The 4C visits the Brunnenburg

On March 13 the class 4C visited the Brunnenburg in Dorf Tirol. The Brunnenburg is an agricultural museum and the residence of Mary de Rachewiltz, the daughter of Ezra Pound. Ezra Pound is one of the most prominent American poets of the 20th century and his works include "Ripostes"(1912), "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1920) and the "Cantos" (1917-1969),  which were partly written in the Brunnenburg.We have read a few of his beautiful poems such as "In a Station of the Metro" and "The Garden" during our English lessons with Mrs. Holzner.
When we arrived at the Brunnenburg, Michael de Rachewiltz, the grandchild of Mary, kindly welcomed us and led us to some American students of ecological studies, who we would get to know more closely on that day and who are going to stay there together with two of their University professors for a whole semester. Firstly he introduced himself and the Brunnenburg, talking about when the castle was originally built and then rebuilt around 1900. Afterwards we split up into five groups and started doing some tasks together with the American students. We introduced ourselves and then we answered different questions about Ezra Pound. After all the group work was finished, the students showed us the Brunnenburg and its most astounding places, such as the castle tower, from which we could admire the beautiful view over Merano in more detail. After that we all came together in the "Ezra Pound room" to meet up with Mary de Rachewiltz. She turned out to be a very charming lady and she told us some interesting and personal facts about her father and her own life. Later she even read out one of Ezra Pound's cantos to us before we had the possibility to read out some of our self-made Haikus (a type of poem) to her ourselves. They all liked our poems very much and Mary de Rachewiltz encouraged us to carry on writing poetry. At approximately 12:00 pm we set off to Merano or, to be more precise, back to school.

It truly was an amazing and unique experience and it was just a great opportunity that we had the chance to read our own poems to Mary de Rachewiltz. It was really interesting to listen to her stories and to hear her speaking three different languages so well even though she spoke English most of the time.
(By Chiara Salvà, Clemens von Musil, Fabian Schmidt, Jakob Unterthurner)