On the homepage of “Wellküren” is the message: “Maria’s birth flagn d’Schwaiberl furt… Our sister Burgi died on September 8th. Almost exactly a year ago she was diagnosed with leukemia. She fought bravely and one undergone the toughest medical therapies. Unfortunately without success. We are very sad and we are at a loss for words at the moment. Have a good flight, dear Burgi.”
Burgi alias Notburga was born in 1952, the eldest of the three sisters. She played guitar and trombone and even had “nun’s trumpets” made for the trio. These are the one-strings that nuns played in church because trumpets were forbidden to them for reasons of propriety. “You shouldn’t let yourself be deceived by her casual, confident manner on stage,” says her vita on the trio’s homepage, “she has all of us siblings in her hands”. As a big sister and a qualified business economist, she is “the mistress of our financial accounting, she knows every private special edition and every flimsy hospitality receipt”.
Burgi had performed with the sisters for more than 35 years. First Vroni was there, when she wanted to change, Bärbi stepped in. They are all part of the big Well family. It consisted of father Hermann, who was a teacher in the village of Günzlhofen, mother Traudl and a total of 15 children together and later also a foster child.
Hardly anyone in Bavaria who doesn’t have this old black-and-white photo in mind of the family standing there, the children lined up like organ pipes. Thanks to their musicality – and their courage to open their mouths, even in a figurative sense – many of the 15 have become exponents of a particularly likeable Bavarianness in adulthood.
Like the Biermösl-Blosn, the Wellküren have passed on the baton of folk music that is “outrageous” in the best sense of the word. Although the brothers became famous first, Burgi and her sisters were only busy raising their children and other jobs for a few years.
“The music was and has always been our cohesion,” Burgi Well once said in an interview. Now that she’s broken from the chain, many friends and colleagues call out to her in sympathy. So did Günter Knoll, who as the organizer often hosted the Wellkuren in the slaughterhouse and backyard theater: “Burgi was also a teacher and (an) director of the ‘Wellkinder’. In this way, she passed on the musicality and creativity of the Well family to the grandchildren . This is also how she will live on!” Burgi Well was one of three. She was one of fifteen. She was someone like no other. There will be many of them.