Die Geschwister Bronte in Haworth

Northwest of the textile town of Bradford lies the unassuming weaver village of Haworth, nestled in the midst of the Yorkshire moors. At its elevated end, next to the village church, stands the parsonage. Both are surrounded by an extensive, gloomy cemetery with hundreds of gravestones and slabs that tell the story of a hard life in this remote area. In April 1820, the Irish-born pastor Patrick Brontë moved here with his family. His four surviving children, son Branwell and daughters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, began creating imaginative stories about the fictional kingdoms of "Angria" and "Gondal" as early as eight or nine years old in this solitude. Over the years, the stories gained sophistication and eventually found their completion in novels that are both autobiographical and shaped by extensive reading and a boundless imagination. Charlotte describes the terrible conditions in girls' boarding schools in "Jane Eyre" and the resistance of many weavers against the Industrial Revolution in "Shirley." Readers often wonder where the shy and reclusive Emily drew the strength for her powerful novel "Wuthering Heights," in which the violence of nature confronts the violence of evil embodied by Heathcliff. And the unassuming Anne is now celebrated for her works "Agnes Grey" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" as an early emancipatory author. Franz-Josef Krücker first encountered the Brontës during his English studies in Cologne and his work as a foreign language teacher in nearby Halifax. In the new issue of our popular series, he tells their story. Angelika Fischer provides an "indirect portrait" of the brilliant siblings and the aura of their living environment with her sensitive photographs.