Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 301, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1913 — Real "Deserted Village.” [ARTICLE]

Real "Deserted Village.”

A “deserted village” which contains only one single soul, a woman, is that of Woolstein, a hamlet near Cassel, in Prussia. It has been abandoned by its inhabitants on the ground that life there is hopeless. The soil is sterlie, and the authorities refused to link the village to the outer world byrail. About a hundred of the inhabitants left, in a body for America few weeks ago, and since then those who were left behind have been moving dally to neighboring villages and towns. The village school was closed not many days ago because there were no more pupils, and’ on the following Sunday service was held for the last time ip the village church. The houses are empty, and the village looks as if it had been swept by the plague. Only one inhabitant remains, Frau Hoeft, a shepherdess, who is eighty years old, and declares that she will die in the village where she was born.