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Our father was a medical doctor who directed a hospital for the Swiss Military who had become ill with tuberculosis. My father was of Dutch ancestry. He was born in Switerland during 1895. His parents moved to Switzerland he was thus raised and educated in Switzerland. He had an older sister. Working at the sanatorium, he became very interested in the problems of handicapped children. He also became interested in Scouting believing it to a very beneficial activity for us children.
My father Henry Willem Otto Voûte was of Dutch ancestry. His father was born in Amsterdam during 1867. He became an engeneer and worked for the Sulzer Company, headquartered in Winterthur Switzeland. At the time we note a great deal of movement within German-speaking Europe (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland). People in the Netherlands of course spek Dutch, but this is a language very close to German and there are a lot of family tis between the Germans and Dutch. While he was with Sulzer he was assigned to their plant near Mannheim, Germany. This was during my fathers early elementary school years. Before that they lived in Winterthur and then when my father did the upper schools, they were back in Sitzerland.
Father had an older sister. His mother died when my father was about 3 or 4 years old. His father remarried and had two more children (half-sister and brother to my father).
Father was born in Switzerland during 1895. His name was Henry Willem Otto Voute, but he was called Hans. His parents lived in both Germany and Switzerland. Father thus grew up in both countries.
Most of what I know about the clothes my father wore as a boy comes from our family photograph album. We have several photographs of father as a boy so we have a fairly good idea of the various styles of clothing he wore. I don't recall discussing the subject with him so all that we know comes from the available portraits. Many portraits and snapshots are with his sister so we have a good record of how girls dressed at the time as well. Most of the photographs are dated so the photographs provide a very useful time line on period clothing. As a very little boy father wore dresses. A little older he wore a sailor-styled tunic with a saucer sailor cap. I note a smock outfit he is wearing in one portrait, but I think this may be more of a folk costume than an outfit he commonly wore. His sister wore smocks, but other thn this folk outfit I don't see father and his brothers wearing them.As a somewhat older boy in Germany he seems to have worn knee pants sailor suits with long stockings. We note a collar-buttoning knickers suit worn with a peaked cap and Eton collar. This seems to have been a very popular style at the time. He also wore knickers with darl blouses, often with a short tie.
Father was educated in both Switzerland and Germany. He attended primay school in ???. Then he battended a Ober-Realschule (similasr to a gynasium) in Mannheim, Germany. Mannheim is a German city on the Rhine east of France. A class portrait reads, "Sexta B der grossherzoglichen Ober-Realschule, Mannheim". That means Class Six B of the Grand-duchy Upper-elementary school in Mannheim. Sexta is the grade level. We have a portrait of my father's class about 1904. The boys wear collar buttoning suits, blouses, and sailor suits. Father is in the third row on the extreme right against the window. He was a very good student. Father went on to to the university. We have a photograph of him in his fancy franternity outfit.
My parents had five children. There boys and a girl who they raised in Montana. I was the baby of the family and have provided HBC a detailed account of my childhood .
Montana is located high above the Rhone Valley in Switzerland. Is it a beautiful place and a pectacular location to grow up. I could not have asked for a more beautiful spot. The Rhone Valley is a predominately French speaking area of Switzerland. The villagers were French speaking and Roman Catholic. Montana, at that time was a small village with a few Sanatoriums for people with tuberculosis. Since then Montana has become a world renowned Golf and Ski-resort. That came inhandy because as a teenager I was able to earn a little pocket change a s ski instructor.
Father directed a hospital for the Swiss Military who had become ill with tuberculosis. The hospital my father directed used to be an old hotel that was converted into a sanatorium. It was above the small farmers-village with a commanding view over the Rhone-valley and the Alps. The village was very small and the inhabitants were all poor mountain-farmers. While my father was in charge of the hospital, he also treated the local villagers and made frequent house-calls. As these farmes did not have much cash, they paid us with produce from their farms, such as cheese, sausage, vegetables, wine etc. That is how I got the wine cask for my play house. Most of the employees came from the German speeking part of Switzerland and were protestant. Part of the hospital was an extensive farming and workshop area. There was a chicken-farm with more then 2,000 chickens. There was a carpenter shop, a forgery, a weaving shop, a leathercraft shop etc. Some of the patients at the hospital during their treatment worked in some of these shops or the farm, depending on their degree of ilness and were thus able to earn some > income towards their living. The products producesd were sold commercially and the patients received part of the income. My mother, who was a professional weaver and very artistic, ran a die weaving shop.
Father became interested in Scouting believing it to a very beneficial activity for us children. Montana was a very small village. As there were not sufficient boys who had an interest in Scouting in Montana, father organized a troop with boys from Montana and the nearby town of Sierre, which is the town below Montana in the Rhone valley. Sierre is the town where one had to get off the train to go up to Montana. This created a problem for the boys who came from far away. To resolve that problem, the meetings were held every Saturday afternoon. The boys from Montana hiked half way down to the valley and the boys from Sierre hiked half way up the mountain. There was an ideal place to hold the troop meetings, which were always held in the outdoors.
Working at the sanatorium, he became very interested in the problems of handicapped children. About, when I became of Scout-age, my father decided to organize Scouting for the handicapped. As he was physician and worked very much with long-term patients he wanted to provide the Scouting Program to the Handicapped. That is why he organized Scouting for the Handficapped.Most handicapped at that time lived somewhere in an institutional setting. Scout-units were organized at these institutions. My father provided them on a monthly basis with program-helps for activities tailor-made for their handicaps. The highlight was always during the Summer months when my father organized regional Summer camps for the Handicapped which our whole family attended and where we functioned as helpers to the handicapped. These Camps provided me with a life-long affinity for the handicapped. We did not just have those regional camps, but we also had large delegations at the National Jamboree in 1948 near Lugano and then at the World jamboree in 1951 in Austria. Again, our whole family was involved in some way in assisting at these Camps.
Europea at the turn of the 20th century was a very different place than modern Europe. Germany was the dominant continental power. Not only was Imperial Germany much larger than modern Germany, but Austria-Hungary was dominated by Germans (Austrians). Thus Germans dominated much of centrasl Europe. Many people outside Germany leanned German as a major language of science and commerce. Many Americans studied German in high schools and universities, especially those inteested in medical and scientific careers. Germany was not just the most powerful militarily, but dominated Europe in both industry and scientific achievement. Germany's loss of World War I was a great shick for the German people and even more for the Germans that after the War found themselves ot side the borders of Germany and Austria. This was a factor in the ultra-nationalism that spread in Germany fter the World War I. In the 19th and early 20th century we note a great deal of movement within German-speaking Europe (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland). People in the Netherlands of course speak Dutch, but this is a language very close to German and there are a lot of family this between the Germans and Dutch. The Voûte family here is a good example of this. A Dutch reader, Rudi, writes us, "For me it was the It is the other way around. I was born in Holland, but my father was German. The Dutch I got from my mother, Johanna Betti Riddering."
Voûte, Tom. E-mail message, May 13 and 16, 2006.
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