Temporary exhibition of parish history set up

Earlier this year, local historian Urspeter Schelbert published a book about the 300th anniversary of the parish of Unterägeri. Now a much abridged version of this, complete with interesting illustrations and photographs, can be seen on ten panels in front of the municipal library until Sunday 28 September.
 
The exhibition was duly opened on Friday evening in torrential rain; not that this dampened the spirits of all those present, including the chairman of the church council, Max Dinser (on the left in the second photograph with Schelbert on the right).
 
The author then showed guests round the ten panels, explaining for example, what a long process it was before the bishop actually gave his consent to the foundation of the Catholic church parish in 1714.
 
Another panel shows how the church with its graveyard and the vicarage were built and all what this meant, such as actually having to pay the vicar a stipend and maintaining the buildings. Schelbert further explained that there was never any real poverty evident in the Aegeri Valley, due in no small part to a certain Dr Bernhard Fliegauf, a former Unterägeri resident and subsequently vicar in Kirchberg in the canton of St Gallen. "He earned a lot of money there and became a most generous benefactor, along with his cousin Sigmund Heinrich, a wealthy and influential politician as well as a farmer and surgeon," he said.
 
The sixth panel depicts the foundation of a guild in 1836, coinciding with the opening of the first spinning works and panel eight depicts the election of Father Blasius Uttinger in 1818; he was very much against any form of industrialisation.
 
After Dinser had duly praised Schelbert for abridging his work so skilfully onto ten panels, the author himself commended the municipality for expressing its strong interest in its own history in this way, and suggested other municipalities might consider something similar.