03:52

Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Galtür

2008-08-22

Sylvia Manning-Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1920

My mother was born in Ischgl. She came from a big Ischgler family which is very influential today. That's why we had close contact with the neighbouring village, and felt that not everything is bad that comes from there. She was an apprenticed primary school teacher. It used to be like this:If a teacher was responsible for rural schools, he himself had to find teachers for these schools. They weren't paid much. They were good students who taught under his supervision. For one year they were instructed by the teacher in the last class of the school concerned. So my mother was trained to teach the first to eighth grades of primary school which she had already completed. And then she was employed to teach. For nine years she taught at a rural school near Ischgl. There were seven to eleven children in her class. Then she met my father. At first they worked together in the alpine hut during the summer holidays. Later, after they got married, after the First World War she sometimes helped out at the hut in the winter when it was possible because of the children. Otherwise she was down here in the valley. She knew how to teach us children the important things. That you have to appreciate being ableto live in such wonderful freedom, here in Galtür. And that you always listen and question both sides if something has to be decided. You scrutinise the one who has to take the decision and also the one who will have to live and deal with it. She was a very intelligent woman and tutored us a lot. I hope that modern mothers are also like her. My wife was a Walserin too. She was from Brand near Bludenz at the foot of the Chesa Plana - the same breed and mentality, here as there - all of us alpine farmers' children.