Animals in the Countryside - Memories of Village Life in the Southwest
The coexistence of humans and animals in a very confined space, in times of need and in good years, used to shape the way children grew up and generations worked in the countryside. The farm dog as a guardian + the horse as a workhorse, plus cows, pigs, geese, chickens and more mice than the farmer's wife would have liked. Cat and rabbit were considered farm animals, but for the children they were also playmates and a possibility to cuddle. As close as the bond with the animals was, their death was just as natural: slaughtering was always a natural part of the farm life cycle. This is how Luise Wirsching from Spielbach/Hohenlohe tells it. The farmer's wife always loved her cows, even when they had to be slaughtered. She has tried to give them a good life and is convinced that they have always felt that. Today she keeps chickens that she talks to + that - she is convinced - are her friends.
Ulrich Jaudas from Lenningen/Schwäbisch Alb is a goat lover. He grew up with goat's milk, because the cow's milk that his parents' part-time farming yielded was sold. Today he breeds the rare Bunte Deutsche Edelziege. Peter Wohlleben, forester from Hümmel/Eifel and best-selling author, also grew up with animals. As a child, he hatched a chick, which then mistook him for its mother and followed him everywhere. Vintner Christoph Hammel from Kirchheim/Pfalz talks about animals of a completely different kind, about pests in the vineyard. Where today pheromone traps naturally keep off the attackers, in the past there was generous experimentation with poisons. Even arsenic, dusted with bellows, E 605 were used.
Many farms also used to have a beehive. Christian Haas from Freiamt/Black Forest comes from a family of beekeepers. At the age of six he was already in the beehive every day. He often sat in school with his eye swollen shut because another bee had stung him. Over the decades, he must have had about a thousand stings - today he is so immune to them that he hardly needs to protect himself.
The SWR authors Elmar Babst, Nicola Haenchen and Holger Wienpahl travel across Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate to interview contemporary witnesses. What was their life in the countryside with the animals like in the past? Their memories, black-and-white photos and historical archive material document the past decades.
Broadcasting on 24th of April 2022 at 10.45am on SWR/ARD
Music: POPVIRUS Library