At the age of 21, his apprenticeship completed, he became a travelling journeyman. His travels took him to Alsace where he learned French and developed a liking for wine. He said later that had he not married he would have "gone to the dogs".

He returned to the Embrach area where he began courting Anna Kramer . When she became pregnant the couple married in December 1888. They had no money and furnished their first flat in Loch in Embrach with wooden crates. But, despite what was no doubt regarded at the time as an inauspicious start, theirs was a loving marriage. Apparently Anna told her daughter that her fiancé had been a very good dancer and would typically leave any weak dancing partner standing. Although she, Anna, was herself a poor dancer, Schaggi had patience with her.

In 1889 the couple’s first son, Jakob (Jacques?), was born and soon the young family were able to buy a house of their own in Unterdorf. Two years later Schaggi and his brother-in-law Karl Benz (husband of Anna’s sister, Karline), who was a joiner, decided to buy a carpenter’s workshop in Illinge. The workshop came complete with living accommodation and apparently the two men were concerned about whether their two wives would get on sharing the same house. As it turned out the two sisters got on fine: it was the two brothers in law who soon fell out.

In Summer 1900 Schaggi and Anna’s second child Friedrich (Fritz), my grandfather, was born – not at home because by that time the workshop and the accommodation above it had been destroyed by fire, but at the home of Anna’s parents in Baltensberg. When the Illinge property had been rebuilt the family returned there and two more children were born: Anna Maria (Anneli) in 1904; and Albert (Bertli), the youngest, in 1907.

All four children grew up happily in Illinge and did well at school. The joinery had come with a farm, and the children had to help with it, but they still had enough time to play with their seven Benz cousins.

The Lüthi and Benz families lived off an open corridor which ran across the front of the building, Benzes on the left, Lüthis on the right. Under the window was a water wheel which powered all the machinery in the joinery, but there was no electricity or running water in the house.

Karl Benz was, apparently, a terrible father and the Benz children tended to spend most of their time round at the Lüthis where there was much chatter and laughter. As for Schaggi, he had learned much from his own unhappy childhood and was a good father to his children. He nick-named his daughter Anneli "Trudel" and the youngest, Bertli, was "de Boobi". However, Illinge was a dangerous place to live. There were machines in the joinery and outside were streams, water-ducts, the waterwheel and a fishpond. This "water-world" was almost young Bertli’s undoing. One day while he was playing beside the water-duct he fell in. Through carelessness, the grille in front of the water wheel had been left up. Luckily Bertli found something to cling to so that he wasn’t immediately swept down to the wheel by the current. But how long could he hold on? If he had been dragged down stream and caught up in the turning wheel he would almost cerainly have been killed. Up above, his father stood immobile with fear at the window. No doubt he would have been ready to jump down into the water to rescue his son had the need arisen. However, all of a sudden a guardian angel appeared on the scene. This was a deaf and dumb farm-worker. Although he couldn’t hear the child’s screams he’d seen him fall in and realised immediately the danger he was in. He rushed to pull the child out. By that time the boy’s father had also arrived on the scene and in his fear and panic he gave the four-year old Bertli a sound beating. Anneli wasn’t spared a beating either, though she hadn’t done anything wrong. After that incident all the children learned to swim and the water was no longer such a danger for them.

Over the years the tensions between Schaggi and his brother in law increased and relations between the two families began to deteriorate. When Jacques, the eldest Lüthi boy, began his training as a joiner in the family business, one of his Benz cousins tormented him so much that to get away he gave up the training and took up work as a jobber in the Sulzer factory in Winterthur.

In 1914 disaster struck. Schaggi got his right hand caught in one of the machines. His thumb was undamaged, and his index finger was saved, but he lost half of the other three fingers. However, some good was to come out of this accident. Before it Schaggi had spent every Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon in the pub, playing cards and drinking. Those were sad days for his wife, who never knew what time he’d come home or what state he’d be in. She often wished weekends didn’t exist. After his accident, however, he never touched a playing card again. His misfortune had clearly made a deep impression on him.

He sold his share of the workshop and house to his brother in law and became an employee in the business. In 1917 he acquired a house in Rosenweg in Embrach where my mother and her two sisters were born. In the new house the family enjoyed such wonders as electric light and running water. Anna kept goats in the small stable and took great pleasure in the large garden, half of which was then a henyard. Life away from the Benzes was altogether much simpler without the tensions between the two men.

After several years in the new home, April 1921 signalled the start of darker times. Bertli, by then at secondary school, contracted diphtheria and even the hospital was unable to save his life. Schaggi and Anna could barely come to terms with the death of their youngest child. Anna blamed herself for sending him to hospital to be cared for by complete strangers. She thought that perhaps if he’d stayed at home and she’d cared for him he would have survived. Meanwhile Schaggi was full of remorse because he’d given his youngest son a fairly severe beating shortly before he was taken ill. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, in January 1922, only a few months after Bertli’s death, they also lost their eldest son, Jacques, who died in an accident at Sulzers. Only Anneli and Fritz were left.

As Schaggi grew older he began to take pleasure in travelling and he used to say how stupid he’d been in his younger days wasting on drink money that he could have spent on holidays. He became the first man in Embrach to own a bicycle – made out of wood!

Once he took his middle grand-daughter, Lore, to Andermatt where they stayed with his niece, Ida Schoch-Kägi. From there they crossed the Gotthard, Oberalp and Furka passes – all on foot, there and back. For both grandfather and grand-daughter it was quite a feat: he was over 70 and she was only 6 or 7. When, on the Oberalp Pass, her grandfather indicated yet another mountain they had to climb Lore declared she wasn’t going to go any further. He told her that when they reached the top they’d have a view all the way to their home in Embrach. That proved to be sufficient incentive for the young girl. However, when they got to the top and her grandfather pointed in the direction of Embrach, the clay chimney of the local Steinzeugfabrik was shrouded in mist.

Around the same time, maybe a year or two later, Schaggi alarmed his grand-daughters and their mother. In about 1934 Embrach got its first public swimming pool. The girls’ father was one of the people behind the project, and he also spent many years as the Chairman of the Swimming Pool Association. The three girls soon learned to swim, and their father and Aunt Anneli had no problems learning, though their mother struggled to get it right. One hot day Schaggi decided to go swimming. In his youth he had learned to swim, but that was about 50 years earlier and since then he hadn’t really had the chance to get much practice. He stepped into the water and dipped his arms in. Then, instead of going into the non-swimmers’ area, he headed straight for the deep water in the direction of the diving board. The girls’ mother stood by the side of the pool wringing her hands and the children swam fearfully over to their grandfather. He however, reached the diving board in the middle of the pool, breathing heavily. Later on he made it safely back to the poolside, and although the girls were proud of him, he wasn’t in a hurry to repeat the experiment.

On 9 November 1934 Schaggi wrote the following in my mother's authograph book. "Lehre Mich Herr Deine Wege. Zeige Deinem Willen mir, Das ich richtig wandeln müge, Führe Du mich selbst zu Dir". It translates as follows: "Teach me Lord your way. Show me your will, that I may lead a virtuous life, and lead me to you."

In 1939 Schaggi and his daughter Anneli joined Fritz, Ida and their three girls for their first holiday together. Fritz had rented a house in Splügen for two weeks. Schaggi really enjoyed his break in the Bündnerland and joined in all the walks. He also chatted away to Herr Hosig, who owned the house. However, in his enthusiasm he almost overstretched himself. He joined the family for a climb up to Lake Suretta. The path was steep and the weather was hot, but Schaggi wore his stiff woollen jacket, his velvet waistcoat and his felt hat. Flies swarmed around his dark figure, and when he reached the top he cried out "Never again".!

Shortly afterwards World War 2 broke out and Schaggi took a lively interest in events, listening each day to the news reports on the radio. He showed Lore how to take his rifle apart and put it back together again. They also undertook target practice together. In an emergency there were thus two family members trained in defence – Fritz being away from home having been called up for active service.

Politically Schaggi was an old "Grütlianer" – the revolutionary fore-runners of the social democrats.

At the beginning of 1940 the old man’s heart began to trouble him and suddenly he needed hospital care. In his hospital bed he expressed one wish – to outlive Hitler. Sadly it wasn’t to be and he died in May 1940.

.....back

Home Page