So kindly listen to me. The names of honest folk are being blackened, a whole village community is dragged into it. Just because a half-Jewish Polish worker hanged herself. The girl was probably unbalanced.
In my view, drawing such conclusions so long after the event is more than distasteful. That kind of thing gets no one anywhere. So let’s stick to the facts. Speculations of any kind are not constructive.
Particularly in the case of such an abominable crime. So if you would now excuse me . . .
O King of Glory,
O Son of God, Jesus Christ,
O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,
grant them peace!
O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,
grant them peace!
O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world,
grant them peace everlasting!
Anna Hierl, age 24, formerly maid at the Danner farm
I saw it coming. Was I surprised? No, not me. Shaken, yes, I knew them all, I lived under the same roof with them for a while. But surprised, no, I wasn’t surprised. Somehow I’d always been expecting some such thing.
Old Danner liked to hire drifters to help with the harvest, you know.
Why? Well, he paid them less. Simple. You can pay a man less if he has a record and don’t fancy being reported to the police.
A fellow like that, there’s times he’s glad to have a roof over his head and a hot meal. And Danner was glad, too, on account of he didn’t have to pay them much. That was old Danner for you. Sly as a fox, and a skinflint.
I remember the old man showing one of those good-for-nothing deadbeats all over the farm. Now that’s something I can’t understand. Gave him a guided tour. Strutting around proud as a cockerel, chest swelling, backbone straight like he’d swallowed a poker.
He’d take those vagabonds all around the house and the farmyard.
Showed them all the machinery, so no wonder if one of them happens to vanish a couple of days later, together with some of the household goods.
I always locked the door of my room when one of those gallows birds was around on the farm.
There was one of them at the place once. Karl, that was his name, I think. Yes, I’m sure it was Karl. None of that lot liked giving a surname.
Easy to see why.
This Karl helped the old man get timber in from the woods.
It was right after the big storm in June last year.
They were getting in the trees that had keeled over in the storm. That’s not easy work. It’s been known for a man to be killed by a tree, or lose a leg. After a storm like that the trees are lying around all over the place. Sometimes stretched so taut, they spring right back when they’re felled.
Well, after less than a week, off went Karl. Disappeared without trace, and a couple of chickens along with him, not to mention some clothes and shoes.
And when someone tried breaking into the farm late last year I’d had enough. I looked around for a new job.
What happened then? I wasn’t at the farm myself, it was Barbara, Danner’s daughter, told me next day. I was visiting my auntie in Endlfeld, she was sick.
It was a Sunday, imagine that, a Sunday. While God-fearing folk are at church. I went to see my auntie straight after going to church. Barbara Spangler and her family, they went out into the graveyard after the service and then home.
When they got close to the front door, they saw that someone had tried forcing it. You could see the marks on the wood of the door, scratches everywhere. Like they were made by a chisel. It’s a wonder the burglar didn’t break the door right down.
Seems he’d been disturbed and ran for it. Just took to his heels and scarpered.
A thing like that didn’t surprise me, I mean any of the deadbeats that worked at the farm knew very well there was plenty to be had at Danner’s place.
Not just chickens neither. He always had plenty of cash stashed away in the house. That was an open secret. Anyone who ever worked at the farm knew it.
So well, like I said before, after that I didn’t fancy staying on at the farm anymore.
I was afraid the housebreaker might try it again, maybe at night next time. You hear about such things every day.
I mean, the farm’s very isolated. Ever so lonely.
So I didn’t want to be out there with them when winter came, not on your life. Twilight starts falling at three-thirty then, and by four o’clock it’s dark. You can’t see or hear a thing. So I packed up my belongings and went off. I found a new place right away.
If I hadn’t left the farm then, who knows, I might well be dead now too. No thanks. I fancy living a little longer, I like life far too much.
Otherwise I could have got on all right with old Danner and his family. I know the rumors. He was odd, so folk say. Him and his whole family.
Maybe that’s true, but I got along well enough with them. I did my work, and on my days off I went dancing or I visited my family.
Work’s work. You always have to work. No one’s going to pay you for idling around. A maid has to be able to work hard, and I like the work, too. Then on my free days I make sure I go out and have a good time.
No, I was never pestered by old Danner. But I’d have known how to deal with that, believe you me. I don’t let anyone take liberties with me.
What was the relationship like between Danner and his daughter Barbara Spangler?
Ah, I see what you’re getting at.
Well, I can’t really say, I didn’t let it bother me, and anyway I wasn’t at the farm all that long, just from spring to autumn.
Did Barbara Spangler sleep in the same bedroom as her father, like some people say? I can’t swear to anything of that kind.
People talk a lot. I can only say what I saw. And it was only once I saw the two of them together, in the barn. I’m not even quite certain of that.
I went in and there was the two of them lying in the hay. Barbara jumped up just as I came into the barn. If she hadn’t jumped up I wouldn’t have seen her.
I acted like I hadn’t noticed anything, and I didn’t either. Nothing precise anyway.
None of my business, you see. Am I the priest or a judge? What’s it got to do with me?
Barbara was ever so embarrassed by the whole thing, she said if she’d known I was going to go into the barn again she wouldn’t have gone out.
Do I think those children are her father’s? Well, what a question to ask!
You want me to be honest, yes, I do, but of course I can’t know for sure. I mean, I wasn’t there, was I? But I did hear Danner telling that deadbeat Karl how his daughter didn’t need any husband. She had him, he said. I heard that with my own ears.
It was because that Karl asked about Barbara Spangler’s husband. Where was he, he asked? Maybe he had his eye on Barbara. Well, he’d have gotten nowhere with her.
Neat and smart, Barbara looked, but she was a proud one, too. Took after her father.
As for Barbara Spangler’s mother, she never said much.
Grumpy, some called her. That’s not right, though. Worn out by troubles, disappointed by life, that’s what she was.
She just looked after her grandchildren and did the cooking. In the evening she always sat holding her prayer book. It was a very old prayer book, all shabby and worn. She always sat there holding that book and muttering to herself.
But once old Frau Danner did tell me her daughter’s husband was a terrible scoundrel and had emigrated to America.