Marianne & Margaret

Kim Yeon-jun (left), Chairman of the Marianne and Margaret Commemoration Project Committee, who visited Austria last month, presents the certificate of Preliminary Cultural Heritage designation to Mr. and Mrs. Norbert Pissarek, surviving family members of Margaret, "the Angel of Sorok Island." (Provided by the Marianne and Margaret Association)

"Sorok Island was Margaret's whole life. Even after she returned home and was living in a nursing facility, she loved to talk about Sorok Island. If she had known that the items she used in her nursing work had been designated as Preliminary Cultural Heritage in Korea… she would have responded the way she always did—very calm and restrained, yet warm."

On the 1st, Norbert (85), the younger brother of Margaret Pissarek (1935–2023), "the Angel of Sorok Island," shared his reflections with the Dong-A Ilbo on behalf of his late sister. Last November, the Korea Heritage Service designated as Preliminary Cultural Heritage the treatment and nursing tools used by Margaret and Marianne Stöger (92), the two Austrian nurses who cared for Hansen's disease patients for some 40 years on Sorok Island in Goheung County, South Jeolla Province. Last month, the incorporated association "Marianne and Margaret" delivered the related certificate to the surviving families of Marianne and Margaret.

A Gugelhopf baking mold.

The items designated under the name "Treatment and Nursing Tools of Marianne and Margaret on Sorok Island" include a baking mold and a powdered milk tin. On patients' birthdays, the two women would bake "Gugelhopf," a celebratory bread from their homeland. Because of its shape with a hole in the center, patients also called it "chamber-pot bread." According to Kim Yeon-jun, Chairman of the Marianne and Margaret Commemoration Project Committee, after receiving the certificate last month, Marianne recalled: "We made Gugelhopf so we could place candles in it and celebrate birthdays together. Seeing their joy made me feel even greater love and gratitude."

The German-made baking mold has rather crude handles attached on either side. These were added separately by the two women for ease of use, as they had to bake Gugelhopf often and in large quantities. The Modern and Contemporary Heritage Division of the Korea Heritage Service explained: "Even though the Hansen's patients' residential area and the hospital staff quarters were strictly separated at the time, the two women invited patients into their home and celebrated their birthdays by slicing and sharing Gugelhopf."

The M Dressing Room, where Marianne and Margaret treated patients. (Provided by Sorokdo National Hospital)

The 68 tools used in treatment and nursing—including a washbasin, nail clippers, and syringes—are also Preliminary Cultural Heritage to be preserved. They were mainly used in the children's dressing room, known as the "M Dressing Room" after the first initial shared by Marianne and Margaret. According to the book "Marianne and Margaret of Sorok Island" (by Sung Ki-young), the two women would rise early each morning to boil powdered milk in a kettle and make their rounds of the wards, soaking the hands and feet of Hansen's patients in a washbasin before trimming their nails. The Korea Heritage Service regards them as "an example of human rights-centered care, treating patients as beings of dignity even amid a poor medical environment and social prejudice."

The designated items will be preserved and managed at venues such as the "Marianne and Margaret Memorial Hall" in Goheung, and replicas are scheduled to be exhibited in October at the Korean Cultural Center in Vienna and the Catholic Women's Association in Innsbruck, among other locations. The Preliminary Cultural Heritage system selects and manages cultural assets less than 50 years old that hold value in representing modern and contemporary history and culture; last year, the first batch of 10 items was designated together. A second list is expected to be announced around the end of this year.