My mother used to say that he was an officer of Napoleon Bonaparte's army and she, the daughter of a French princess. Some used to say she would lay the clothes out "to bleach" always at night and would fold the collars and cuffs of her blouses so that no one could see the embroidery of (insignia o~ the crown. Some used to say that she had been accompanied by a lady in waiting, that she spoke many languages, and had an incalculable fortune waiting for her descendants, etc., that Anton's sword was a golden one, and so forth. Albino Both writes:

In the French court blew up
of the century its worst scandal,
because the German, a vandal as he was
with the nobles had mixed.

In turn, Father Guide Both, likewise of German descent, states: "In 1827 Hillebrand, commissioner of São Leopoldo, took note, in column of the book of immigrant registration: arrived at 2-4-1 827 in São Leopoldo, - 275 Anton Kieling; - 276 Elisabeth Lange, his wife.

Some juicier speculation: Who were Anton Kieling and his wife Elisabeth Lange? According to Mr. Germane Kunzel, Anton took part of Napoleon's personal guard and accompanied him to Russia in 1812. "Once the army was dismantled, officer Anton started in the general cavalry, for his future father-in-law had been promoted duke by Napoleon. Lady Elisabeth, then 16 or 17 years old, preferred giving up her inheritance to giving up Anton".

Martin Scholles and Maria Anna Sehn

They came to Brazil in 1854, when he was 39 years old. Together with other immigrants he founded the township of São José do Herval (Morro Reuter). The house in which he lived is still standing. Made of mud and wooden pillars, it is typical of that time and region, the region of German colonization in the State of Rio Grande do Sul - Brazil. They were small farmers.

My paternal grandparents:
Johann Scholles
Maria Blume
My maternal grandparents:
Karlus Kieling
Margaretha Gijrgen

MY FAMILY
Being the last of Anna Kieling Scholles and Carlos Scholles eleven children, I was born when my mother was already 47. I saw my father die when I was only 3 years old. My mother had the help of a midwife only for the birth of her first and her last child, my oldest sister and I. The other were all born only with the help of my father. She herself cut the umbilical cord of two of her children. She became a great-great-grandmother, getting to know the 5th generation - five women - and she died at the age of 90, in 1993. She used to say that a delivery was like the greatest pain and the greatest happiness.

Just after my father's death, she was hit by a thunderbolt, which somehow cured her of her arthritis and allowed her to bring up, all by herself at 50, all of her children. No wonder, I fear storms!...
She worked as a seamstress, made cakes and pastries to sell, and occasionally helped as a midwife. As a little boy, preparing the Chimarrão (a local gaucho tea of indigenous origin) for the customers who brought clothes to sew, or delivering cakes my mother had made, I used to find out "all the news in town!" (The women sitting with opened legs, exposing their underwear, showing their breast as they were nursing the children; the gossip and the parties; the country-side balls with their folk-music bands which I watched from backstage, the typical food my mother used to prepare for the parties and the small pay she got in return·)I observed it all. Mom always used to say that before I was born there were employees in my dad's lumber yard and that they were all treated like a part of the family: João (John), the black man, and an Indian, who helped with his knowledge in herbal medicine (tees, herbs, food, etc.). My mother appreciated them a lot. To the black man she was grateful for his fidelity and to the Indian because of his teachings in domestic medicine.

MY BIRTH
My sister Anna Egydia tells me that on February 15th 1950 my father asked her to call "Lisbeth Lehnen", the midwife, to come over quickly because "Mom has a terrible headache". The midwife lived in a very small town, near a creek, in a valley faraway (Leva Eck). When my sister got there, the midwife was milking a cow. My sister remembers that after Lisbeth had washed her hands she pick up a little suitcase and started down the road. My sister offered to carry her suitcase. When they arrived, my father told my sister to go play with the children of the neighborhood. After a while, he called them:
" Come here to see who has just arrived!"
I had just been born! It was noon.
" Huh", exclaimed my sister, by then already 15 years old; "Where
was he?"
" You, silly, you!" said the midwife. "You brought him yourself.., in
that little suitcase!"

EVERYTHING "FLORIBUS"
The village was getting ready for Easter!
On Easter we always got new clothes. The old Sunday clothes would be worn Saturdays in the afternoon and the new ones would be worn, for the first time, on Easter Sunday, and three weeks later, on the "Kerbball" (traditionally the party with ball given by church members to celebrate the anniversary of the church's inauguration).
The flowers that blossomed during this season were sewed months before. The houses would be whitewashed. The lawn was mowed. And we would bake big honey cookies in the shape of bunnies, flowers, stars, etc. In the evening, around a table, big enough for the whole family, we would sit to garnish the cookies. I always wanted to sprinkle the cookies with colored sugar. With that "colored sugar" I'd imagine
things and create forms. These were my first sketches! When the clouds were bright and colorful, with the colors of the fall (autumn), I'd ask:
" Mom, why is the sky so colorful?"
And she, who could actually have answered by explaining what it
was, instead triggered my imagination by saying:
" It's the bunny rabbit coloring the Easter eggs!"
Once, at bedtime - after my father passed away I went to sleep in my mom's bedroom, in a wicker bed with an old corn hay mattress -I asked:
" Mom, of all houses, which one has the nicest color?" My mom would say this one or that one, but I'd retort:
" I like Victor's house best".
My brother Victor's house had just been whitewashed with a sea-
green color.

THE STAINED GLASS WINDOWS, THE MOUTHLESS CHILDREN AND THE WOMEN
People used to ask why I would paint black contours around the shapes in my paintings and why my children had no mouths. I would do it intuitively, unconsciously. I had no explanation for it until the day I was paid a tribute in Herval, as an outstanding "colono" (the inhabitants of German settlements are known and called "colonos" throughout the State of Rio Grande do Sul). When I entered the little church for the ceremony, I could see myself kneeling down years ago, wearing a blouse with buttons. I hated this cloth, because it belonged to my sister Walesca, who I loved most, but it was so feminine. I was 4 then, and was looking at the stained glass windows.
At that time we had already become very poor and had no art books, no magazines, prints, paintings, Radio or TV at home and the only artistic input I could get were the stained glass windows of that little and beautiful church made of stones which my father had helped to build and in which he always sang as a member of the choir. When we had company, especially during the Kerb balls, when relatives visited one another, the children had to sit quietly behind the wood stove on the bench where we used to keep the water bucket, a mug and a basin to wash our face. We were not allowed to say a word.

The women in my paintings always appear to be strong, also something I draw unconsciously. Women, at least in the colonies, always helped in the household chores and gave their opinions. They were in charge, with the help of the children, of producing the food for the family subsistence, the animals, and the domestic chores, while the husband and the older children were in charge of growing and producing all which brought money into the house.

The decisions were generally made, and the daily chores distributed, during chimarrão time.

THE FIRST SCULPTURES
The priest or pastor, the doctor and the teacher were the most important people in the village. My sister Egydia was the girlfriend of the teacher. They were young and modern and when they once went to town by bus - a bus that used to run once a week only – they brought me back a tie and for our house they brought a little plaster image of Father Reus. I asked them how much they had paid for it.

"Such and such", they replied.
I thought it was a lot.
" Why did you pay so much if I could have made one myself', I challenged them.
" You dummy, you wouldn't be able to make one like this!" I ran to the place where we chopped wood for the fire and took a little chip of wood. From the swamps I got black mud and started to shape it. It looked just like it! After it dried under a caqui tree, my mother fired it in our outdoor oven. That was my first sculpture!
I still made a second one, without a model, free-style. They say it looked like my dad's face. I was 7 or 8 by then.

THE SCHOLARSHIP
When my dad was still alive my brothers had to work in order to pay for their primary education. Afterwards, they returned home to help in the fields. Even I worked an the land, on vacation, to help pay for my schooling.
One day mom said:
'You are going to continue in school!"
So, like everyone else in the village who studied would choose to become priests, I wanted to be a priest too. But before, a miracle happened! Leonel de Moura Brizola was the governor of the State and awarded scholarships to the children of colonos. I was selected. I would be able to study! That was in 1959!

AN ARARA
I stayed at the boarding school "Imaculada Conceição" of Dois Irmãos, RS (Rio Grande do Sul), then went on to the Seminars in Esteio, RS and Rio Claro, SP (São Paulo).

At the Seminary, the majority of the students were of Italian descent. They spoke an Italian dialect and I spoke the German one. Somehow I had to communicate with the world. Shy as I was, I tried to do it by drawing. With simple color pencils I drew a beautiful arara, so beautiful, that the priest, our drawing teacher, couldn't believe it. That same priest had the most beautiful case of watercolors I had ever seen or could ever have imagined! After the incident of the Arara, he lent me his watercolors to illustrate the short stories, the poetry and the texts, the best ones, written by the seminarians, which were compiled in an annual journal called "Claretianinho".
My classmate Line Girardi and I, because we made the drawings, were excused from other cleaning chores to dedicate ourselves exclusively to the painting and drawing. Father Javier Mateo Araiia, who had just been ordained and arrived from Spain, gave me some of the money that his family had given him - to buy my first three canvases and the first oil paint. He thought I had talent. At the Seminary there were libraries, there was music, music instructors, a chorus, movies, television, newspapers, and lots of other things that used to be beyond my reach. What a wonderful world! How many resources! But I thought I could do more for humanity as a lay person. So I left the Seminary on August 25th, 1968.

COLLEGE
In 1973, Marisa - the mother of my daughter Rudaia - and I, after having furnished a little rented house, decided to go to Campinas, São Paulo. I never really understood why I went to São Paulo! Only years later I understood that my trip to São Paulo led to my work about the inhabitant of the Vale do Rio dos Sinos. I remember it well:
My professor of Folklore, in one of her ingenious classes, stated:
The State of Rio Grande do Sul, in cultural terms, is divided in two
states:
a) from the Guaiba River to the West, there is the Gaucho, in his costumes, with his accent, clothing and typical food, being culturally and visually explored,
b) from the Guaiba River to East, there are the German, the Italian and the Japanese descending Brazilians, with their accent, clothing, food, music and housing completely unexplored culturally and artistically.

I thought to myself: but that is what I am! I was born and live in that region, I have the accent, I love the bandinha music (traditional folklore bands). I like the food of this region. That was how my work about the inhabitants of the Vale do Rio dos Sinos began.

THREE PROFESSORS
During the time I went to the School of Fine Arts, three professors magically and definitely marked my learning: Nayá Corrêa and Cristina Balbão from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and Bernardo Care from the Pontificia Universidade Cat6lica (PUC), Campinas, São Paulo.

Nayá Corrêa
The daughter of the founder of the Art Institute, she taught drawing. I used to draw "academically", until one day she stood next to me and my easel, and gently suggested:
- Draw with more anger!
Then I started to strike the graffiti with strength, deforming.
- Stronger yet, she said motivating me.
There! Never again would I draw like before. My own style had begun.
Another time, I casually commented that I would get married. She, thoughtful, shook her head unapprovingly. I was only 22 years old and used to make no more than minimum wage (U$ 100) and had to exchange with my classmates a drawing for a crayon or a graffiti or drawing for two sheets of paper. I had also flunked in two courses because I couldn't afford the material. Poor people in Public Universities were exceptional. In a subtle way she said:
" You've got everything to be a great artist. Marriage messed up
the life of many artists!"

Cristina Balbão
Generous. Her generosity used to embarrass me. In the classroom where we used to copy live models she used to set up costumes of Bumba-meu-boi and party banners! Fantastic stages. She loved life! She always found us models to paint and would say: "There you go! Right! How beautiful!" She used to take our drawings and put them up, only the best ones, on an improvised mural board, an "idealist" mural!
“ Now try this", she would say. And more: "This is fine!"
And like an anxious and whispering angel she would say: "But you could do it this way!"
Many times, after I had already graduated, I would go by her studio. "Stop by again. Bring your material to draw while you are here. It can't do you no harm!" I can still hear her words:
" Very good, very good!", but she would always emphasize that I would never know everything and that if one day I thought I knew it all, that would be the day I would stop painting.

Bernardo Caro
At PUC/Campinas Bernardo was our Painting professor. He was renewed and had won many prizes. What called him attention the most were his eyeglasses and his sideburns that came down to his earlobes. On the first day my classmates showed him a drawing I had made of him tin this class we were supposed to draw deforming). He took my drawing, graded it, and folded it. For me it was my best drawing till today. Only later he told me my grade: "Artists get an A", he would say.
He invited me to participate at the opening of the "Convivio de Arte", with an exhibition of my cartoons. The classes at the Fine Arts School at PUC were suspended that day. I was an outsider who had been accepted and recognized.
People suggested me that I should stay in São Paulo. But I, not knowing why, wanted to return to the Vale do Rio dos Sinos. I owe him the structuring of my work - the boldness and the freedom to create!

1976 - ASSUMING THE IDENTITY
I learned how to speak Portuguese at the age of 10. Until then I spoke only the dialect, spoken throughout the Vale do Rio dos Sinos. We did not know how to speak German, neither how to speak Portuguese.
Besides, with the beginning of industrialization in the country, mainly in the Vale do Rio dos Sinos, and with the use of machinery in the fields of Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná and Mato Grosso, the small land estates proved to be no longer profitable, and the small land owners were forced to exchange the land for the city in a massive rural exodus. In that marginalized position, especially with the postwar effects, those who remained in the countryside became ashamed of their reality, their customs, their houses and so forth. They were losing their identity, with strong cultural characteristics that could be considered raw material for the arts.
That is how I grew to accept my reality, my identity, and begin to do my job to save a part of this land's culture. I realized that no one, no other artist would make art using our reality as raw material if we did not start ourselves. At the end of 1975 I started with a series about my history, the history of my family, which was, by extension, the history of most of the inhabitants of my country: Vale do Rio dos Sinos. I had foreseen the Globalization!

1977 - CASA VELHA
Novo Hamburgo was experiencing the outburst of the shoe industry. It was a paradise! Without the land reform, the demand for manual work brought thousands of people from the countryside, thus swelling the cities and creating poverty-belts around them. The Valley, inasmuch as culture is concerned, was still living within the artistic phase of Romanticism as it was brought in 1824 when it was still a vanguard movement in Europe. Preserved for about 150 years. Romanticism was only challenged in the Vale dos Sinos with the appearance of the Casa Velha - Convivio de Arte (Old House - Art Center).
The Movement Casa Velha defended the settlement of the artist in his place of origin, in order to make an art that would better identify with the region and thus avoid the artist from moving to large centers.
That demanded a lot of courage, but the region seemed mature and anxious for cultural spaces, since there were no cultural centers or art galleries around. The region gave this initiative full support. Afterwards, came the time of the monuments, in an attempt to make art accessible to the people. With it came the polemic, essentially political, of the "Monument to the shoemaker", and the "Monument shoe as food".
Cartoon, photography, stain glass and batik exhibitions were promoted. We took the exhibitions to the farther away towns and villages of the valley. Interviews, lectures, recitals, as well as presentations of gaucho music were all given coverage by the local press, mainly the newspaper NH, through Evania Reichert.

Theater groups popped up and the effervescence around the arts was such - since we had really stirred the mentality of the people - that the Movement Casa Velha ended as fast as it had started, at the beginning of 1979, after a total of 2 years.

O TRAVESSÃO
Since its foundation the Casa Velha Movement went through three stages. The first one, to simply start reaching the people through art. The second, with the monuments: monument to the Bible and the murals of San Crispin and Saint Crispiniano by Marciano Schmitz; the murals about soccer and carnival by Carlos Alberto Oliveira; and the monuments to the Shoemaker, to the File and to the Shoe as Food by my own authory During the third stage, we wanted to reach the remaining part of the State and in order to do that we opened a branch of the Casa Velha at the Travessão (Crossroads), a neutral territory in the Vale dos Sinos, which divided the limits of 4 counties. After the Casa Velha Movement was over, I moved altogether to the Travessão, and there I dedicated my time entirely to the theme of the Vale dos Sinos inhabitant. After a lot of work it was possible to identify the certain features peculiar to my art: my going to the Travessão had led me to my own style. From then onwards I started to conceptualize my work in three themes - Colony, Rural Exodus and City. Now, many
years having gone by, and having made contact with Europe, I added a forth one: Roots/Origin.

translation to english by Hanna Betina Götz