Message of Senator Loren Legarda | Opening of the Rizal Historic Trail Hike, Wilhelmsfeld | June 20, 2026

To the Gemeinde Wilhelmsfeld, and to the Knights of Rizal Wilhelmsfeld– Heidelberg Chapter, thank you for bringing this trail to life, and for inviting me to walk it with you.

 I have visited Wilhelmsfeld many times, and it has always been a home for me.  I remember the quiet of it, the vicarage where Dr. Jose Rizal stayed with Pastor Ullmer and his family, the garden he and Eta tended at dawn, the home where a young man from Calamba was treated less like a boarder and more like a son. When you stand in that house, the distance between 1886 and today grows very thin. I cannot put into words the pride and joy I felt when my son, Representative   Leandro   Legarda   Leviste, decided to purchase the house—to preserve it and open it not just to Filipinos but to all those who love, respect, and draw inspiration from Rizal.

 Each day Rizal left that parish house at a quarter to seven, carrying the breakfast Marie had packed for his lunch, and went down a forest path to the eye clinic in Heidelberg, then climbed back up in the evening. He did this for months. At night, by candlelight, he wrote his Noli me Tangere. The trail you have marked is simply his commute, the same path he walked to work and back, day after day. That is where the heroism began. Not in a grand moment,  but in an ordinary walk, repeated every morning, by a man before the world knew his greatness.

 This is why I am eager to help preserve this trail for our own memory, and for the generations who will come after us. In the Philippine Senate, I ensured that support was provided through the Philippine Consulate General in Frankfurt, and this year, under the National  Commission for Culture and the Arts, we allocated funding for the markers along the route.  A path without signs is forgotten. A path with them becomes memory you can stand on.

 The Knights of Rizal live by the words Non Omnis Moriar— not all of me will die. Rizal kept that promise in his books. We keep it in stone, in signpost, and in every step taken on this trail, so the next person who walks from Wilhelmsfeld to Heidelberg knows whose steps they follow.

 To Wilhelmsfeld, to the Knights of Rizal, and to all of you who are here today, vielen Dank, maraming salamat.