"You need lard in your arms": Hat maker (90) talks about her work
Created: 08/20/2022, 19:00
By: Elena Royer
Maria Heiss from Lenggries took good care of her customers.
For many years, the 90-year-old made all kinds of hats for the people of Isarwinkl.
100 hats for the Anlassschützen © Krinner
The Lenggrieser hat maker Maria Heiss (90) reported on her work in the narrative café.
The interest was great.
The forest church was well filled.
Lenggries – The forest church in Lenggries was well filled on Wednesday morning.
The Lenggrieser hat maker Maria Heiss was a guest there as part of the narrative café.
"I am very touched that so many have come today," said Barbara von Uthmann, the organizer of the narrative café, at the beginning.
"And I'm pleased that so many are interested." She explained to those present, who had sat down expectantly on the pews in the church, that the event is also a catch-up birthday celebration for Maria Heiss, who recently turned 90 years old .
"You wouldn't believe that when you see them racing through the village," added von Uthmann.
Film about Maria Heiss dates from the 70s
In honor of the jubilee, a film was shown that the Lenggrieser Anton Steger had shot about her in the 1970s.
In it you can look over the shoulder of Maria Heiss in her workshop while making a rifle hat and a corded hat.
“I made at least a hundred hats for the Lenggrieser Antlass Schützen,” Maria Heiss explains in the film, while she shapes a steaming hot blank hat.
"You need lard in your arms." And above all, it's a time-consuming job.
"There's five to six hours of work in there," said Heiss after the film screening, holding up a protective hat into which she stuck a few flowers on the side.
"In addition, the hat still has to dry overnight." And also the corded hat, a black hat for women with a golden cord and tassels,
is anything but done quickly.
"Just putting on the cord takes forever."
The actual career aspiration was a kindergarten teacher
After the film screening, there was an opportunity in the adjoining room to toast with the jubilee and to learn more about her time as a milliner.
A visitor wanted to know how Heiss got into millinery.
"I came from the Lenggrieser elementary school in 1947," said the 90-year-old. "With a not-so-bad report card, if I may say so," she smiled.
By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Bad Tölz newsletter.
At first she wanted to do pottery or become a kindergarten teacher.
"But my mother's cousin was a hatter in Waging am See and wanted an apprenticeship.
So I started my apprenticeship there on November 3, 1947.” After that, Maria Heiss actually wanted to see something of the world, but her mother said she could still learn how corded hats are made in Miesbach. No sooner said than done.
"After that, the Miesbach company actually wanted to keep me," Heiss recalls.
"But my mother said: It's not possible.
Lenggries needs a clever milliner.”
The craft of hat making is almost extinct today
And so it happened that the 90-year-old made all kinds of hats for many years, but mainly traditional hats, everyday hats and holiday hats for the people of Isarwinkl.
A craft that hardly exists today.
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Maria Heiss has also literally “taken off her hat” and no longer makes headgear.
However, the 90-year-old always found the most beautiful thing about her work when the hats were finished and her customers were satisfied with them.
"I've always been happy when people come up and tell me the hat fits well."
You can find more current news from the region around Bad Tölz at Merkur.de/Bad Tölz.
