Page 06

Willi is about 15 here

I. Lehrzeit (Apprenticeship)

Willi's fellow journeymen and apprentices at the Villingen barber shop, with sharp character sketches

Diary page 06

Translated from Willi's German.

The next assistant was Franz Kirnberger, who came from Pforzheim and was born in Ettenheim. I constantly had to help him along, and he let me learn nothing the whole time. The only thing he taught me was to corrupt my morals, and to such a degree that I often no longer knew what to do with myself. His friends Spengler from Pforzheim, Niesserer from Villingen, and Jakob Haffen set about enlightening me, a boy of 15, in the crudest way. A small disagreement between master and journeyman led to the dissolution of the work contract. Schumacher, who came from Heidelberg, was 19 years old and very conscientious in the shop. I got on quite well with him. In moral terms he was not much better than his predecessor. We then got a new apprentice named Heinrich Vogel, who had already trained two and a half years with Gustav Herrmann and had given it up because of illness and theft. He committed himself to us for two years and still finished before me, so I remained the junior, though the drudgery was now shared out a little. The character of this last-named person was the worst imaginable: he was cheeky, cowardly, frivolous, had sticky fingers, and was morally a thoroughly degenerate individual. With us he was sent away after his apprenticeship. He went to Singen am Hohentwiel, could hold on there only a short time, and since his departure has...

People: Willi Distel, Franz Kirnberger, Spengler, Niesserer, Jakob Haffen, Schumacher, Heinrich Vogel, Gustav Herrmann

Places: Villingen, Pforzheim, Ettenheim, Heidelberg, Singen

Interesting facts