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Bräker's grandchildren are also listed by Voellmy:

Children of Anna Katharina and Mathias Wälli: Susanna Barbara 1792-1826?, a son who died in infancy (i.e. under five years old).
Children of Johannes and Anna Dorothea,

née
Brunner: Salome 1792-1872, Susanna 1796-1826, and six sons and three daughters all of whom died in infancy.
Children of Susanna Barbara and Johannes Zwicky: Anna Elizabeth 1794-1874, Salome 1797-1862, Ursula 1800-1862, Susanna Barbara 1804-1816, Anna Maria 1806-1858.
Children of Anna Maria and Friedrich Lieberherr: Anna Elisabeth 1802-1872, two sons who died in infancy.

Bräker therefore had no grandsons who lived long enough to carry his name into the next generation. At least five of his granddaughters, however, were married and many of their descendants were still traceable in the Toggenburg (according to Voellmy) up to the end of the Second World War. He also states (v 1, pp 45-46) that three male descendants of Johannes's daughter Salome died in the workhouse at Wattwil, two of them in a fire on 5th February 1919. Her sister Susanna married twice, but her first husband was killed while in military service in Holland not long after the marriage; she then married Sebastian Schiess. She had six children, including an only son, Johannes Ulrich, who became a soldier at the age of 17 and fought in France and Belgium.

It seems that none of Bräker's immediate descendants inherited his love of learning, though two of them married men of some education: Anna Elisabeth Lieberherr, who married a teacher, Johannes Anderegg of Sidwald in Krummenau, and another Susanna Barbara, granddaughter of Johannes, who married an archivist of Winterthur.

The new facilities of the Internet for genealogical research are now being exploited in the region, and Bräker duly appears in them under his own eyecatching quotation: "Christ save us, what freedom - to beg when one has nothing left." The accompanying biography is not l00% accurate, but is followed by a short but useful bibliography.


Early obituaries:

In 1805, in the first year of a new monthly journal called "Isis", published by German and Swiss scholars under the supervision of Füssli in Zürich, there appeared a new anonymous appreciation of Bräker. Voellmy, quoting some of it, [v 2 pp 47-48] thinks that it was written by someone who knew Bräker well, probably Füssli himself:

"This Poor Man - which he was in all seriousness though it troubled him less than it did his true friends - was one of those rough diamonds who now, like those in Gray's country churchyard, is covered by the cool earth of a grave-mound. Had he only a little more breadth of culture he would have been a truly distinguished author, if he had had none, we doubt not that he would have been richer by a few hundred guilders. He laughed - but not at everything, not by far. Never over what was sacred - but he delighted in laughing at hypocrisy. Nothing human was alien to him. Yes, he was intelligent enough even to comprehend the inhuman, and to hate it all the more profoundly. In politics itself he was a complete quietist. And so - if one can ever say it of one who has been so active, we may say: Peace to his ashes!"

Voellmy goes on to point out that in fact Bräker was
not
completely indifferent to politics. He was aware of the strife and disunity among the people of the Toggenburg, and often ridiculed and deplored the venality, incompetence and ignorance of petty officials. He was less ready to condemn the rulers of his homeland and speaks with admiration and affection of the Prince-Abbot Beda Angehrn and the Landvogt Karl Müller-Friedberg. I think, moreover, that the author of this obituary may not have realised how much in fact, Bräker
was
troubled by his poverty, both in the sense that it kept him from a kind of life that he strongly desired, and also in the sense

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