you have to treat him decently. I mean, he’s a human being, not a beast of burden. That’s what I said to themayor. I told him so to his face when he tried warning me off.
All he said was, “You’d better watch your step, Frau Sterzer, many people have been strung up for less.”
I even got an anonymous letter. They were threatening to report me. All the same, I did what I thought was right. I wasn’t letting them get me down, not them.
Amelie was in a bad way. They didn’t treat her well at Danner’s farm. The old skinflint gave her hardly anything to eat, and she had to work like an ox.
And she was a delicate little thing. She didn’t come of farming stock. She was from a city in Poland, I think it was Warsaw, but I don’t know for certain.
I felt so sorry for her, poor creature. Our Pierre said Danner was chasing after her. Pestering and molesting poor Amelie, Pierre said, he even beat her. She showed Pierre the bruises, and she cried.
Seems that Danner once even hit her with a whip in the farmyard. Just because she wouldn’t do what he wanted. She had bloody welts afterward.
And do you think Frau Danner helped her? She didn’t say a word. Far from it, she tormented and harassed poor Amelie herself the whole time.
I suppose if someone’s been knocked around all their life they’ll take the chance to knock someone else about if they get it.
Amelie couldn’t bear it at the Danner farm anymore. She couldn’t run away, so she hanged herself. Poor girl. She hanged herself in the barn. In the very same barn where they found Danner himself and his family.
That’s odd, when you come to think of it.
Old Danner
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