Valentin Pfeifer (local researcher)

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Valentin Pfeifer (1886–1964), born in Sommerau, around 1950

Valentin Pfeifer (born June 24, 1886 in Sommerau (Eschau) ; † June 20, 1964 in Aschaffenburg ) was a German teacher, folklorist and local writer. He researched the customs and collected fairy tales and legends from the Spessart .

life and work

Valentin Eugen P. was born as the youngest of seven children of the farmer Theodor Valentin Pfeifer (1850-1917) and his wife Eva Maria, née Pfeifer (1851-1920) in Sommerau in Spessart. His brother Heinrich Pfeifer (1885–1950) took over the parental estate, the so-called Thedors House, named after his father in the village of Sommerau .

After elementary school in Sommerau, Pfeifer attended the preparatory school in Lohr am Main , then the teachers' seminar in Würzburg . In 1904, at the age of 18, he came to Faulbach and Michelbach as a junior teacher , after which he was in Rück and Waldaschaff . He spent most of his life in Aschaffenburg, where from 1909 he worked for many years as a teacher in the Luitpold School, which was destroyed in the war, and then as the principal of the elementary school in Aschaffenburg-Damm .

In addition to his school work, Pfeifer collected fairy tales and legends from the Spessart, which he republished. His best-known collection, the Spessart sagas , reached seventeen editions between 1948 and 2007. Around 1920 he mainly used his mother's memory for the Spessart fairy tales , which, however, often contained parallels to the Brothers Grimm's collection and was therefore not published. Further sources were the remembered stories of his grandfather, who also lived in Sommerau. In the 1950s, Pfeifer found a farmer in the Elsava Valley who could tell him "[...] over 150 fairy tales, sagas, tales and other folk stories."

In his little book Spessartvolk he not only reports on the customs and traditions in the Spessart, but also the superstition, which was very widespread in folk medicine, finds its place here. He made many contributions to the radio, in the daily press and in the monthly Spessart magazine .

Valentin was married (1910) to Laura, née Schwarz (1886-1966), the daughter of the main teacher Josef Schwarz (1858-1941), and Berta, née Bernard (1858-1915) from Rück im Spessart. The marriage resulted in two children, daughter Helma (1911–1968) and son Bruno (1928–2013).

The city of Aschaffenburg honored him by naming the street in the Damm district. Valentin and his wife Laura are buried in a grave of honor at the forest cemetery in Aschaffenburg (grave field C-10).

In 1956 he became an honorary citizen of the then independent community of Sommerau (Eschau) . A street in Sommerau reminds of him and the elementary school in Eschau (Lower Franconia) bears his name.

After his house in Aschaffenburg, Hanauer Str. 14, was destroyed in an air raid in October 1944, Valentin and Laura P. lived in Sommerau from October 25, 1944 to June 16, 1951, then again in Aschaffenburg.

In December 1919 Valentin Pfeifer was one of the founders of the Sommerau gymnastics club .

a Christmas Story

By Gisela Umenhof - 12/2005. Gisela Umenhof, an author from Aschaffenburg and living in Grasse / southern France, writes cover stories for the weekend magazine Main-Echo .

Spessart fairy tale

Christmas evenings of the post-war period: our gifts were waiting, beautifully wrapped, under the Christmas tree. We children couldn't get enough of the colorful balls, the glow of lights, the festively arranged room. But I was a little disappointed: again no book! One day I got it, not in the evening, but in the early afternoon. At that time we lived in the Aschaffenburger Cornelienstrasse in a block of the Brunowerk. The stairwell always smelled of cabbage in winter. The neighbors were friendly. They helped each other. There was always a broadcast van from the Hessian broadcasting company in front of the house. We were curious. Mother had explained to us that the radio people came to a neighbor who often told stories on the radio. His name was Valentin Pfeifer and he was a primary school teacher. Every December 24th he came up and brought us a bag of apples, nuts, chocolate and cookies. And he praised us, even if Mother didn't find us hardworking. That was how Christmas began. One day, however, he brought something else with him: a book with his name on it: "Spessart fairy tales, collected by Valentin Pfeifer". He was a short, agile and slim man with white hair and friendly eyes. In his small two-room apartment, on my rare visits, I had always admired the walls full of books while I drank the raspberry juice served by his wife. Since I was five, when Sister Iso from the Sacred Heart Parish allowed my sister and me to borrow books free of charge from the parish library, I was a bookworm who locked myself in the toilet in order to read more undisturbed. At first there were picture books, then those with more and more text that I tried to decipher. And now, already "big", I got a whole book for myself. Fairy tales, as she had often told Herr Pfeifer's mother that evening, back when there was no electric light in the Spessart, no cars, no television set. Fairy tales in which the wisdom, wisdom of life, hopes and the hard life of the Spessartians have been saved from ancient times. I devoured them. If I read them again today, they bring back the scent of the Spessart apples, which I smelled much later during a visit to the Aschaffenburg market. Without knowing where it came from, I followed him and found myself in front of a stand with old apple varieties. I bought a few kilos and, on my flight back to Nice, caused loud laughter at Frankfurt airport when they discovered them when my suitcase was being x-rayed. But back to "my" book. It was the nicest gift I've received, the first book of thousands that I own today. And whenever I open it, the “light of childhood” that the author evokes in the preface shines. It makes modern life homely to me. With his expression, perhaps rejected as "old-fashioned" by many younger people, leads me into a world in which people still had time. And when my aunt discovered the “Spessart fairy tales” in a bookstore in the new federal states and told them with shining eyes, my mother wanted the book immediately, I gave it to her for Christmas last year.

Fonts

  • What mother said. (with pictures by Julius Maria Becker ), Jul.Kranzbühler, Speyer am Rhein 1913
  • On popular life in the Spessart and Bavarian Odenwald. Romberger, Aschaffenburg 1915.
  • Spessart fairy tale. (New edition), Geschichts- und Kunstverein, Aschaffenburg 1998, ISBN 3-87965-080-2 .
  • An evening in the Spessart village. Wailandt, Aschaffenburg around 1920.
  • From a cool homeland. Wailandt, Aschaffenburg 1922.
  • Heroine love. Novella, Wailandt, Aschaffenburg around 1925.
  • Spessart People: Customs and Customs. Wailandt, Aschaffenburg 1929.
  • The Wasserburg Sommerau. Listening sequence in 6 pictures, 1932
  • The year of the farmer's boy. (with pictures by Karl Vollmer), Thienemann, Stuttgart 1936.
  • Spessart legends. 16th edition Pattloch, Aschaffenburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-920410-02-9 .
  • Fairy tales and stories from the mother's treasure trove. Pattloch, Aschaffenburg 1952.
  • The Rohrbrunn inn. Pattloch, Aschaffenburg 1958.

literature

  • Hans-Michael Körner, Bruno Jahn: Large Bavarian biographical encyclopedia: PZ. Saur, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-598-11460-5 , p. 1487.
  • Otto Pfeifer: Historical house book of Sommerau. Hinckel-Druck, Wertheim, ed. Markt Eschau, self-published, 2010.
  • Otto Pfeifer: The history of the parish and the churches of St. Laurentius Sommerau. Hinckel-Druck, Wertheim, ed. Markt Eschau, self-published, 2012.
  • Otto Pfeifer: Chronicle of the Pfeifer Sommerau family. , Self-published, 2017.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Theodor Ruf: The beauty from the glass coffin: Snow White's fairytale and real life. Königshausen & Neumann, 1995, ISBN 3-88479-967-3 , p. 110, note 79
  2. ↑ Barbara Grimm, Rüdiger Kuhn: From sit-ups, beautiful women and other demons: Spessart sagas on the trail. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-8260-1148-1 , p. 72
personal data
SURNAME Pfeifer, Valentin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher, fairy tale collector and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Sommerau, today part of Eschau (Lower Franconia)
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1964
Place of death Aschaffenburg