Who was Henrich Bruning? This question kept me busy after I stumbled upon his name in the archives of my hometown. At first, I did not understand why I was so intrigued by him. The only thing we had in common was that we lived in the same small town in West Germany. We were not related, had never spoken. Of course not – Henrich died 200 years ago.
The Allure of the Ordinary
As a weaver in the early 1800, Henrich’s story was nothing out of the ordinary. He lived the prototypical life of a craftsman in that era. Not exactly the stuff of an exciting story. But like a ghost from the past, he left me no peace. And as ghosts go, Henrich was good at remaining invisible. The traces he left behind in the archives were faint and easy to miss. It was his invisibility what fascinated me.
Following the Traces
Henrich died long before cameras became available to people outside the upper circles of society. The first ever photo was taken one year before his death in 1827. There are no oil paintings of Henrich either. Weavers were not portrayed on canvas. But it was not only the lack of pictures that made him difficult to grasp. What little information there was about him remained elusive. The only people who made sure to document Henrichs’s life were those who wanted something from him: the military and the tax collector.
An Echo From the Past
When Henrich enlisted in Napoleon’s army in 1810, he was described as a brunette man with blue eyes, a round forehead, long nose, and a small mouth and chin. No remarkable features, his enlistment papers explicitly stated. At 158 cm tall, he was considered rather short for the 19th century. In most documents he appears only as a number. While the faces of my town’s nobles were immortalized in portraits, Henrich’s description is barely good enough to draw a sketch. But while we have at least some information about Henrich, his wife Maria Anna Bruning remains completely invisible. We know her name, when she died, and how many children she had. That is all. From Henrich we have an echo of himself, from her nothing.
Nothing to see Here
Their invisibility represents the invisibility of many. However, people like the Brunings – the craftsmen, farmers, or simply the “common people” – were the majority in my hometown. To get a picture of the past, we need people like them to tell us their stories. But their traces are hard to follow. Their homes, belongings, and stories have mostly not survived to this day. People like the Brunings almost never left diaries. Fires, wars, and demolition wiped their houses from the surface of my town.
New Stories to Tell
What was once typical of small-town life in Germany is no longer visible. When we visit the large aristocratic estates or look at oil paintings, we see the exception. Let us look for the rule, even if it is hard to find.
