The movie Heidi, based on the child's book by Johanna Spyri, was released in 1952 when I was 4 years old. The star Heidi (Elsbeth Sigmund, born October 25, 1942 in Winterthur, Switzerland) was only 6 years older than me. For the first time I "saw" Germany and Switzerland, from the point of view of another child. The movie is still my all-time favorite. One of my prized possessions before I was 8 years old was a soft-cover book of the movie, with photographs, a book that I read and reread and studied its pictures. A few years ago my daughter found the movie on Amazon and gave it to me, to my total happiness! My son bought me the German-language movie, Heidi und Peter, the second version of the Heidi movie, with the same actors a little older. It is pure joy to watch those movies!
Here is another book I had when I was little --
Lutheranism, languages, hymns and Heidi, and the people around me, in church and at home, had everything to do with my early interest in family history.
Wow! Quadrilingual! That is really incredible.
ReplyDeleteShe knew Swiss, French, German and English. She learned Swiss at home and later taught it to her Texas-born children. She went to French school in Switzerland and later in Texas spoke French with her French-Swiss sisters-in-law. She picked up German from both her parents (both were from the German areas of Switzerland) and could communicate with the Germans in Texas. She was 11 when she came to Texas and went to English school. She was at a critical age when she left Switzerland -- old enough to have gone to school in Switzerland, but young enough to learn English well in Texas.
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