Lukas Hartmann writes about a Verdingkind that concerns him
Published: Wednesday, Apr 24th 2024, 15:50
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"Martha and Yours" is the title of Lukas Hartmann's new novel. He wrote parts of it after suffering a stroke in October 2022. In it, the Bernese author tells the story of his grandmother, who was hired out as a child.
Lukas Hartmann has "recovered well and is grateful for it", the author told his publisher in response to an inquiry from the Keystone-SDA news agency. His enjoyment of writing is undiminished.
More than half of "Martha and Yours" was written before his stroke, writes Diogenes Verlag. "The remaining part was written after the stroke in the last few months." Hartmann had been dealing with the Verdingwesen and the themes of the novel for many years. "They are both very important to him personally and an important chapter in Swiss history," says the publisher.
The children have to go
And so Hartmann talks about his paternal grandmother, Martha. She was seven years old when her father died. An accident at work had left him bedridden, so the family of eight had no income and food was scarce. The father's death finally makes the misery official: the children cannot be fed by their mother alone, they have to leave, the municipality decides.
The six siblings were sent to six different farms in the Bernese countryside. "If you're good and hardworking, you'll have a good time with us," the strange man says to Martha when he picks her up.
It is a story that many children and young people in Switzerland experienced. They were sent to orphanages, psychiatric institutions or farms, were beaten, humiliated and abused as cheap labor.
Simonetta Sommaruga's apology
In 2013, the then Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga - Lukas Hartmann's wife - officially apologized to the Verdingkindern and other victims of compulsory welfare measures on behalf of the Federal Council at a commemorative event.
Lukas Hartmann tells the story of Martha's life chronologically, without pathos, almost matter-of-factly. Every now and then he lets his grandmother speak in the first person in short passages. Then the despair that the girl must have felt comes through more directly, the loneliness and excessive demands.
Martha gets used to her new home, which she doesn't call it that because she is never really part of the family. She doesn't know where her siblings have gone and how they are doing. Over time, Martha manages to escape the initial beatings by adapting and doing what is asked of her.
Her only friend is a teacher who she confides in from time to time. He also helps her to find a job after school. The young woman began working for 42 centimes an hour at the Ryf knitting mill in Bern's Matte district. From then on, she went her own way, became more independent, got married and left poverty behind her. She had children and eventually grandchildren.
Demons of childhood
But Martha was never completely rid of the demons of her childhood until her death. The emotional coldness, deprivations and humiliations of the past have made her tough, strong-willed, sometimes cold and dominant. In the same way that she doesn't begrudge herself anything and demands everything from herself, she also demands everything from her family. She passes on the feeling of having to constantly prove herself to her children. She barely allows for weakness. It is only in the old people's home that Martha tentatively begins to tell her grandson Bastian about her childhood experiences.
Bastian, that's Lukas Hartmann. As the author explains in the epilogue, he changed all the names except Martha's in order to gain some distance "and to credibly tell a family story in which the rise from poverty to growing prosperity had to be paid for with hardship, both physical and mental."
In the novel, Hartmann tells us a lot about this Bastian, about his difficult relationship with his father, about his artistic streak, which he first suppressed in order to fulfill expectations - until he finally found his way to writing. In this way, Lukas Hartmann impressively shows how a childhood trauma can be passed down through generations, from the mother to the children and their children.
Reading "Martha and Herself" can be hard going at times, almost unbearable at times. It's a good thing that Lukas Hartmann tells Martha's story anyway. So that no one forgets.
The author will also tell his story in person. To mark his 80th birthday (August 29), a matinee is planned for September 1 at the Paul Klee Center in Bern. He will then read from "Martha and Yours". *
*This text by Maria Künzli, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation
©Keystone/SDA
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