Volkskunstmuseum Innsbruck

When visiting the VOLKSKUNSTMUSEUM in Innsbruck, you can listen to the stories of "Kathl" about life in Tyrol in times gone by on the audio guide while viewing the exhibits in the "Precarious Life" section (2nd floor).

"Anna Maria Huberin", known as the "Wallfahrtskathl" (pilgrimage Kathl) or the "Bötin" (messenger woman), is a fictional figure of the 19th century who has retired from active working life but is still sprightly enough to get around Tyrol on foot. She earned a little extra money running errands, fetching and delivering, making pilgrimages on others' behalf, announcing and issuing invitations to weddings, christenings and funerals, and also by finding servants for households. Through neighbourly help at births she came to various farms and tenants' houses.

"The precariousness" of life in earlier times begins long before birth and is far from over with death: purgatory, the resurrection of the flesh and the Last Judgement on Judgement Day are inseparably part of it.

The "transitions" in life, with their accompanying rites, were considered extremely precarious: the child in the womb, birth, the time before baptism, the passage from childhood to the state of being unmarried, from there to the state of marriage, dying, death, and "life" after death.

"Precarious Life" does not mean a difficult, wretched life, but a life for which one must ask and give thanks again and again.