In winter they get by somehow.
It’s harder and harder to find laborers and maids to work on the land these days. Most of them try their luck in town. Lured there by better pay and lighter work.
Town life, that’s not for him. He has to feel free. Be his own master. No one tells him what to do. He decides on everything here. On this farm he is Lord God Almighty, never mind how much his wife prays. The older she grows the more pious she gets.
What’s keeping the old woman in the kitchen so long? Sits praying under that crucifix half the night, wasting expensive electric light.
He’ll have to get up and go and see.
In his socks, clad only in his nightshirt and a pair of long johns, he slips his wooden clogs on. Shuffles down the stone flags of the corridor to the kitchen.
The door of the room next to it is open.
What the hell’s the idea? What are those women doing in the cowshed at this time of night? You had to see to everything yourself around here.
Very annoyed, he goes into the room next to the kitchen and then on, over to the cowshed.
From his vantage point, Mick has been watching the comings and goings on the farm all day long
He sees old Danner finding traces of the break-in. It’s dead easy to keep out of the old man’s way.
Old Danner searches the whole place. He even climbs up to Mick’s hideout in the loft.
Mick holds his breath. Stands there with one hand gripping the knife in his pocket. Hiding by the chimney, behind the farmer’s back. He could touch his shoulder. Danner is perched on the steps up to the loft not an arm’s length away from him. Trying to light up the dark loft with his lamp, which is very faint.
He doesn’t notice the straw scattered over the suspended ceiling of the barn, or the rope hanging ready.
Mick waits all day. He can take his time. He knows just where the Tannöd farmer hides his money. He’s planned everything out down to the smallest detail.
If it all goes as he’s calculated, he can leave the house unseen. And if not?
Mick shrugs off this idea. He doesn’t shrink from using violence. Violence is part of his job. He’ll play it by ear.
As evening comes on, two more strangers appear in the farmyard. Two women going toward the house in the rain. They knock. Both of them are let in. After about an hour the women come out of the house again. They say good-bye to each other, and one of them goes back indoors.
Hansl Hauer, age 13, Georg Hauer’s son
It was the Tuesday when my auntie told me to go over to the Danner farm.
“No one’s seen or heard anything of them over there,” she told me. “Maybe something’s happened and they need help.”
So I went over.
I guess it was about three. But I’m not sure.
There wasn’t any of them in the farmyard, so I knocked at the front door. I knocked good and loud, I shook the door, but it was locked and nobody opened it.
So then I went around the house. Peered in all the windows. Couldn’t see a thing, though. The place looked quite empty. Like there wasn’t anybody there.
I heard the dog. Whining terribly, it was. And I heard the cattle in the cowshed. The cows were lowing like anything. But I couldn’t get into the cowshed, it was locked from inside.
You can get into the cowshed from the old machinery shed, though, I know that. First you go through the barn, then there’s a wooden door into the cowshed on the left.
And the door of the machinery shed was standing open. Wide open, but I didn’t fancy going in there.
I just stood at the door and called. I called for Barbara and Marianne. But there wasn’t any answer and I didn’t want to go in. I was too scared because the cattle were bellowing like that, and everything was all different from usual. Like as if the place was deserted.
I got goose bumps, I really did, it seemed so scary.
Something’s wrong, that’s what I kept on thinking. I felt like there was a bell ringing in my head. Same as an alarm bell when the fire engine’s coming out. So I ran home quick, I told my auntie and my dad.
Dad said I was to fetch Farmer Sterzer, because he wasn’t going over to that farm on his own.
So I went on, over to the Sterzers in Upper Tannöd.
Farmer Sterzer’s Dagmar was outside in the garden with her mother. Working on the garden beds.
I shouted to them way before I got there, I was in such a state. Asked if Farmer Sterzer was home, and he came out of the door right that moment. I told him there was something wrong up at the Danner place. No one was in, and the dog was whining and all that, and the cattle lowing in the shed. And I said my dad said to fetch him to go over there with my dad. Because my dad didn’t want to go alone.
So Farmer Sterzer called Alois right away. Alois is the farmhand at the Sterzer place, he’s going to marry Dagmar.
Then I went over to Tannöd and the Danner farm with Farmer Sterzer and Alois.
It was just before we reached the house we met my dad. He’d been waiting for Farmer Sterzer there. Then he went on up to the Danner farm with us.
And then we found them.
Well, not me, because my dad wouldn’t let me go into the house. He said I was to stay outside.
And after Farmer Sterzer and Alois came out of the barn again, white as chalk they were, I was really glad I hadn’t gone in with them.
My dad told me to go down to the village. “And tell them they’d better call the police from the mayor’s house.” So that’s what I did.
I fetched my bike and went over to the village, I went to the mayor’s, and I shouted out how they were all dead at Danner’s. All of them murdered dead. I shouted it in everyone’s face, even the mayor’s.
Johann Sterzer, age 52, farmer in Upper Tannöd
I was sitting in the living room. I saw young Hansl through the window. He was waving his arms around, and he kept on shouting something.
Right away, I guessed something had happened, but I thought it must be at the Hauer place.
So I came straight out of the house. Hansl says to me, “Dad sent me because there’s nothing stirring at the Danners’.”’
He, that’s Hansl, he’d been to look around on their farm today, he said, and there wasn’t anyone at home and the dog was whining terribly. And the cattle were restless too.
“But Dad doesn’t fancy going there alone,” he told me, so I called Alois and we went over to the Tannöd farm with Hansl.
I’d noticed myself there was nothing stirring there. When I was plowing on Saturday, in the field next to Danner’s land, I didn’t see anyone at all the whole time.
It was odd, yes, but I thought no more of it.
They’ll be in the woods, that’s all it is, I thought to myself.
Hauer was waiting for us just before we got to the house. We all went up to the farmyard together. I saw at once that the door of the machinery shed was open.
Hauer knows his way around the farm since that business with Barbara. He was in and out of the place a lot back then.
“We can get into the barn through the shed. There’s a door into the cowshed from there, and we can go on into the house from the cowshed,” he said to me and Alois.
He told Hansl he’d better stay outside. That was all right by Alois and me, so it was just the three of us went into the shed. Sure enough, there was a little door there. On the back wall of the shed, but it was fastened shut with a hook or something on the other side.