Elisabeth Anges Becker, known as Butterbettken - or Butterbettchen, was a very special woman who was born in Hellefeld on March 31, 1858
. She spent her life as a trader, making the long journey from Hellefeld through the Arnsberg Forest to Arnsberg, bringing eggs, butter and other agricultural products to the market in Arnsberg in all weathers. On the way back, she took medicines from the pharmacy for her village. Free of charge, mind you! In those days, when nobody was mobile, that was a great help. And helpfulness was one of her most outstanding qualities!
Butterbettken kept a diary throughout her life. She kept a record of every single thing she earned, leaving behind one of the few testimonies to the everyday life of a working-class woman in those days.
on November 20, 1900, she bought a donkey called Hans to make her life a little easier. However, Hans made things really difficult for her. The "crutch" was stubborn for ten and once threw Butterbettken and her market goods into the ditch. That was the last stupid thing he did in her service. Butterbettken sold Hans in 1903 and walked back to Arnsberg with around 13 pounds of goods. At least Hans had managed to stop her from writing in her diary, as there are no entries for the whole of 1902.
Luxury was alien to Butterbettken. When she was asked by a newlywed bride for her opinion on the beautiful golden bedposts of the marriage bed, she said succinctly: "You feel your body aches in this bed just as much as in another one. "
That monuments would be erected to her, or that there would be a "Butterbettchenweg" and a "Butterbettchenbrücke" ... she would probably have laughed and said "oh, go away". But it is precisely because of this modesty that she is still remembered today.
Butterbettken died on June 4, 1932 after an accident and is buried in the Enkhausen cemetery, where Federal President Lübke also found his final resting place. On her 150th birthday in March 2008, an honorary delegation visited her grave and commemorated the little market woman.
2007 saw the first Butterbettchen market in Arnsberg, where a lady in disguise with an egg basket mimed the market woman. Butterbettchen has since become a brand,
and what she would certainly have liked is her existence as a nativity figure in the nativity scene of the St. Johannes parish in Sundern. Carved from lime wood, she has been standing there with her basket among the more or less prominent sons and daughters of the town since Advent 2002.
