Tribute to Marie IV

by Legacy
Curitiba/ Ponta-Grossa, to nowadays. Centuries 20 and 21

Is interesting to realize that talents, defects, family stigmas remain, many times, from generation to generation and are called by psychologists transgenerational links.

The book “My Ancestors”, from the Jungian psycologist, Ane Ancelin Schtzenberger, who does a study about family myths, concludes that there are, in fact, demonstrably links transgenerational.

Scientifically approved or not, it is certain that Marie left its mark in the heart of the family.

A eternal legacy. Truly eternal mainly because her grandchildren – Eno Theodoro (who dedicated himself to research details of German immigrants coming to Paraná and write a book about it), told their story, this way, at this time, she found space to stay in time.

The way that Eno has found its audience, since he had “poetic vein” and loved writing books and short stories, was “sui generis.” Each copy published with its own resources was mailed to friends and contacts, also with shipping prepaid and autographed. At the launch of the book about immigration Eno confessed that he liked so much to be an engineer than being a writer or poet. However, to support himself needed to leave Ponta- Grossa, try an open competition in Petrobras to work as an engineer  because in a small city  “nobody gives a house to a poet engineer build.”

Many descendants of Marie accepted the inheritance, yes, received the signal!

A great writer, Lygia Fagundes Telles, who was the third woman to take over the Brazilian Academy of Letters – May 12, 1987, defines in just one sentence what she feels when writes a book. “The word is the bridge that the writer throws for his next. I stretch the bridge and say: come.”

I understand Lygia! I build bridges through words and go through it always, for the simple fact that I received this “taste”, this stimulus, following in the footsteps of Marie. I received from her a eternal legacy!

So, is for you, Marie, my grandmother, I dedicate this story and the words contained therein, reinforce the structures of our bridge and move on your legacy and, then united, together, we continuously extend the bridge and tell everyone , come …

Curitiba, September, 2008

Mari Weigert

2colon

Marie’s travel to Brazil III

by Legacy

Breslau. Century 19 – 1879 to 1943

When I completed eight years my father traveled to Brazil. We lived in Breslau near my maternal grandparents who were butchers, Augusto Hänzel and Carolina Köler. A peculiar data: my grandmother took care to note the names and dates of birth of their 11 children, in a book of hymns. She became a widow 40 years old and already had the 11, remarried and, this time, had no sons.

Strong women those who have lived in my century, including this group, my mother, Anne Pauline, who was small in stature, fragile but very brave!

Our life in Germany was not bad.

It was simple and certainly much more comfortable than the great adventure that we had until adapt ourselves and get stability enough to live better in Brazil.

What happened actually is that Mommy, too impetuous, never accepted to live away from Dad. She already had in her mind go to meet him since the beginning.

Then, Daddy busy with his rivets, neither had time to write and left her out of news during the months he spent alone in Brazil.

Certainly this helped to increase her anxiety to meet daddy. Nothing made her give up the idea , neither the fact of giving all their savings months before leaving her country, for her brother who had assaulted a Prussian soldier and needed to escape from Germany. Instead, she worked with even more energy, crazily, selling “broas” 1 and gathering money again until raise more, get rid of everything and pick up the children, embark on a ship and play the craziest adventure of her life, which made her not go back to live in her homeland, and never meet their parents again.

We arrived at the railroad camp before completing one year of Daddy’s work in the place. Was indescribable his fright when he saw Anne Pauline and their children coming to stay.

You already know from the stories you heard from your father, the unimaginable situations we experienced in our adaptation my childhood until my wedding. In about seven years living in Brazil, I gained six brothers. My fifth sister was born, I think, nine months after we arrived at camp, on a night when was falling a lot of water from the sky, on a ranch where rained in mom’s bed somehow the women opened umbrellas over her to protect from the drippings.

Perhaps this premature experience with the family responsabilities, to help mom keep the house, made me able to face a marriage so early. Edward was always a man of a closed temperament, but very good.

In family gatherings he always remembered my flicks in mocking tone and played with me, used to say to our children. We had eight. It was an offspring so big that once, in one of the train rides, in a parade, I forgot to do the usual count in return for a snack and left on in the station. It was a general hubbub, untill we found my boy in tears.

Edward was always a intelligent man, of inventiveness, helped build two more rail lines, and also Curitiba/Paranaguá. After we began to live in Curitiba, in the street Cândido de Abreu, beside my mother’s butcher. My husband opened a blacksmith shop and also used to produce industrial knives, using a secret of tempering steel that was in the family for centuries.

I always thought Edward was little recognized in his work on the railway network. When he was chief of the workshops from Ponta-Grossa, he projected a steam vehicle, the “Hildinha”, which was inaugurated with a party among friends. I remember they said, finally the value of our friend Eduardo will be recognized!

But it was not. Ewaldo Krüger, his boss, never mentioned in his writings the name of the creator and manufacturer of the vehicle. Attributed to himself the invention.

Despite my clumsiness at the beginning of marriage, I have a clear conscience that I played well my role as mother, wife and partner.

As you can see, I have not lived in vain. The pages of my life were filled with facts, stories, fights and challenges. I helped many of my grandchildren born, and had so much commitment to this divine task that I could participate in three days of three deliveries, a granddaughter and a grandson, in Curitiba, and save the life of another, Eno Theodoro, in Ponta Grossa-.

Eno was born, according to the midwife, dead with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. A good slap I gave in his butt made him wake up to life and save himself from asphyxia caused by umbilical. Maybe, my soul knew that the boy Eno had already captured my signal. Besides engineer like his grandfather, was a writer and poet. I saved his life and he saved our history writing a book. Understand, as it is wonderful, created and wrote not one, several – a great achievement for me , who always loved to read

1  broas – black bread often used between the immigrants, made by wheat, shorot, and rye.
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A necessary rescue II

by Legacy

Curitiba, Paraná/Brasil, to nowadays. Century 21

Egon really liked to tell the stories of our ancestors, immigrants who left German Silesia (now Czech Republic), from Germany and the Austro-hungarian Empire, some refugees from the First War, others who have ventured themselves to gain more then what they received in an Europe in full recession.

America was an El Dorado, where gold used to spring up in the soil and everything that was planted grew vigorously. A paradise on earth.

A lot of lies and a few truths collaborated to increase the suffering and the adaptation of these immigrants who dreamed with prosperity, often thinking they would live in North America, not South, without the option to return to their homeland. Is a fact that in the first ship that left from Germany to Brazil, many immigrants thought they were going to San Francisco, California, but they landed after three months of traveling – leaving the european winter and coming to the brazilian summer – in San Francisco, Santa Catarina, southern Brazil

Was with curiosity and attention that children from Egon heard these stories, like fairy tales of the famous Brothers Grimm, the tales of magical Sherazad, with the big difference that the distory from my family was not pure ficction and, yes, real life stories, of people who came here to work without knowing what they would face in a wild and unexplored country.

Just as so many immigrants, the Weigert and Wanke were part of the story of colonization of this State, which became the “land of all nations” for sheltering diverses ethnic cultures. The Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul received many German immigrants, Poles, Austrians and Italians, in part because the climate of this region – the South of Brazil – was similar with the European and it facilitated the adaptation of new settlers, and also because the abolition of slavery created a serious productive problem: the big landowners were losing their land and the country needed to grow, and to produce, it needed to be colonized.

However, Hermann Weigert (father) and Edward Wanke (husband) came before this process and not as poor colonizers, uneducated and with the unique dream to live here a better life. They came as technical specialists to build the progress and make real the railroad that would conect the plateau (Curitiba) to coast (Port of Paranaguá). They were among the workers considered more specialized from the technical people employed in the Austrian Empire.

Silesia

The Hermann, Marie’s father, born in 1841, in Trachtenberg, German Silesia, today the Czech Republic, arrived in Brazil already hired by the French company defined to build the railway, as well as my great grandfather Edward, who came a little later. Hermann arrived 38 years old and his role in the work was to put the rivets in bridges and metal overpasses to join the pieces.

Edward, who arrived years later, served the Austrian army, where he made his course of military engineering. Came to Brazil with 21 or 22 years, hired by Compagnie dês Chemins de Fer Brésiliens, the one choose to do the work.

Hermann used to say that if he had gained a penny by each rivet he had put on the steel structure built in the mountains, he would be a millionaire. According to the report contained in the book by Eno Theodor Wanke – Immigrant Saga (Saga dos Imigrantes)- to make the riveting in a bridge you needed teams with at least four men. Two in the pipeline, either for heating or for the passage to the bridge riveteres, another handling the bellows to keep the flame in high temperature.

The bridge

“In the bridge, two men were in charge of riveting, one working in front of another. The transport from the rivet to them depended, naturally, of the position they occupied in relation to the forge. If easy to reach, the rivets was brought one by one into a bucket by a fifth worker. If hard to reach, hanging like spiders in inacessible places, the transport was done by shooting: a man, using bucket, threw the rivet and the other the other picked it up algo in a bucket, passing them one by one, to the riveters.

And this giddy transport by air, could have intermediate steps, in which the workers, strategically placed, caught the hot rivet with his bucket and immediately give it to the next one, until it came to the riveters. (…) As you can see, was essentially a blacksmith work. Who looks for those viaducts and bridges soon notes the huge amout of rivets on it. There are thousands, milions, regularly arranged, buttoning buttons steel beams into each other, keeping the solidity of the whole. (…)

The Railway Curitiba-Paranaguá is one of the most beautiful works of engineering built amid the cliffs of the Serra do Mar, making a sinuous trace inside the exuberant Atlantic Forest in Paraná. In this place are together the hands of God and man: the forest and the railway.

Impossible

From this building, whose project was considered impossible by French engineers and that was not forward in the hands of an Italian coach, my ancestors participated in the realization, commanded by a Brazilian who accepted the challenge and believed in the impossible: the miner João Teixeira Soares, who had only 33 years when started the construction.

When the work of the most difficult and spectacular stretch was completed, where the most imposing viaducts were built, especially Taquaral, next to the rocky escarpments, projected in a curve with three spans of 12 meters and one with 25 meters, 57 meters in total, the President of the Province, Dr. Carlos Augusto de Carvalho, tall dignified president of Paraná, visited the work.

The visit happened in June of 1884 and Dr. Carlos participated of a small ceremony in which he expressed his feeling in a mixture of pride and triumph: _ “The South Americans also can now say that the word ‘impossible’ is not part of their dictionary . If a yankee breaks the ice wall of the Sierra Nevada with the iron paw of a mechanical horse, we Brazilians, equally make him treading by impracticality of magnitude equivalent.”. The work was inaugurated on February 5th 1885, although the first train to travel the entire line was on December 19, 1884.

So, as you can see, Marie’s father participated of this process which was a historical landmark for the country’s development. He arrived in Brazil already married in Germany with the German Anna Pauline, he also had already four children. The first of four children, born in Breslau, was Marie Weigert, on March 8, 1871.

Return

Their intention was to return to Germany after the construction of the railroad with the pockets full of money. The project was to make a financial reserve and return to live in their homeland.
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But it did not happen because Anne Pauline decided to sell everything in Germany, take the children and find her husband in Brazil. “Hermann nearly fainted because of the fright when he saw her. Her arrival meant the end of the hopes of return. And effectively, was that way.”

 

1 Wanke, Eno Theodoro. The saga of the immigrants. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Paquette, 1993. P.107

2 Wanke, 1993, p. 99

3 Wanke, 1993, p. 101

4 Wanke, 1993, p. 108

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To be a good housewife? I

by Legacy

Avenue Candido de Abreu, Curitiba/Brazil, 1888 – Marie Weigert Wanke’s home

My story, actually, beggins here, in the day my mother gave my a spanking for being reading a beautiful novel, fully satisfied in my marriage bed, having myself as the best.

marie1

Imagine a married woman taking some flicks of the mother, with a rod of quince, like a naughty little girl.

Wrong ot not, this story was told from generation to generation. I got famous among my descendants, evidently I don’t care about it and I still keep it as a legacy to generations who wish to receive the gift of love reading.

It all started when Edward was complaining to my mother that I, instead of making lunch, I was reading in bed. I confess that neither remembered the house and my daily tasks … Edward left for work in the morning and I, zupt, threw myself on the bed and I dived in the pages of a delightful romance.

You know how is the anxiety that comes when we feel that insane desire to see the end of a story. Than I just surrendered without resistence to this need.

What a shame! I was really concentrated in the bed like a queen, and did not feel the time pass and Edward come and see me at this literary delight. I felt ashamed, yes, but very different from what everybody feels when do something wrong or do not know how to do something correctly. My shame was like a “youngster” caught in a romp that deep in the soul hide certain sensation of triumph for doing that way.

I love reading…

I think the books are meant to be eaten, sated by the eyes, and the stories contained on it must penetrate our minds and mix itself with our thoughts on delighted dreams, in revelations, in knowledge and wisdom…

But even so, the fact of being caught reading at this time when women had no place in the intelectual world and also in the labor market, another sensation was coming. I also felt a huge disappointment compared to my new role: the wife. I thought that, now married, I could live a quieter life, without the endless responsability to clean the house, do laundry, make lunch every day. I thought Edward would be more understanding with me, and wouldn’t ask me to strictly fulfill my tasks. After all, he is 10 years older than me and could be more condescending to my little life experience – I am only 17.

Marie Weigert Wanke

Me, Marie Weigert now Wanke too, first born in a family of 10 brothers and my mother, so poor, really needed my help to take care of their children and of the butcher’s shop. I always admired her for the strongness and courage to abandon everything in Germany and live with her husband in a country so distant and different from where we used to live. That was the feeling that pushed me to share, with dedication, the domestic service, what consequently increased my responsability and left me timeless to play and devocate myself to nobles pastimes as reading.

Anyway, repress this uncontrollable wish to fly on the magic carpet from the pages of a book, and choose the tasks of a housewife, did not leave me revolted. Instead, I resigned and accepted the idea. After all, that was how they used to educate women in that century and is not my style questionating. My temper is far from being rebel, I think more practical submit myself to the system. They always told me I am from a quiet and sweet nature.

Now, after the fright of the suddenly flicks, I even smile remembering the scene… Of course, a kind of yellow smile. I see clearly Edward going to the butcher shop next to our house and ask “mota”1 to take a look at my pose, all loose, lying in bed with the book in my hand. I remember when I felt the spanking in me leg, I left the room jumping untill I reached the kitchen and concentrated on the dishes.

impetuous and determined mother

Certainly, my impetuous and determined mother, when saw the scene, got herself outraged with the failure of her education, had no hesitation in taking her wand quince and give me some good slaps.

That’s right! In the moral values of my mother, the german immigrant, Anna Pauline, daughter of butchers from Breslau, was unacceptable that one of her daughters, carefully hard educated from germans, failed to fulfill the sacred duties of a housewife. So, that was how at age 17, married, I took a few flicks, simple because of the fact that I like too much of reading my lovely novels in an inconvenient time.

For this episode, so simple, and at the same time so intense and capable to remark future generations, I need to open my heart and tell you and to the entire lineage of Weigert and Wanke, who like, love, just like me, to read a good book, I offer this passion as a legacy. I wish the “slap” received be an incentive recorded, almost like a command, in memory of my cells, and spread among my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren… so they seek to develop this wonderful habit, which I consider a real treat that never leaves us lonely: the reading.

Enjoy my ancestral energy, my signal and always seek to improve more. Read for me…

Maybe, that way, I will satiate, by my descendants, this thirst and this habit, so inaccessible to me, as well as for many women from nineteenth century.

The legacy I left is to compensate my resignation to the situation in which I lived, without revolt with my fate as a mother, wike and homewife. Instead, I had a wonderful time in this life and completed myself as a women, though, I recognize that, I wish…to tell the truth… to have had more time to read.

Style unique

Maybe for this resignation and for being a quiet woman, even a little out of the problems, I was the reason of teasing to my brothers, who used to catch me with jokes when I forgot things and facts.

For my own style, unique, is that I became character of many stories told among the Weigert and Wanke. For example, before finishing my lunch, I loved to go through the neighborhood – all brothers and cousins – and see what was inside the pots, chatting a little bit, and then, after this, go back to my kitchen and finish the lunch of the day. They also told that I used to go to the bathroom and forgot to tie the strips of these terribles “shorts” with opening behind, nothing sexy, we women wore beneath our huge skirts. My brother always warned me that they dragged on the ground.

Bahhh… That never bothered me. But back to the story of the slaps, I have always in my mind Egon, my nephew, telling me tim-tim-by-tim-tim, that Edward went to the butcher, next to my house, where the “mota” used to live, and told in German: “Komm, komm, kuch mal was passiert ist!” – “Come, come, come to see what is happening”…

Then Egon finished telling the story, everyone smiled because of this episode and her wife, Odette, my nephew, completed saying: “-What a shame, she got married so young and did not know the responsability that she was going to face with! She thought getting married would free herself of taking care of the brothers and would let her to do everything she wanted! Neither had any idea of the offspring she would produce: eight children.
Mota – mommy, in German, at least in the concept of the immigrants who settled in Candido de Abreu.