The Man with Nine Lives: Heinrich Villing

By Sonja Bauer

Have you ever cheated death once? Twice? Three times has to be pushing it, right?

Well, Heinrich Villing has cheated death several times, from being shot in the eye as a kid to witnessing bombings at the start of WWII to being drafted and wounded and taken to a POW camp. After the war, he then traveled Europe on a motorcycle for two months with his best friend and only $400. He eventually emigrated to Canada and had open-heart surgery.

Heinrich has celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday and is still up to mischief.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781638816652

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgments

The Beginning

Faith Heals All Wounds

Baker's Life for Me

Happy One (April 17, 1927)

Four Months Old

Cousin

Fire

Five Months

Creek

One Year

Lye Bath

Five Years

Ax

Six Years

The Adventure Begins

Eye Shot Out

Ten Years

Dumb Cow

Grandfather and the Steeple

Lake Constance

Why I Became a Painter

Daredevil on the Bike

Eleven Years

Bike Concussion

Twelve Years

Lederhosen

Thirteen Years

Shit-Legged

Mocking the Priest

Fourteen Years

Cheap Labor

Perfume Bottles and Sex

Accordion

Fifteen Years

Train Station and Master Classes

Painting, Sandwiches, and Waterlines

Seventeen Years

V2 Kid

Draft

In the Navy

Russians Attacking: Red Flare

Grenade through Legs

High-Powered Gun

Russian Tanks and Foxholes

Machine Guns and Russian Ammo

Asleep at the Front

Retreat

Another Old Soldier

Hungary Shit

Hungary in War

Bridges

Shot and Rescued

Eighteen Years

Eighteenth Birthday

Interrogations

Paintbrush in Hand

Last Meal: Dandelions and Grass

Thieves and Punishment

Work and Thievery

Same Shit, Different Place

Weihnachten

Home

Bartering

Handgun

Nineteen Years

New Year's Eve

Twenty Years

Mandolin Club

Twenty-Two Years

Austria

Twenty-Four Years

Italy: Round Two

Day Trips and Engagements

Twenty-Five Years

Marta

Twenty-Seven Years

Fire

Twenty-Eight Years

Time for a Move

Thirty Years

Ship to Canada (April 1, 1958)

Cheap Work

Chutes and Ladders

Lawn and English

Yacht Club and Driving Lessons

Thirty-Two Years

Mud and Ruts

Thirty-Three Years

Meeting the Little Woman

Here Comes the Bride

Dates and Dancing

Chicago Bound

Wedding Bells

Thirty-Four Years

Summer 1961 and Richard

Time for a Move: Take Two

Thirty-Five Years

Daughter's Birth (March 24, 1962)

Were you ever scared to be a parent?

What three words would you say represented your approach to parenting and why?

Jumping through Hoops for the American Dream

The Move

The House Is Now a Home

Men Chancing Death for a Decent Pay

Thirty-Six Years

Work

Membership

Swinging High

Eviction

Swinging Low

Not What You Know…

Forty-Two Years

Nebraska (1969)

Forty-Eight Years

Heart Grows Fonder

Working Again

Diana Bauer, Heinrich's daughter

Fifty-Three Years

Women's Club

Midfifties

Family Man Already in MKE

Fifty-Eight Years

Five Fingers

Diana Bauer, Heinrich's daughter

Sixty-Eight Years

Hip

Seventy-Three Years

Branch

Curt Bauer, Heinrich's son-in-law

Eighty-Eight Years

Falling

Siblings

Fritz

Franz

Leokadia

Eugen

Hedwig

Gertrud

Elisabet

Adolf

Manfred

Bathroom Door Recipe (painting on the back cover)

About the Author

cover.jpg

The Man with Nine Lives

Heinrich Villing

Sonja Bauer

Copyright © 2023 Sonja Bauer

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 978-1-63881-664-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63881-665-2 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

I couldn't have written this book without many long, wonderful Saturdays sitting on the couch next to my favorite person telling me his story, my Opa, Heinrich Villing. The man who would let me stand on his feet when I was five so we could dance in the living room. The man who taught me how to count to ten in German. The man who taught me how to paint, how to work with my hands, and how, when sanding, it's more about feeling the wood, or Fingerspitzengefühl, than just how it looks. The man who made special tea by putting Schnapps in it. Ich liebe dich.

To my Oma, Gertrud Villing, who always brought us something to drink, was surprised with all that Opa remembered and had to share, and for going through lots of pictures to find the perfect ones.

To my mom, Diana Bauer, for constantly thanking me for getting his story as she has learned so much about her father while I was writing.

To my dad, Curt Bauer, for helping me remember details of stories he had heard before.

The Beginning

This year was for my parents a very forthcoming year because that's the year in which I was born. It was an Easter Sunday, April 17, 1927. In the morning at seven o'clock, I was born as the fourth child of my parents; the three siblings before me were Friderich (Fritz), born December 1921, Franz, born June 1923, and my sister, Leokadia (we called her Kadel) born October 1925. My parents were Franz Sales Villing (it was a holy man's name) and Anna (maiden name Wiederman).

Before I was born, my mother worked in a hospital as a cook, and there, she got to know a man and dated him. He promised her that he would marry her and be a father. After he fathered the child before they were married, he left her. So the boy, my brother Fritz, was born as an illegitimate child. My mother was pregnant and single, and she couldn't go back to her parents; it was impossible. Her father was very strict and didn't want to see Anna anymore. Because my mother worked in a hospital while she was pregnant, she was able to keep her job until her child was born.

My father and mother did not know each other very well before they got together. Somebody brought them together on a blind date. The man was a baker by trade and owned a little bakery in Leimbach. He had a small income with the bakery, but the people in the area came and bought the bread from him. Franz Sales had a war injury from WWI on his head from a bullet, and so it was hard for him to work behind the oven, and the heat made it impossible for him to continue as a baker. So he gave up the bakery and inherited a small farm with a very old house in Leimbach. It was better for him to be in the open instead of behind the hot oven. He needed a wife or somebody to take care of him with the cooking and household. My mother needed a man, her illegitimate child needed a father, and she needed a place to stay. Some people talked to my mother, saying she should marry that baker and be his Househaltern (caretaker). Franz Sales's old mother was very troubled because, at the age of forty-four years, he did not have a wife yet. My mother was seven months pregnant with Fritz, and she didn't know what was going to happen when her child was born.

A wedding was planned, and on October 1, 1921, in the church in Bergheim, they were declared as man and wife. There was no wedding celebration; there was no honeymoon or anything—and there was no love. The main thing was that Franz Sales could still work in his bakery, and Anna had a place where she could sleep, and the coming child had a father—even though it was just a stepfather. Fritz was born, but his stepfather never accepted him as his son. Fritz was born with the last name of Villing, but he was the child of another man.

In order from left to right: Maria, Fritz, Maria's Husband, Anna (Heinrich's mother), Hedwig Wiedmann (Anna's mother), Emil, Gottlieb Wiedmann (Anna's father), Otto in the 1920s

Because Anna did not give him up for adoption, my mother's only sister, Maria, and my mother talked about what could be done. Maria was a young girl who was already used to a different lifestyle than my mother had. She was not pressed to work, and she got married very early. When Fritz was born, Maria was already married for the second time, and she lived in Cologne. Aunt Maria never had children, and so she took little Fritz from Anna and moved with the little boy to Cologne. Maria's husband loved that young boy and tried to adopt him. Fritz had a very good time. He was spoiled and was very happy with his stepparents.

Eventually, Aunt Maria's husband died. Maria didn't want to have this boy and take care of him alone, so he couldn't stay with Maria in Cologne anymore. So Fritz came back to my mother to Leimbach and lived with us. He was twelve years old when he came back from Cologne. When he came to us, he brought all the good clothes from his stepparents, along with toys and all the things we'd never seen before. Our mother told Fritz that he had to share all the beautiful toys and clothes with us, which he didn't like too much. And while we were all fighting about the nice toys he brought, we ended up breaking and ruining them. But more of that later.

We grew up as children of poor parents, and of parents with a big age difference. My mother was born on January 13, 1900, and my father in October 1877. Twenty-three years difference.

Faith Heals All Wounds

My mother had the ability to heal other people through prayer.

It started in 1930. My mother sought help for her daughter, Hedwig. You see, Hedwig was born premature. She was always small, and she wasn't given long to live. So my mother brought her to a faith healer, and somehow, it worked. Hedwig is still alive today at eighty-five.

I have no idea who taught my mother; maybe the people who helped Hedwig. She did not advertise or make other people know that she could do that. Somehow, somebody approached her one day, and she said that she would be willing to help. When people came to her, it was normally parents bringing their sick children. She never promised anybody success; it was all trial and error.

One particular time that I remember, there was a young man, a farmer's boy who lived quite a distance away from us up on the mountain—well, big hill—and the family brought that young boy to our house. His name was Joseph. I remember that well because I met Joseph myself later. I'm not sure what was wrong with Joseph, but my mother did her thing to help, and it was a success. Joseph got well.

Later, when my mother went to the market in Markdorf to get supplies, Joseph spotted my mother in the market, and he came up to her, hugged her, and thanked her. He said, You saved my life. All this made my mother happy because what she did was so unconventional. Word spread around; word of mouth, of course. Other people heard about it and came to visit her in our house. People traveled by car, horse buggy, or any way they could just to get to her. She never asked for payment. Her only requirement for the people who sought help was to make three donations, different donations, to any person they wished. It could be food, money, or any other help the people could afford, but it had to be three different items or donations. Of course, people brought my mother food, bacon, eggs, and ham, anything the people could bring to her. Of course, my mother accepted them.

I later learned how my mother had helped these people through prayer. My mother prayed at three different locations in a single day where a crucifix was placed. It could be a church, a steeple, or a wayside, which was something built on the road with a crucifix, a bench to kneel on, and a place to pray. During the day, she mostly didn't have time to pray at three different places. Well, in the morning, first thing, she went to Mass so she could pray. On the way home, she passed a chapel and prayed. Three times was the requirement for her to ask for spiritual help in helping people. People came from far away when they heard about her ability to heal and brought their sick children to ask for help. Sometimes, after work in the evening, mostly when it was already night, she walked to different locations to pray—to whom in particular, to saints, or Jesus, or God, I do not know. All I know is that sometimes in the evenings when she didn't want to go alone in the dark, she took one of her children along. Even I sometimes accompanied my mother in the evening to her prayer stations. Nobody ever bothered her when she was alone at a crucifix to pray, and she didn't tell anybody why she was there.

Later in life, when I was already working and came home, sometimes my mother would say, I had a visitor here today. She would proudly show me what the people brought to her as the required donation. It was food, of course. We ate it, and she was happy that she got something that was good for all of us. This went on for many years. Nobody ever bothered her. People still came to see her. I had already left home, and people still came to see her.

One time, when I still lived at home, my mother asked me to do what she did and help heal people. She said, If I get older, I can't do it anymore. I told my mother I couldn't do that. She asked why.

I said, I don't have the deep faith in what you have or believe in something that is not in my thinking. So that was it.

I don't know if I was already in Canada at this time, but I wasn't home anymore. My mother told me about an occasion when people brought their children to her and asked for help. Somehow the health department heard about her and what she was doing. The county health department official came to see her and told her that she couldn't do that anymore. She said, I don't call these people or ask them to come to see me.

The official told her, Send them away. They warned her that if she kept this up that she would be arrested for healing without an official permit. That was the end of my mother's capability to help other people when help was needed most.

Now think about it. If my mother hadn't gone to pray at those places, would it still have helped? The people and children would come to our house; my mother would take a child to one of the bedrooms and ask the people to just leave her and the child alone for a little while. I had never watched her when a child was in the house. I don't even know if she touched them on the head or with holy water or a crucifix on the body. I do not know. I think it was more or less concentration of the mind. She had a strong will and a good heart. When the health department came, she stopped helping people. All I know is that when people brought their children to her, they begged her to help.

If it hadn't been my mother, I honestly would not believe that someone could heal someone through prayer. She had the ability to ask the deities for help. I even told my mother that I liked to see things black and white, yet she was able to produce something that was beyond my thinking, and if it hadn't been her, I wouldn't believe it. She asked me, almost begged me, to learn what she did and help heal people, but none of her other children ever did. I was not a deeply religious person, and now I don't believe in organized religion at all. I still wonder where her gift came from; it was a gift.

*****

My mother, Anna, did not have an easy life.

When she left school, she did not have any particular trade. She was put in the hospital as a cook. She learned cooking and hard work in the hospital. The meager wages that she made there, her father, Gottlieb Wiederman, collected, so he was able to pay for his house. He didn't have much income even though he was a blacksmith, so my mother worked mainly for nothing until she got married at the age of twenty-one. She was a poor woman when she got married, and she was a poor woman when she died. Her whole life was just work, raising a family, and not much of an income as a reward.

Rarely did she have time for herself during the week unless there was a special occasion besides daily Mass. On the anniversary of the day her father died, she went to the priest and asked him on that particular day to read the Mass for a person he thought was worthy of the prayer. The priest had announced before he started Mass that he would stand before his congregation and say that the Holy Mass was made for Gottlieb Wiederman. But for that privilege, you had to pay the priest a certain amount of money. What the priest did with that money was up to him; it was his pocket money. Most of the week, the Mass he was celebrating was for a different person. When the Mass was finished, the two Ministranten (altar boys) had to help the priest get out of his gown, straighten up the altar and around the altar, and put all the things away, and then they could go to school. Luckily, the school wasn't too far, about a quarter mile, from the church.

My father was religious, not deeply, but he was religious, and he was involved with church life. He had to pump the air belly that supplied the air to the organ. There was no electric organ at the time at this church. My father was right behind the organist, and there he stood pumping the air. If he didn't pump right, the organ didn't sound good, and it squeaked. When he didn't have to pump the air, he had to kneel down and pray, but he only did it when the organ played, mostly on Sundays and holidays. That was his involvement with church life. He was always dressed well in a dark suit, white shirt, and necktie. Always dressed properly. When we finished Mass on Sunday, we all walked home together. Mother would cook the Sunday noon meal, a big meal with everything that was available.

Later in life, after we grew up, we were free to make up our own minds about church, so we didn't go. My mother and father would encourage us to go to church and attend Mass but never made us.

When I had my motorcycle, my mother always wanted me to pray and ask for assistance from God and the saints for my well-being so I wouldn't have an accident. When I told my mother where I was going one Sunday, she asked, Why don't you stop at Birnau (a famous church) and go in and do some praying? I promised my mother that I would do that. She wanted to have proof that I really did it and went there. In that particular church, they always had these little pictures of the church. I stopped there, went in, took a picture, and drove off. When I came home, I gave her the picture. Well, I was in, but I never stayed long enough to say a prayer. My mother was happy that I was there.

That church, Birnau, was on a hill near Lake Constance. It's more of a shrine; people would get married there. That was a place I usually passed when I went somewhere. It was a beautiful area up on the hill, overlooking the lake and the city down below. It was run by some monks of a certain order. Of course, everybody who stopped there and asked for help would leave a little money behind for help to pray. Rich or poor, farmer or city folk, people would always stop there to find help and say a prayer. When my mother stopped there, she found help to heal those sick children.

The donations could have gone to anybody, but