The plague priest of Annaberg

I find accounts of epidemics, whether documentary or fictional, fascinating. I appreciated texts of this kind by Camus (La Peste), Defoe (Journal of the Plague Year) and Giono (Le Hussard sur le Toit). This interest is reflected in a number of posts in this blog, for instance this one on the influenza pandemic of 1918. At the moment we all have the opportunity to experience what a pandemic is like, some of us more than others. In such a situation there are two basic points of view, depending on whether you see the events as concerning other people or whether you feel that you are yourself one of the potential victims. The choice of one of these points of view probably does not depend mainly on the external circumstances, except in extreme cases, and is more dependent on individual psychology. I do feel that the present COVID-19 pandemic concerns me personally. This is because Germany, where I live, is one of the countries with the most total cases at the moment, after China, Italy, USA and Spain. Every evening I study the new data in the Situation Reports of the WHO. The numbers to be found in the Internet are sometimes quite inconsistent. This can be explained by the time delays in reporting, the differences in the definitions of classes of infected individuals used by different people or organizations and unfortunately in some cases by poltically motivated lies. My strategy for extracting real information from this data is to stick to one source I believe to be competent and trustworthy (the WHO) and to concentrate on the relative differences between one day and the next and one country and another in order to be able to see trends. I find interesting the extent to which diagrams coming from mathematical models have found their way into the media reporting of this subject. Prediction is a high priority for many people at the moment.

Motivated by this background I started to read a historical novel by Gertrud Busch called ‘Der Pestpfarrer von Annaberg’ [the plague priest of Annaberg] which I got from my wife. The main character in the book is a person who really existed but many of the events reported there are fictional. Annaberg is a town in Germany, in the area called ‘Erzgebirge’, the literal English translation of whose name is ‘Ore mountains’. This mountain range lies on the border between Germany and the Czech republic. People were attracted there by the discovery of valuable mineral deposits. In particular, starting in the late fifteenth century, there was a kind of gold rush there (Berggeschrey), with the difference that the metal which caused it was silver rather than gold. My wife was born and grew up in that area and for this reason I have spent some time in Annaberg and other places close to there. The narrator of the book is Wolfgang Uhle, a priest in the Erzgebirge in the sixteenth century active in Annaberg during the outbreak of plague there. In fact in the end only a small part of the book concerns the plague itself but I am glad I read it. The author has created a striking picture of the point of view of the narrator, at a great distance from the modern world.

During Uhle’s first period as a priest there was a fire in a neighbouring village which destroyed many houses. He saved the life of a young girl, in fact a small child, who was playing in a burning house. Much to the amusement of the adults the girl said she would marry him when she was old enough. In fact she meant it very seriously and when she was old enough it did happen that after some difficulties she got engaged to him. The tragedy of Wolfgang Uhle is that he had a temper which was sometimes uncontrollable. Before the marriage took place he once got into a rage due to the disgraceful behaviour of the judge in his village. Unfortunately at that moment he was holding a large hammer in his hand. A young girl had asked him if a stone she had brought him was valuable. He had some knowledge of geology and he intended to use the hammer to break open the stone and find out more about its composition. In his sudden rage he hit the judge on the head with the hammer and killed him. He went home in a state of shock without any plan but his housekeeper brought him to flee over the border into Bohemia. He was sentenced to death in absentia and hid in the woods for five years. The girl who he was engaged to repudiated him, stamped on his engagement ring and quickly married another man. He partly lived from what he could find in nature, living at first in a cave. Later he started working together with a charcoal burner. I learned something about what that industry was like when I visited those woods myself a few years ago. Eventually he revealed his identity and had to leave.

In the woods he met a man who had got lost and asked him the way. The man wanted to go to Bärenstein, which is the town where my wife spent her childhood. He agreed to show him the way. The man told him that the plague had broken out in Annaberg and that the town was desperately searching for a priest to tend to the spiritual needs of the sick. Uhle decided that he should volunteer, despite the danger. He saw this as God giving him a chance to make amends for his crime. He wrote letters to the local prince and the authorities of the town. The prince agreed to grant him a pardon in return for his service as priest for the people infected with the plague. He then went to Annaberg and tended to the sick, without regard to the danger he was putting himself in. There is not much description of the plague itself in the book. There is a key scene where he meets his former love on her deathbed and it turns out that she had continued to love him and felt guilty for having abandoned him. Uhle survives the plague, gets a new position as a priest, marries and has children. This book was different from what I expected when I started reading it. Actually the fact that it was so different from things I otherwise encounter made it worthwhile for me to read it.

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