The conversation begins, a christening is scheduled in three hours – and after just five minutes it’s clear that this could be close. A systematic conversation with Maria Feldigl is hardly possible; not because she loses the thread, but because she has three stories in her head for every question – at least. She has finally experienced enough at the age of 93 – and 75 of them as an organist in Wolfratshausen.
Despite her age, Feldigl is wide awake, humble, modest and highly entertaining. Her belief in God protects her from fears and doubts. To this day she lives autonomously and happily in her own house – to the key words “emancipation” and “self-realization” she only answers with big, questioning eyes. Nevertheless, Feldigl is a woman who has persistently but seemingly effortlessly pursued her own path.
Feldigl was born on May 11, 1929 in Wolfratshausen in the house where she still lives today, “and I’d like to die here too. Yes, there’s no other way, otherwise I’d have to emigrate.” She experienced her childhood as carefree, Wolfratshausen was a beautiful place, the children played in the street “and counted the cars that passed – many weren’t.” And in winter they always waited for another one to get stuck on the hill in front of the Weidacher mill.
She also likes to remember the controls of the raft master at the old box mill weir. She could watch from the garden of her house and grandma had to be careful that the child didn’t fall over the garden fence into the water – “I haven’t learned to swim until today.” Hook for a Stoiber anecdote: In the past, the raft with the dignitaries drove past Feldigl’s house at the annual Nepomuk procession and then down the raft slide at the weir – everyone only got out again below. The “old hands” on the raft kept their distance when tipping down the slide, while the former prime minister stayed on the front edge and got soaked when he dived in – “but he didn’t have to go far to get home,” Feldigl laughs.
Little Maria started school in 1935, after eight years of elementary school (“it was in the monastery behind St. Andreas, where the community center is today”), from autumn 1943 she took the Isar Valley Railway to Munich every day and walked from there to middle school . When there was an air raid alarm, she ran back to the Isar valley station, ideally to get home. School attendance became less and less frequent because of these attacks until the middle school was closed in February 1945. When the bombers flew over Wolfratshausen, the children hid under the currant bushes – there were no cellars or bunkers, but the town was not a target either. From autumn 1945, Feldigl went to a boarding school in Altötting, where her aunt was a school sister, to continue secondary school. In the summer of 1947 she returned to her parents’ house and the organ became the central focus of her life.
Maria Feldigl practices and plays seven days a week – in both town churches in Wolfratshausen.
(Photo: Gregor Miklik/OH)
The father Johann Feldigl, church musician of the catholic congregation St. Andreas in Wolfratshausen, taught both sons and the daughter. Maria began playing the piano at the age of six and the organ at the age of ten. The older brother became a craftsman, the younger studied church music in Munich before being drafted. At the age of just 24, he took over his father’s office after his sudden death in February 1945. “I stood in for my brother early on, because he often didn’t feel like playing the organ during all the prayers – I always felt like it,” says Feldigl. After school she took care of her mother and the household and contributed to the livelihood with piano lessons and organ services in St. Andreas. Vocational training for women was not yet common. Only when the Sparkasse was looking for someone to do the bookkeeping in 1954 did it get this job. She stayed there for a total of 35 years as an “unskilled worker” until she retired in 1989. She is still grateful to her colleague Astrid Kremser, who apparently repeatedly confirmed to the bosses that Maria can get along well without a computer – “so I never had to learn computer stuff.” And she continued to play the organ regularly, “that always made me happy.”
Since Feldigl’s father had already played organ concerts in the evangelical church of St. Michael, the name was known there; When there was a vacancy in 1964, the pastor asked her – since then Feldigl has shared the Protestant services with Klaus Pieferling and took over them alone in 1989. 1989 was also the year Feldigl retired – so she had plenty of time for her vocation.
In 2010 – at the age of 81 – this vocation was briefly questioned when Feldigl fell in the apartment in the evening after a visit to the Oktoberfest (“yes, yes, the beer was tasty”). Despite her aching arm, she went to bed first, but the next morning she was diagnosed with a broken upper arm. She quickly refuted the prognosis that the organ would probably come to nothing. After six weeks she returned to duty. The implanted metal splint doesn’t bother her, metal detectors at the airport aren’t a problem, “because I don’t fly. But if I go out in a thunderstorm now, of course lightning could strike,” says Feldigl dryly.
In addition to music, it was always important to her to be interested in and interacting with her surroundings. As an active member of the Catholic community and organist in the Protestant community, she always had many contacts – with everyone. In addition, she was mostly on foot in the city and got into conversation with people – apparently Maria Feldigl didn’t need much more to be satisfied with her life. “My mother and I had the garden and we were never alone”. The ground floor was rented out and my brother came to visit from time to time.
Today she leaves this garden for the neighbors to use, she prefers to stay on the balcony under the roof, from there she can see more and doesn’t need a parasol. She doesn’t have much time for leisure anyway, because everyday life is well filled seven days a week: From 7.30 a.m. she goes to church to practice, then to go shopping, then home to read the newspaper; Cooking, household chores and laundry are still pending. And the organ service has become more and more intensive: she not only plays in Sankt Michael, but also in Waldram to cover her holidays, school services in Münsing, “and then all the baptisms, weddings and funerals.” With these “casualities” she was sometimes offered money, which she then let donate to the organ, her pension and the fee for playing the organ are completely sufficient. “I don’t need anything. I last traveled in the 1980s, I think – that would be too exhausting for me today.” The organ, on the other hand, apparently never gets too much, so she is available to the Protestant community in an emergency 365 days a year – and if necessary, she also helps out in her Catholic home community of St. Andreas, whose service she regularly attends on Wednesdays.
She “actually doesn’t have any bigger plans for the future”. When the evangelical pastor Florian Gruber wanted to send her for a corona vaccination, she would have asked herself “is it still necessary now?” When Gruber realized that the community definitely still needed her, she left because “at least I don’t have to worry about long-term consequences anymore.” However, she says with a wink, she would very much like to celebrate her 60th service anniversary in the Protestant Church in 2024.