It helps when the autumn wind waves the umbrella

After the fall, Erich Baumann, 55, at the summit: “If stormy weather hits Switzerland, I will receive packages full of broken umbrellas in ten days,” he says with a smile. «Bumä», as it advertises itself, is the last umbrella patch in Switzerland. He lives in Jegenstorf BE, has a workshop in the neighboring town of Münchringen BE in an old schoolhouse from 1876.

The room, where kindergarten children used to line up the blocks until 2005, features a large wall unit with over a hundred deep wooden drawers, dating from an old umbrella factory since 2008. Each sliding compartment is neatly numbered and contains all kinds of spare parts, from the handle to the ring to the crown. Opposite it stacked dozens of long cardboard rolls from which a wide variety of railings protrude.

The mostly eight narrow “Stängeli” covering the fabric roof are an umbrella’s biggest weakness. A strong wind and – hui! – the umbrella turns upside down: the bars bend, break or the rivets pop. An example of a wall with different models shows Baumann which compartment to look in to find the right spare part for his repair.

The success rate is an incredible 99 percent.

If he can’t find what he’s looking for, he still has a wall with hundreds of stacked umbrellas from thrift stores and left-luggage offices that no one wants anymore. Baumann hollows them out and extracts the intact parts that he can use to heal the sick. He ironically calls himself the “umbrella doctor” and stands in the middle of the room under the bright light “on the operating table”.

She is holding a colorful umbrella in her hand. “Things that shouldn’t be moving are moving,” he says. “Often more breaks down than expected.” He loosens the clamp at the end of the rod and finds traces of glue in an entire tube. “The customer probably tried to fix it himself,” he says. This just makes things worse and gives extra work. The effort that the screen patch does not shy away from, but encourages it.

Baumann likes to repair mechanical devices; It can walk around patiently until it finds the problem. Growing up with his four older sisters in Heiligenschwendi BE, above Lake Thun, he loved to play with Lego or Meccano and later got a moped haircut when he was younger. “I was already successful back then,” Baumann says, “that’s what the police told me when they stopped me.”

The success rate with umbrellas is an incredible 99 percent: Out of the nearly a thousand defective parts it receives each year, it cannot fix only ten of them. It tries everything and can tamper with a screen for up to two hours. “It could be because of a small detail,” Baumann says. “I’ll be very happy when I find it and the screen works again.”

Baumann is a full-time tram and bus driver.

To cope with the massive amount of workload of 20 percent, it needs to activate three units on average every hour. Baumann is a tram and bus driver at Bernmobil. Here, too, he likes tricks: “I serve all lines around the Bern train station,” he says. He has been doing this laborious job for eleven years. The trained gardener previously worked in the social sector.

As a so-called work agog, Zollikofen accompanied the people at the Gewa Foundation at BE in their professional integration. In the late 1990s, Baumann started repairing umbrellas here with four employees. After the foundation abandoned the offer, she took over with her husband – she provides courier services and picks up defective goods from a pick-up point near Bern, for example in the Loeb shopping centre.

Broken umbrellas from the reception point in Thun are sent to Baumann by post. Now packages reach him from all over Switzerland. It does not want to go abroad because the customs taxes are high. A repair at the “Erich Baumann Umbrella Service” costs about 30 francs – the bill for a complex repair of a complex umbrella can sometimes be a hundred francs or more.

“I’ll get goosebumps if I remove it”

Baumann talks about an expensive Rolls-Royce umbrella that was placed in the heated side door compartment of the luxury limousine and jammed when closed, causing the bar to break. “It’s worth paying a few more francs for the restoration,” he says. The car enthusiast insisted on bringing the patched umbrella himself to the old garage in Zurich.

He wanders around Baumann’s workshop and reaches for a rare piece of his own: a classic men’s umbrella with a chiseled handle, probably more than a hundred years old, made in England. It opens, and a night-black roof of silk fabric opens up. When it rains on it, the silk swells and provides the best protection. Baumann was touched: “I’ll get goosebumps if I pick it up.”

Although it often rains in England, in 1705 a Parisian merchant invented the modern umbrella. For this reason, it has long been frowned upon as a sign of “French” and “feminization” in the British Isles. It was settled in the German-speaking world only in the 19th century. In 1928, a company from Solingen (D) patented the foldable pocket umbrella – the small one was born.

Small, compact and almost no weight

Small, compact and almost no weight: umbrellas are becoming more and more comfortable. Thanks to its fully automatic function, it can be extended and opened and loosened again at the touch of a button. The tram and bus driver Baumann should really welcome this, because that way, when it rains, passengers get on and off faster. But he also says: “The more joints an umbrella has, the weaker it is.”

Whether it’s a souvenir from your grandfather or a cheap umbrella from the sideboard: Baumann basically fixes everything. “A customer once sent me one from H&M,” he says. Repair costs far exceeded the material value. Still, he requested that the umbrella be patched as it was part of a special edition. “People often form an emotional attachment to an umbrella,” Baumann says.

Whether it’s memories of a vacation spot or a kiss under an open roof: The Umbrella Doctor hears all sorts of stories behind the fragile frame and piece of material. And sometimes he can smell stories too. “When I opened a package, I was greeted by a cloud of obnoxious stench from a cat constantly peeing on the screen,” Baumann says. “Locater!”

Umbrella is much older than umbrella

When it’s cat or dog weather, we often use umbrellas. But they were originally meant to protect against precipitation, not the sun – the first representations date back 4000 years and come from ancient Egypt, Persia or China. The first written mentions can be found in ancient Greek texts by Aristophanes (450-380 BC) or the Roman poet Martial (40-104).

“I’ve never worn as many sunshades as this year,” Baumann says. He estimates that about one-fifth of the 1,000 umbrellas that pass through his stall each year (with a small proportion of photography umbrellas) are parasols. And given the drier and hotter summers, their share is likely to increase. “Umbrellas against the sun are on the rise,” Baumann says.

Sunnier summers, more severe autumn storms due to climate change: the last umbrella repairer shouldn’t be out of business anytime soon. What if it stops? “Maybe one of my kids will be interested,” Baumann says. She has 31-year-old fraternal twins and a 27-year-old daughter – the last screen repairman may be followed by the last screen repairman.