Gallus, der Fremde

For over twenty years, Gallus has lived in the wilderness of the Steinachtal when one day a stranger appears. With her questions, she forces the stubborn hermit to remember his past: the perilous journey that brought him around 590 AD with a group of wandering monks from Ireland to the Vosges and then to Lake Constance, their violent attempts at conversion, and above all, the separation from his strict teacher and companion Columbanus. The story of the voluntary exile and social outsider from the early seventh century, who became the namesake of St. Gall, resonates with the life of the stranger at the end of the twentieth century, who found and then lost a home in Ireland. Their fates intertwine across time into a narrative of emigration, love, and loss.