In the large kitchen-at the same table I often hid under reading comic books as a boy-my grandmother used to sit with me all evening long, telling me stories about our ancestors, the Kuisls: my stubborn great-great-grandfather, Max Kuisl, who emigrated to Brazil during the 1920s with his entire family; my great-great-uncle, Eduard, who wrote fairy tales and who reminded her so much of me; my great-great-aunt, Lina, who studied at the Munich Academy of Arts, then fell head over heels in love with a French painter-all these ancestors whom I had known until then only through faded photographs and paintings. My grandmother could go on and on with stories and anecdotes about all these people until my head started to spin.
Since the appearance of my first book, The Hangman’s Daughter, it’s strange to see how huge my family has become. Again and again, I receive calls or letters from people who are part of the large Kuisl family, too. They ask about a distant great-great-uncle or a long-lost aunt; they’ve traced their ancestry back many centuries, until we eventually encounter our common ancestor, the hangman Jakob Kuisl.
We’ll never know what sort of man Jakob Kuisl was. All I can say with any certainty is that he was a hangman in Schongau during the seventeenth century and one of the first in a long line of Kuisls who were hangmen in Bavaria. All together I’ve counted fourteen executioners so far in our family.
The Schongau town archives have little to say about Jakob Kuisl. We know he once killed a wolf. The documents also mention a daughter named Magdalena; his wife, Anna Maria; and the twins, Georg and Barbara. (There were two other children whom I’ve left out of the story for dramaturgical reasons.)
Jakob Kuisl assumed the position of Schongau executioner at the age of thirty-six-a position also held by his father and grandfather-and lived a full eighty-two years. What he did before that time is unknown. It’s quite possible my ancestor served as a mercenary during the chaos of the cruelest of all German wars. His wife died just two years after he did. I can imagine they had a long and happy marriage, but this is where the realm of imagination takes over.
Every book finds its own theme. Unintentionally, my second novel became a book about religion-all the madness, the insanity it can cause, but also the consolation and refuge it offered at a time when people could easily have doubted God. The natural setting for a book like this is a region like the Priests’ Corner, with its many monasteries and churches, its pious people, and heavenly countryside. And sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
Many things I didn’t have to invent, like the innumerable macabre relics in the Rottenbuch Monastery-they were just waiting for someone to write about them. The history of my family was also there long before I came along. I just embellished it a bit and put it down on paper.
That evening at my grandmother’s house in Hohenschäftlarn, my son, daughter, and I visited the Kuisl gravesite on a hill directly above the entrance to the village church. I pointed to the names overgrown with ivy, and we stood there silently as darkness fell. I’ve always tried to create an awareness in my children that a family is more than just a father and mother, that it can be a large community, a place of refuge-and an endless treasure trove of stories.
Later I sat in the kitchen correcting the first draft of this book far into the night. It was a strange feeling sitting in the same house, the same room, where so many of my ancestors had lived, worked, laughed, and brooded before me. It almost seemed as if their shadows were leaning over my shoulder to see what their descendant had to say about their large, old family. I hope they’re happy.
The story you can read in these pages developed during the course of long hikes and bike tours and was inspired by the ideas and information from many people.
Unfortunately, I can’t list them all here, but I’d like to give special thanks to the local Schongau historian, Helmut Schmidbauer, who told me about the Altenstadt Templars and without whose extensive knowledge the first novel, and also this second one, never could have been written. Many thanks likewise to Wiebke Schreier, who showed me around Augsburg and gave me enough ideas for three books. Professor Manfred Heim has, I hope, been able to correct most of my errors that concern the history of Bavarian churches. In addition, he’s an excellent Latin teacher!
Dr. Claudia Friemberger of the University of Munich filled in the gaps in my knowledge of the Bavarian Templars, and Matthias Mederle from the German Rafting Society knows how fast a raft moves and at what times of the year it would have been used on rivers. Eva Bayer corrected my miserable French and knew the proper Parisian expletives. The pharmacist Rainer Wieshammer, who’s an expert on ancient medicines, prepares herbal medicines in his facility in Rottal and has a magnificent collection of Breverln-little cloth and paper talismans adorned with images of saints and prayers, which as late as the twentieth century were thought to have healing and protective properties. (Incidentally, Magdalena’s charm necklace looks just like the one Rainer Wieshammer donated to the Müllner-Peter-Museum in Sachrang. Perhaps someday you’ll have the chance to stop there for a look.)
Everything I know about executions comes from the enormous collection of notes by my deceased relative Fritz Kuisl-a wealth of information I draw upon even to this day.
Thanks also to my editor, Uta Rupprecht, who came up with the idea of the fungus herbarum antibiotic, and to my agent, Gerd Rumler, for a first-class Italian meal over which a few new ideas for the novel were born.
And last but not least, thanks to my entire extended family: my wife, my children, my parents, brothers, grandmother, and all the aunts, uncles, and cousins who surround me and support one another. Without you-your patience, your pride, and support-this book would never have been possible.
A TRAVEL GUIDE THROUGH THE PRIESTS’ CORNER
If, like me, you’re one of those people who like to read a book’s epilogue first, you should stop now. This book is a journey that will take you from one riddle to the next and to some of the most beautiful places in Bavaria. What pleasure is there in solving riddles when you already know the solutions? So stop reading!
STOP!
If, on the other hand, you have finished reading the novel, then sit back and enjoy this section. The following pages will help you plan your next vacation to the Priests’ Corner, absolutely my favorite area in the Alpine foothills. If I had to explain to an extraterrestrial what Bavaria is-what it smells and feels like-I would just set him down on the mountain Hoher Peißenberg and tell him to look around for himself at a countryside as colorful as a robust painting from the Bavarian baroque period: monasteries, chapels, lakes, gentle hills, and the distant Alpine peaks that, when the warm, dry foehn is blowing down from the mountains, appear as close as the nearest cow pasture.
The people who live here are all a little bit like my ancestor Jakob Kuisclass="underline" stubborn, grumpy, and reserved. But if you approach them with humility, respectfully doffing your hat politely in church, they won’t bite. Be brave!
You can find all the places mentioned in this novel on a map today. After a trip through your imagination, what makes more sense than actually traveling to this area to check out all the riddles and the history behind them? To best appreciate Kuisl’s time, of course, you should travel on foot or at least by bicycle. Back then, things were not as fast or hectic as they are today. In researching this book, I walked everywhere and got lost several times in the Ammer Gorge. Why should you get off any easier?
Enough said! Pack this book in your backpack with a pair of good hiking boots, a water bottle, and a local map, and come along with me to…