Anton Kirchmair grew up directly on the Isar. In his childhood in the 1950s, the river was his playground, the artist recalls. At that time, the adults would have instructed the schoolchildren how to jump into the Isar, for example at the Thalkirchener Brücke, was right. “They showed us how to dive through dangerous rollers and whirlpools.” Today, Kirchmair complains, “the children are kept away from the water because of their parents’ fears. You just have to guide them.”
Anyone who is familiar with water often experienced that expansion of consciousness there, as it is verbosely described in the literature. It’s like diving into another world. Even the fragile writer Franz Kafka experienced swimming as a mental state of emergency. “Kafka and I,” his friend Max Brod later recalled, “lived under the belief that one would not have taken possession of a landscape as long as the connection was not established physically by bathing in its lively flowing waters.”
A reading book published by Lichtung Verlag, which is dedicated to the topic of rivers, also aims in this direction of thought. The texts contain stories that describe the water experience in all its shades. Be it as a source of strength or as a threat, as a place of remembrance or as a place of rest, as wild water or as a raw material for literature and music.
One of the most beautiful geotopes in Bavaria
“Entran dem Weltlärm” is the appropriate title of the introductory text by Karl-Heinz Paulus, an expert on the Danube Forest region. “Nature is a very good sedative,” he says loosely after Anton Chekhov, particularly referring to his favorite place, the Buchberger Leite between Ringelai and Freyung. This wild water gorge is one of the most beautiful geotopes in Bavaria, also because nature can still rule there undisturbed.
The painter Anna Glockshuber, who grew up on the Vils, describes quite poetically how the rapid change of times is also reflected on the river. She is reminiscent of an old farmer who lived near Gerzen (Landshut district) and benevolently shouted to her grandchildren, who drove to the village with the new mopeds: “Fohrts no owe noch Gerzen, that wos sehgts vo da Weud.” Their radius of life only extended to a few kilometers.
More and more desperate he screamed “Brrrr, Brrrrr”
The story of the farmer who, after exchanging his oxen for a bulldog, chased across a meadow in the unfamiliar vehicle, straight towards the Vils, and knew nothing more than to get louder and more desperate, is also tragic-comic. ” Brrrr, Brrrrr “to scream. When the bank was there, he just threw up his arms and rushed into the Vils with one last “Brrrr”. Throughout his life, as Anna Glockshuber sums up, “he bathed in the laughter of his fellow men”.
Fred Haller, on the other hand, uses the example of the Rottauen to describe how much the use of water power there depended on the whims of nature. The weather alone decided whether the miller could run the mill. Sometimes the amount of water was too small, sometimes there was flooding. “The Rott is a bitch!” Haller’s grandfather complained.
The author Hans Göttler, in turn, grew up in a tavern in Simbach am Inn. The father was a passionate Braunau-goer, that is, someone who liked to cross the Jordan, as it was popularly known. If the name Braunau is mentioned, Hitler is not far. According to Göttler, Zach, the former Simbacher Weißbräu, had the saying: “Da Zach, da Zach, dees is a creature, and be Bia, des hod an Stich.” Unfortunately, the old Hitler, who lived as a customs officer in Braunau at the time, did not perish from this brew before the conception of his unfortunate son, summarizes Göttler, which proves that the rivers shape the course of the world, but just as the river gods want . For example the Aenus who watches over the Simbacher Bridge. That the figure is stretching its butt towards Braunau may be interpreted either way.
Rivers. A reader, ed. by Kristina Pöschl and Eva Bauernfeind, Lichtung Verlag, 191 pages, 20 euros.