02:56

Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Innsbruck

2008-06-17

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1947

Oh yes, interesting. The flesh-coloured stockings. Nylon stockings! I wasn't allowed to wear nylons as I did when I was grown up. I had to wear cotton stockings, before I went to Innsbruck, I visited her with my little Gitti. My oldest daughter Gitti was two years old at the time. I went to say good-bye to my aunt with Gitti before I went to Innsbruck. It was a Sunday. I was wearing socks. What a horror! I was 25 years old and married and had to go to church because it was Sunday. We had to walk a long way to the holiday resort because the parish also served the resort. From Graun it was a long walk to get to the church. I had to put on a pair of her cotton stockings. I told her: "I don't have a garter with me or anything." So she gave me a piece of string that I could tie the stockings. Can you imagine what that was like for my muscles? To walk with the string tied around my thighs ? but I did it. My aunt was so domineering, that I didn't dare say: "I just won't go to church." I had to go. My uncle, the priest, often came home saying: "Today there was a girl at Mass wearing flesh-coloured stockings." And Aunt Lora would answer: "Yes, yes." Then they started discussing about that shameless person who dared to wear flesh-coloured stockings. It was especially bad in this village, because we were very far away from the town. The villages closer to town weren't so strict. Going swimming, for example -. the boys were allowed to go swimming in the river Etsch, but the girls weren't. If a girl went swimming in the Etsch from the pulpit the priest would say in his sermon: 00:02:38:19"Sadly we've had to experience a girl swimming in the Etsch again. It was this one or that one." It rarely happened because it was a disgrace to be named and exposed in church like that.