The speaker from Briesen, born in 1860, tells about the poet Mato Kosyk from Werben.

Many emigrated from the surrounding villages to Australia and America. The emigrants needed a pastor and so Mato Kosyk went to America. In a letter to the speaker, Mato Kosyk wrote that a pastor in America does not get a salary, but gifts. He had an Indian housekeeper and he wished for a wife from his homeland. He married a Polish woman and they had a son, but he died young of a heart attack while bathing. I informed him of his mother’s death via the Red Cross, the news was transmitted by submarine cable. During the war we became quite separated. The news of his death reached us, but on what day he died we do not know.

Date of recording: 10.09.1954