Max Bauer died 30 years ago, he came from the Passau region, and died at the age of 86. He was of a tough nature, born of a lack of luxury and pampering. Even as a child he hired himself out as a farm hand, then he went to war, and then he slaved away as a stone-breaker.
We know quite a lot about Bauer’s life because in his old age he wrote down his memories in ruled exercise books. Anyone who studies these texts learns a lot about life and even more about the meaning of the concept of home. Because Bauer had learned one thing emphatically: the homeland is so deep inside a person that they cannot escape it and their whims.
At this point, Bauer brings an old servant named Hakl into play. Unable to work and frail, he had to hobble from farm to farm, as was customary at the time, in order to receive a small meal and a makeshift bed. Only the bare essentials were spoken to these abused people, they were left to their own devices until they died out somewhere in the damp corner of a stable.
As Bauer learned from his father, Hakl once sat on a bench in 1866 and cried bitterly. The Bavarians had just lost the war against the Prussians, and when someone asked him what was bothering him, he replied: “It hurts me so much because we are now Prussians.” The Hakl shed tears for a home that did not begrudge him anything, for which someone like him did not even exist. Homeland is nice and generous to some, and disregarded to others. It gives beauty and security, but it also sows envy and injustice.
“We have to reinterpret the term positively,” demanded Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, but experience has shown that it cannot be reinterpreted, not even by politics and ideology. The minister could just as well try to mold a liter of water into a mold with her hands. Nothing will come of it other than all the helpless attempts to define homeland: where the best white sausages are, where you can understand the obituaries, where you hang yourself…
Perhaps the lady from Klingen, a contemporary of Max Bauer, saw the true essence of home. All her life she tended a farm full of demanding men. She was emaciated at 40 and died young. Those who saw her on her deathbed said: There was a radiance on her face like never before.