Landkreis
- The book "Country People", published by Hans Prockl, is about people in the country.
The author believes these contemporary witnesses have a lot to tell.
Precisely because they are not in the public eye.
Reason enough not to focus on prominent people, but on “normal people in a less exposed position”.
The native Wimpasinger and today's Wörther recorded the conversations on tape.
The result was an exquisite collection of local stories - literal and contemporary.
It's about everyday things.
The tension lies above all in the ease of the language, which mixes the familiar and equally personal perceptions in every interview.
"Most people like to talk, tell about themselves and their lives," explains Prockl.
“Stories that are repeated for the hundredth time become more and more detailed, flowery.” The recently published collection is also history, connecting the past with the present, according to the documentarist.
The self-published book “Country People” contains twelve interviews, the two oldest of which are from 1965 and 1966, one from 1978 and the others from 2015 to 2018. People who live on the upper reaches of the Isen River have their say or have lived.
Just like Prockl himself in his childhood and youth.
The author, born in 1948, comes from Wimpasing near Lengdorf.
The other part of the interviewees are, so to speak, new neighbors.
As a pensioner, Prockl moved back to the country - back to Isental, he now lives in Wörth near Schwindegg.
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Ayse and Mehmet Aritoprak from Wörth were spared prejudices.
They tell you in the interview.
© private
Hans Prockl lived in Munich for a long time after studying physics.
For 37 years he taught mathematics, physics, computer science and documentary film at the Realschule and Fachoberschule of the Pfennigparade Foundation.
The lessons with handicapped students shaped him.
Long before the word inclusion was on everyone's lips, the Munich rehabilitation center campaigned for the participation of people with disabilities in the areas of education, work, living and leisure.
Although Prockl has been taking portraits with the camera since he was 16 and recording the words of the protagonists, the hobby filmmaker consciously decided against a media profession: "I'm not a contract writer, I'm looking for contemporary witnesses."
He found Martha Angermaier from Lengdorf.
“Martha, she knows so much”, is the title of her chapter, in which she reports on her childhood and youth, her professional life and the customers in the village shop. The village shop has always been the local trading point for gossip and news.
The first telephone, the first car and the first television - unforgettable for the baker's daughter.
The Lengdorf woman tells of the role of the church in her life: "I am a Bavarian Catholic, I need church, I need baroque Bavarian", the book says.
Or about the construction of the controversial A 94, which destroyed many “magical places”: “It hurts me so much,” says Angermaier, who was interviewed by Prockl in her kitchen.
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She knows a lot: Martha Angermaier from Lengdorf.
© private
Or the couple Ayse and Mehmet Aritoprak, neighbors of Prockl.
The two migrants came to Germany from Cappadocia, Turkey, in 1972, recruited to work in a Schwindegger woodworks.
Mehmet Aritoprak rarely encountered prejudices: “Out of 30 people only one said you come from Turkey and take our work away from us.
People are actually always good, but only look inside, ”he says.
The Aritopraks would not have regretted having settled in Isental.
Something special is the 1966 interview with the housewife Katharina Feckl from Innerbittlbach (municipality of Lengdorf), born in 1888, in which her granddaughter Helga and the farmer couple Agnes and Schoos Huber also took part.
The conversation is available in two versions, once written down in Bavarian and translated into standard German in the next column.
It's about dying and suffering as well as the neighborhood.
And Prockl also published the transcription of the conversation recorded in 1978 with the Wagner, construction worker and gravedigger Isidor Hein in verbatim language, he only transferred the passages that were not so easy to understand.
“There are no more grave diggers like they used to be this year.
If he dug a grave, he was invited to the funeral feast, ”says Prockl.
The interview is a real piece of contemporary history: "I want to capture people as they are and as they were."
The illustrated book
“Country People” costs 19 euros and is available in the Dorfener Buchhandlung and Leseglück in Erding, or directly from the author: hans.prockl@t-online.de
Michaele Heske