Wilhelmus Ratinger has been in the wood business his whole life. He feels a block of wood in his fingers, allows his spirit to penetrate the bark and starts to hew and cut. In the summer he wanders through the woods covering the mountain slopes, saws fallen down trees into pieces and loads these onto a cart to take them back to Schneewald.

Here he leaves the blocks to harden in every kind of weather until they have a thin grey covering. Not all pieces of wood are suitable for every job. Wilhelmus really likes to keep the block as intact as possible. Side branches become noses and ears, antlers sometimes, clothes hooks. The winter is the ideal time to do the fine carving. For the clock maker, Johann Friedrich, he makes attractive clock cases, sometimes Johann even fits a timepiece into a hollowed out tree trunk.

Wilhelmus recently made two wooden pillars, as door posts for the entrance to café/restaurant "Stab Aldo", into which the skiers tumble in the evenings for the après ski. Wilhelmus does not look like a person who has any affinity with fine work. He his tall and broad, has hands like spades and thick fingers. And yet his work is sensitive and even artistic. For his wife Anna, the sextoness of the Tyrolean chapel, he and his fellow wood worker Marty Friedenau, made attractive images of saints and even a few pews, so that walkers are able to spend a little time sitting in the chapel and, who knows, maybe enjoy a moment of pleasant contemplation. But Wilhelmus has also done some good work for the priest Victor Konrad’s "Pfarrkirche" including a long term restoration of the old dark, almost black teak wood pulpit. It was almost impossible to tell the new pieces apart from the original wood. That is professional work!