The Poor Man of Toggenburg - Autobiography of Ulrich Bräker

of the autobiography of Franz Xavier Bronner, published at Zürich 1795-7. Bräker had promised to write to Gessner about this book but has still not had time to finish reading it. [Chronik, pp 428-429]

Bronner was a German Benedictine monk who had absconded to Switzerland partly for religious reasons but also for love of that country, and claimed that reading Bräker's autobiography had been his inspiration for writing his own.

In November Bräker fears that his creditors will seize his house. He takes to brandy again but gives it up when he realises that he is setting his children a bad example. To keep himself sober he notes cases of drinkers who came to a bad end. [Chronik, p 429]

"December brings the year to an end, which in almost all respects was the most remarkable year that I have lived through. [...] Our beloved Helvetia was at that time still one of the most fortunate countries of Europe, although it too felt the consequences of this devastating war very keenly. The poorer and more numerous class of people in particular, because our fatherland is so to speak hemmed in by the powers which are waging war. So it could not be otherwise that all victuals became very dear, our industries came to a standstill, which is felt very keenly by that very poorer class of people, who do not possess any land and until now have wrested a bare living from the cotton trade, spinning and weaving. The farmers, on the other hand, who possess more or less land and property, for them it is a golden time. For why, they do not need to buy much, some buy only salt. They do not have to pay duty any more as they do in cheaper times. On the contrary, all their produce is worth money to them, all products are doubling in price. In our part of the world cattle, and all that comes from cattle, in the fruit-growing lands the fruit, in the wine-growing lands the wine. Everything is double in value, some articles have even risen threefold in price.

But they who must buy all their necessities of life, and have nothing of their own, except that maybe as a favour they can plant a few potatoes - and many are too poor even for that - in the first place they lack for seed, in the second place they cannot find time for it, as they must every day take their work to the middleman in order to be able to buy the most indispensable victuals at the miller's or the baker's. Yes, I know several households where two or three times every day they have to carry the spun yarn thus. So one person must be continually on their way to carry the yarn to the middleman, and out of the spinners' wages buy meal, milk, coffee or bread, while the others are continually working away and hastily consume what has been brought. These are still such as are ashamed to beg, where others, who could work just as well, throw the spinning-wheels into a corner and go a-begging by the thousand, because they do not fancy working through half the night and sparse living. It plagues us greatly to see every day so many beggars making their desperate racket before our very doors, especially for those who would give willingly, but are not doing too well themselves. Most of them roam still in the villages and on the main roads, they are too lazy to go to the farmers in the hills. In the whole Confederation street-beggars are nowhere so numerous as here in Appenzell." [Voellmy, v 2 pp 253-255]

For himself this year has been a testing time and a time of many unhappy events, for which his own carelessness and thoughtlessness have been partly responsible. But he and his family have good health, he has friends and benefactors, one of them has even replaced his cow. Since many other people have written about the events at Stäfa and Gossau he will say no more about them, but he notes that in the Toggenburg revolutionary activity continues: meetings, collection of grievances, formation of political parties, publication of polemical writings. But outwardly the political situation has calmed down towards the end of the year. "So ends one of the most remarkable years that I have lived through". [Chronik, p 430]