Franz Xaver Sailer (69), who now lives in Bad Tölz, has immortalized his childhood memories of his home village Ammerland in a book.
The Ambacher Verlag publishes the 42-page, illustrated work.
Franz Xaver Sailer was born in Ammerland in 1951
He has recorded his childhood memories in a 42-page book
The encounters between young Franz and the villagers are particularly nice to read
Ammerland
- Born and raised in the Hotel and Gasthaus am See in Ammerland, Sailer tells of a harmonious childhood that was shaped by the beginning of post-war tourism.
He reports on sometimes bizarre encounters with the people in the village, in which many things are no longer what they used to be.
As early as the middle of the 19th century, more and more manufacturers and other wealthy people moved into the formerly sleepy fishing village with a few farms, who had magnificent villas and country houses built.
It was then that steam shipping began, which brought tourism to Lake Starnberg and its shoreline along with the railway line that had just been created.
There was initially a small jetty in front of the Sailers' hotel, which was expanded over time.
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The book contains 18 stories about the village.
© private
However, the jetty has been history since 2018.
Sailer's brother Reinhard, owner of the Hotel am See, has, as the property owner, no longer extended the contract with Bayerische Seenschifffahrt - one of the changes in Ammerland that the author regrets.
He describes how the place changed after the Second World War due to the influx of refugees and displaced persons as well as the structural change in agriculture, as a result of which many farms discovered tourism as a welcome source of income.
The development of "automobilism" reinforced this trend.
The winter of 1962 was one of the severest of the 20th century
“I saw the light of day in our inn and hotel 50 meters from the lakeshore in October 1951 through a house birth and grew up on the Würmsee shore,” Sailer begins his notes.
He consciously calls the lake Würmsee in order not to let this name be forgotten.
That was the official name of Lake Starnberg until 1962. Sailer has intense memories of it.
He writes that the winter of 1962 was one of the severest of the 20th century.
In mid-November a Greenland high of polar origin spread over almost all of Europe, which was to remain weather-determining until March 1963.
There were minus temperatures of up to 30 degrees.
The Thames, the Rhine, the Elbe, the Bodensee, the Danube, the Nurse and Würmsee were frozen over.
“At night, when the ice contracted, the loud cracking noises that often tore ten kilometers along the ice surface were ghostly,” says Sailer, describing the winter of the century.
As a child, it was nice to be able to skate on the ice.
There were also ice sailors and sometimes even passenger cars on the ice.
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Author Franz Xaver Sailer.
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The author
“As a pensioner, I now have more time,” says Franz X. Sailer, who also writes poetry.
That is why the 69-year-old from Tölz sat down at the beginning of the year to record memories of his childhood and youth in Ammerland.
18 stories, partly cheerful, partly thought-provoking, never invented, have emerged.
With the Ambacher Verlag, Sailer found a small “home publisher”, as he says.
Most of the photos in the book come from the family's possession; the author got some from the community and private individuals.
Four farms, all with dairy cows and fisheries, existed in Ammerland in the 1950s: at the Hoffischer, at Schmauz, at Fischermichel and at Fischerhauser.
The cows were driven through the village to the meadows on the outskirts, and the farmer even had oxen for agriculture.
The fishing boats were made of wood.
“I often fetched milk from the Fischermichl and was one of the few who drank it cow warm.
It tasted wonderful, ”remembers the Ammerlander.
At night when the ice contracted, the loud cracking noises that often tore ten kilometers across the ice surface were ghostly.
Franz Xaver Sailer on the winter of the century 1963/63 at Lake Starnberg
At that time there was an enormous commercial diversity in his home village, starting with the restaurants with the Gasthof am See, the Gerer with a butcher's and a small shop, the Café Seeblick and the Café Hubertus, the latter with an ice cream parlor in summer.
The Graf bakery still exists today, in contrast to the Erna Gehring delicatessen, the Konrad Schnetz grocery store and the vegetable shop owned by the siblings Marga and Ernst Kink.
Sailer's “favorite business” was Martha Holzbauer's household and stationery store with the post office opposite.
Until the beginning of the 1960s, the place even had a police station with an integrated prison and a branch of the Volksbank Wolfratshausen.
The Granacher petrol station stood at the entrance to Münsing until the 1970s.
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Tourist destination: the Gasthof Sailer am See.
© private
The encounters between young Franz and the villagers are particularly nice to read - the eccentric retired major general Walter Leuze, the talkative Fraulein Eva Romanowsky and the good-natured Hoffischer Josef Bäck, whom Sailer completely smoked up about 70 Würmseerenken by diligently adding beech logs.
“It was always funny when Konrad von Pocci acted as referee at a football tournament.
He ran around with his pipe like Karl Valentin doing a hundred-meter sprint in his younger years, "it says of the count.
There are also anecdotes about the German shepherd “Arno” and the billy goat “Mecki”, although the end of the dog, the young Sailer's beloved playmate, is sad.
A serious chapter is devoted to Pastor Friedrich Schnell, who beat the pupils at the small Ammerland forest school and had a criminal record for this.
Of the many craft businesses, only a few are left
"Almost 70 years later, the cormorants and villa owners in Ammerland have increased significantly, the whitefish starve to death in the water that is too clean and the fishermen often breed their fish off the beaten track," wrote the Tölzer at the end.
Only a few are left of the formerly numerous craft businesses.
“But the green nature has not left our beautiful place, the sunsets have not changed.
My memories of the wonderful time in Ammerland after the war will be unforgettable.
Maybe our landmark will reappear at some point, because Ammerland without a steam bridge is like a mountain without a summit cross ”.
Tanja Lühr
info
"Mein Ammerland" is available from Ambacher Verlag (www.ambacher-verlag.de) and at the turn of the month from November to December in the Krümel and Korn bakery in Münsing and in the Wolfratshauser Rupprecht bookstore in the old town.
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