It was over 100 years ago, but the old story about "Lexenkaspar" Kaspar Haslinger from Gaißach keeps coming back to life.
The poacher died 100 years ago today.
What happened then?
Gaißach
- "Everyone here knows Lexenkaspar", is the saying in the village when you talk about Kaspar Haslinger.
In the 19th century he was the most famous Gaißach poacher and was suspected of murder in September 1886.
Affected with this bad flaw, he no longer saw a basis for life in his homeland and emigrated to America.
The unpunished act haunts the collective memory to this day.
With his vita, Haslinger even made it to a Wikipedia entry.
A hundred years ago, on July 19, 1921, he died in Terre Haute, Indiana.
A search for clues.
Kaspar Haslinger was born on July 30, 1858 on his parents' farm "zum Lex", which has been in the family's possession since 1606. According to an old custom, the farm was assigned to his first-born older brother Michael, while Kaspar grew up there in the role intended for him as a single “servant”. This was how coexistence was regulated in the rural culture of that time - including on the Lexenhof.
With this not very rosy outlook on life, Kaspar Haslinger poached regularly as a young man in the Isarwinkel and far beyond.
Hunting was still a privilege and a pastime of the nobility.
Forest officials and other persons authorized by the sovereign took over the protection, maintenance and supervision of the hunting area.
All hunters who had become illegal as a result were viewed as poachers, treated like criminals and punished accordingly.
Wildschützen belonged to the sympathy of the common people
It seems amazing how far these men got around in the past and how well connected they were. Haslinger's great-great-great-nephew Kaspar Fischer, who today - five generations later - runs the Lexenhof, says: "As guardians of extensive forest pastures and as woodworkers, they had a large radius;
Wildschützen belonged to the sympathy of the common people. They were revered like heroes by the rural poor. But despite all the euphemistic romanticism, it should not be overlooked that their insatiable passion for hunting sometimes turned them into criminals to whom a human life meant little. When the game warden and game shooter got in each other's way, there were always deaths on both sides. A cynical principle of the game shooters was: "Da gschwinda is da gsünda."
There is a thoroughly amusing episode that is told in the Jagdkultur-Atlas, an online portal of the Bavarian Hunting Association: According to this, Kaspar Haslinger and a game shooter named “Wastl” from Tyrol were once after a capital 36-ender in the Wallgau area , which was reserved for the king and was guarded by the hunter Donatus.
When they met, they are said to have cut off both buttons of his lederhosen and the bib, whereupon he bared and ran away amid their laughter.
But it soon turned into serious seriousness.
Escape after an exchange of fire
On December 1, 1883, Kaspar Haslinger poached with a friend in Duke Carl Theodor's hunting area on Lake Tegernsee. He was caught by the hunting assistant Hansel Scheidter, who shot him a load of shot in the chest and face. Haslinger managed to escape, but because of his disfiguring injury he stayed in hiding for longer until he was tracked down by gendarmes in Lenggries and then sentenced to two years in prison.
What happened next is told in the family like this: After his release from prison, Kaspar Haslinger and a friend from Oberfischbach who had been innocent until then went poaching again in the Stallau on the night of September 14, 1886, where two gendarmes on night patrol followed their heels stapled.
The older, experienced police officer is said to have shouted "let them go", but 19-year-old Johann Neuner from Mutmannsreuth (near Bayreuth), who had just graduated from the Royal Gendarmerie School in Munich, could not be shaken off by the two poachers.
Haslinger jumped nimbly over a cattle gate, but his friend Johann Baptist Pföderl got stuck on this obstacle and is said to have killed the Neuner who was chasing him.
28-year-old was ostracized
Both managed to escape, but Haslinger was quickly targeted by the investigators. On September 22nd, our newspaper reported: "Kaspar Haslinger vulgo Lexenkaspar von Gaißach, who was only released from prison this spring after serving a prison sentence for poaching, was arrested on suspicion of the murder of gendarme Neuner." But Haslinger denied each Involved in the crime and did not reveal the perpetrator either. Because nothing could be proven to him, he had to be released again.
But the 28-year-old realized that he was now without perspective and an outlaw. So he made the difficult decision to emigrate to America. After having had his marriage property, i.e. his compulsory inheritance, handed over to him at a secret meeting, he set off for Venice in the night and in the fog to embark there. In Innsbruck he explained to an acquaintance that he would henceforth be called Kaspar Hirschmann. In South Tyrol, Kaspar Fischer assumes, he met his future wife Maria, with whom he settled in Indiana in the mid-west and started a family.
Haslinger maintained contact with his relatives via the postal address of friends from Reichersbeuern.
He's also sent them a photo of him in a hunter pose as a 43-year-old.
As Kaspar Fischer says, he also expressed his great homesickness in his letters and asserted that he was not the perpetrator.
It was only later that this mystery was resolved in a dramatic way: on his deathbed, the gunman Pföderl from Oberfischbach confessed to the murder and asked his relatives to inform Kaspar Haslinger's relatives about it.
Strokes of fate for the real murderer
If there should be such a thing as the curse of the nefarious deed, then in this case it seems to have been fulfilled in a terrible way: Because Pföderl met a difficult fate during his lifetime: shortly after the heir to the court Pföderl (Moarbauer) was his wife pregnant. So he had a lot to lose. The couple had twins, but they died soon after the birth. Less than two years after the crime, on August 23, 1888, he too died. This meant that there were no more offspring and the farm fell into other hands.
Kaspar Haslinger died at the age of 63 after severe suffering, as is shown by a death report that also ended up in his old homeland, which he himself never saw again.
With a small collection of pictures and documents, Kaspar Fischer and his mother Maria keep the memory of the family's “prodigal son” alive, but they are far from glorifying his terrible involvement in the crime.
The family also owns an eight-verse text in Gstanzl form with a fully composed melody.
There is still a song of mockery today
Sepp Kloiber and other folk musicians have this song of mockery of the incompetent hunters in their repertoire.
Kloiber even considers it “possible that it came from Haslinger himself, but the authorship has not been clearly established”.
It says: “In Tölz do the Isar flows through / do a Gams came along for a short time, dö hams gfangt open / what hams gfangt?
A Gams / Yes, yes, yes, a Gams came along for a short time, dö hams probably caught free. "
Haslinger had a daughter and a son in America who once visited his Gaißach family in the 1960s.
However, he only spoke English, it is said in the village.
(Rainer Bannier)
By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our new, regular Bad Tölz newsletter.
