AEMI

ELISA GOSSO
205
Fig 2. The motto of the village: “To the Fathers, for a faithful thought. To the Children, for a constant
memory.
the creation of a sort of quasi-ethnicity.
The religious community of Rohrbach-Wembach-Hahn
belongs to the
reformed branch of the Evangelical
Church in Hessen and Nassau and is
identified as Sondergemeinde, a special
community. It keeps the ancient right to
choose its own pastor, whereas the other
communities have their pastors automatically
assigned from the ecclesiastical
organization.
Heritage includes some social and
cultural beliefs and practices. There is
a deep bond that unifies the members
of the community with their forebears,
and genealogy is the element that most
of all characterizes the belonging to the
Waldensian heritage. Having a Waldensian
ancestor in one’s own family is a
strong marker of identification with
such heritage. However, this feeling
is not reduced to individual and family
bonds: it apparently extends to the
whole community. The emigrant ancestors
are represented as a single body.
Thus, for example, in the motto of the
village the term ‘Fathers’ of the community
is mentioned 5 . At the same time,
this familial lexicon is extended to the
current inhabitants of Pragelato. During
my fieldwork I heard many times the locals
speaking about ‘brothers’, ‘cousins’,
‘children of the same mother’, and so
on. So, if the genealogy intervenes by