Special exhibition: Ernst Kriemler

Excerpts from his notes are illustrated in the exhibition with historical pictures of the places he mentions in his texts.

Ernst was a citizen of Speicher and was born in Herisau in 1902, the first of eleven siblings. The family lived in poor circumstances and moved frequently. During the vacations, Ernst worked with his father's sister on the farm until he finished school. There he learned farming from scratch. At 16, he packed his bags, ran away from home and hired on as a farmhand with various farmers in eastern Switzerland. Because he was soon wanted by the police as a minor, he decided - without identification papers - to "emigrate" to Germany. There, shortly after the end of the 1st World War (1918), young Swiss found work immediately, because many Germans of the same generation had disappeared in the war, fallen or returned with permanent disabilities.

When Ernst learned that his cohort would have to enter military service, he traveled back to Switzerland. Now, however, he finally needed identification papers: until all the clarifications were made, he ended up in the prison of his hometown Speicher. After recruit school in Kloten, Ernst returned to Appenzellerland, where he began working as a bricklayer. When the work situation developed to Ernst's disadvantage, he drove to Zurich one day, where he found a job with the Hatt-Haller construction company. Then in 1938 the misfortune of his life happened: in his spare time he helped a friend to renovate a kitchen. He picked up a bottle of Märwiler juice at the Comestibles store, and Ernst got some sodium hydroxide solution from the druggist to whitewash the kitchen. When filling up the drinking cup, a fatal mix-up occurred: the lye burned Ernst's entire esophagus. He survived, but underwent operation after operation and was never able to eat solid food again until his death in 1975.