author
Ulrich Bräker
1735–1798
Best known as the "Poor Man of Toggenburg," this Swiss writer turned a hard rural life into one of the most vivid autobiographical voices of the 18th century. His journals and life story offer a rare, direct view of ordinary experience, restless curiosity, and self-education.
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About the author
Born in Näppis near Wattwil in 1735, Ulrich Bräker grew up in a poor family and had only limited formal schooling. Even so, he became an eager reader and a determined autodidact, shaping himself through books, religious writing, and observation of the world around him.
Bräker worked at various trades and lived through years of economic struggle, but he is remembered above all for his writing. His autobiography, Lebensgeschichte und natürliche Ebentheuer des Armen Mannes im Tockenburg, published in 1789, made him widely known as the "Poor Man of Toggenburg." He also kept diaries that have become an important record of everyday life and thought in the late 18th century.
What makes Bräker stand out is the freshness of his voice. He wrote about poverty, faith, reading, work, and ambition with unusual honesty, leaving behind a portrait not of a famous statesman or court poet, but of an ordinary man who observed his own life with remarkable care. He died in Wattwil in 1798.