Irschenberg's oldest citizen has died.
Margareta Prechtel passed away peacefully at the age of 108 surrounded by her family.
An obituary.
When Margareta Prechtel celebrated her 108th cradle party last year on June 28, she wanted to take the next big birthday with her.
She would then have been 110 years old – that would have been in 2024.
And she was looking forward to it.
But this celebration will no longer exist.
Margareta Prechtel died on January 7th - as Irschenberg's oldest citizen.
What is remarkable is not the old age that the mother of three has reached, but how she lived her life.
"She was a lively, happy person," she describes her daughter Margarete Koch.
"She had the gift of being able to tick off the negative in order to always see the good." This positive attitude has carried her through life.
And maybe that's why life meant well for her.
Her positive attitude has carried her through life
Margareta Prechtel was born in 1913 in Kufstein, where she grew up until she was ten.
Then the family – the father was a customs finance officer – moved to Augsburg for work-related reasons.
She lived through both world wars – the first as a little girl, the second as a young woman.
In 1935 she married her husband Leonhard in Augsburg, who was a businessman and authorized officer of a construction company.
The family was the most important thing
Margareta Prechtel did not have a special hobby.
"The family and the children were important to her," says her daughter.
"She was great as a mother.
She was very modern for the time, and she raised my two brothers and me freely and openly.
She was very tolerant.”
The family was to remain the focus even after the children were grown, for it grew and grew.
Today there are nine grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren between the ages of seven and 24.
After the death of her husband in 1975, Margareta Prechtel continued to live in Augsburg for many years, but she was never alone.
Not least because the close connection to her daughter had accompanied her into old age.
Margarete Koch drove from Irschenberg to Augsburg twice a week to visit her mother.
The senior citizen herself often and regularly visited the forest settlement until she moved to Irschenberg entirely in 2015.
At some point, you could feel the age.
Active into old age
Here, too, she felt comfortable and regularly did her rounds on the street with the walker to stay fit. Chat a little, experience a little something new. She trained her mind by reading books. Her 105th birthday had shown how active she was even in old age. At that time the whole family had come together - in honor of grandma. 100 cake forks, 100 coffee spoons, 50 champagne glasses, 50 water glasses were purchased for this. In the end there were over 150 guests.
The three birthdays that followed were not that great.
Maybe that's why Margareta Prechtel was looking forward to the 110th again.
She was fit enough in the summer to be believed.
But in the winter months, the elderly became weaker and weaker, as her daughter says.
At Christmas there was another opportunity for the family to spend some time with her.
One last time.
On January 7th, Irschenberg's oldest citizen fell asleep gently - in her daughter's arms.
A death without pain, as she says: "She enjoyed her life until the last day."
ddy
The Burial
The urn will not take place until February 24th so that the big family can get together.