The Last of Gassen East Tyrol, September 1965:
It had been raining for weeks. The clear Klammbach was a brown swollen torrent that had taken its little bridge down into the valley with a crash.
Chrysanth Ladstätter, the 20 year old young farmer on the Walderhof, with a rope around his hips crosses the foaming water partly reaching up to his breast.
Also tied to the rope is the midwife of Kals whom he has to bring as fast as possible to Maria, the Stemminger farmer’s wife. The week-long thunderstorm has cut off the mountain farmer village Gassen which lies 1600 meters high on a terrace of Defereggen valley. Whole mountainsides have slid down into the valley together with their footpaths.
When Chrysanth and the midwife finally arrive, wet and spattered with mud, the birth is already under way, one month early due to the incessant excitement and fear.
Chrysanth, who until then hasn’t seen a woman naked, has to assist the midwife because all the others are at the creek, trying to dam it up.
When a healthy boy is born - his name will be Sigmund - Chrysanth immediately sets forth to his parent’s home in Gassen, two kilometers away from the Stemminger farm.
The air is full of the crashing and smashing of falling trees. When he arrives at last and sees his home village, he needs all his strength to be able to bear what meets his eye.
A deep brown furrow goes through the village like a wound, his parents’ home is in ruins, and two other houses simply aren’t there any more. They were washed down into the valley by a landslide.
With his bare hands, Chrysanth is searching under the ruins for his mother, his siblings and his grandparents. He can hear their weakening cries, but he is alone and too weak himself. He leaves to get help from the valley, runs back, and goes on digging until he faints from exhaustion. Four of his brothers and sisters are saved, but for two more of them and his mother, the helicopters are too late. After this night of terror, the people of Gassen left their hamlet. Only one brother and sister didn’t know where to go - they stayed until today.
Hans and Ursche Masinger are now 86 and 91 years old, the last of Gassen. Today, no road leads into the ancient hamlet with the lonesome siblings, only a steep footpath and a disheveled cargo rope-way. For 35 years they have been waiting, always hoping that their neighbors would return one day. A vague hope - but not unfounded … Just at the turn of the millennium, Gassen’s long sleep suddenly ends. A new generation has grown up, the fear of another landslide is overcome. Gassen becomes the focus of manifold interests, including that of the Tourist Association.
Touristical development should make an open air museum out of Gassen and its brother and sister. Chrysanth and Siegmund though, the former victims of the catastrophe and their children want to start farming again in their beautiful Gassen with its steep meadows. Siegmund only lacks the right woman for his complete happiness in Gassen. Christian, a hotel owner and mountain farmer’s son from the valley, wants a bistro in Gassen as a branch of his hotel. He values his home-country’s originality and personally brings his guests to Gassen so that they can marvel at the brother’s and sister’s simple life. Some of the guests then want to donate something to the two, because they mistake frugality with poorness. Will Gassen meet its fate as a museum, or will it come alive again?