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be supplied with such a large quantity of grain at a fixed price, for every week he could get up to 3500 guilders more for it. Truly a kind deed, which should awaken ungrudging love towards him, though many people still think badly of him." [Voellmy, v 2 p 392]

3-4th May Bräker draws a moral from his youngest child, Johannes, who when walking with his father in the fields, cries to his brothers and sisters to wait for him because he cannot keep up with them. [Chronik, p 61]

31st May Bräker writes that a pound loaf now costs 14 kreutzer, and a Mütt of corn 28-29 guilders. Many people are resorting to beggary and eating wild plants. He believes that the high price of Italian corn is due to the transport costs. A note adds that for lack of pack animals, much of the corn was carried by porters over the Splügenberg pass. [Chronik, p 62]

19th-25th Aug. Bräker's first mention of an outbreak of the "rote Ruhr" [red flux]. This was bacterial dysentery, often fatal and very infectious. The entries for 1st-8th Sept. record that 70 people in Wattwil have died of the flux in three weeks. [Chronik, p 65]

12th Sept. Johann Ulrich, Bräker's eldest child, is very ill and dies two days later. On 17th Sept. Bräker's elder daughter, Susanna Barbara, also dies. "She, like her brother, could read fairly well and also write a little. And both of them might have been able to earn something for me. But from their youth on they were neither of them really healthy in their innards." Susanna is buried on the 19th, and the three remaining children fall ill. On the 21st Bräker is sufficiently recovered to go out, though still very weak. [Chronik, pp 65- 66]
[Attitudes towards the death of a young child have certainly changed since the 18th century, but in what way remains somewhat debatable. The account given in Bräker's autobiography reads like a 19th century tract - did real children ever die like this? In the diary we find the lost children missed as an investment - in training for work and also in reading. But also in the diary Bräker writes snatches of verse and prose which perhaps represent his deepest feeling at the time, for example: 20th Oct.
"Meinen Kinden schrei ich nach"
[I cry after my children]
wishing only that he could go where they are gone. [Bräker records the large number of deaths from disease at this time, showing his awareness of the danger to the whole community.]

7th-13th Oct. Bräker gains a fine harvest of potatoes, but at the end of December he was still "up to his ears in debt". [Chronik, pp 67,69]

6th Nov. Salome takes to her bed. A daughter, born on the 17th is named Susanna Barbara after her dead sister. [Chronik, p 68]

6th Dec. Bräker writes that many people have died of influenza. The entries for 15th and 19th mention that he has been asked to make a coffin and a bier for the dead. The entry for the 30th says that he had made eight coffins during the past year. [Chronik, p 69-70]

1772 aged 36

30th Jan. The weather has been bad all month, with smooth ice on all the roads, and there has been lightning and fog together. [Chronik, p 72]


10th Feb. Bräker's wife has something wrong with one eye, her mother has the influenza and Bräker has toothache. [Chronik, p 73]
Bräker suffered severely from toothache throughout his life. In his time there was no remedy for tooth decay except having the tooth pulled out, but Bräker never accepted this treatment.
[Chronik, p 481]

24th-29th [sic] Feb. Many more people die of influenza and typhus, at the rate of seven or eight a week. [Chronik, p 74]


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