<\/a>Personal Memories: An Itinerant Life between Post-War Germany and the Period of Political Correctness<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cProgressive Memories\u201d illustrates the history of the spectacle lens industry following the development and commercialization of the progressive lens.The ophthalmic optical industry however was only one of the stages of my professional career.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonal Memories\u201d tells the story of this itinerant life and describes the\u00a0various \u00a0stations as well as the professional and private experiences with different cultures and people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nClick on the different chapters in the Navigation Bar on the left side. If you prefer to read the contents page by page (like in a book) \u00a0please open the following pdf.<\/p>\n
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>\u00a0Personal Memories: An Itinerant Life between Post-War Germany and the Period of Political Correctness<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n
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\n\n<\/a>Enka Glanzstoff, a Giant of the Industrial Mass Production<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\nDiolen<\/span><\/i>\u00a0was the brandname of a polyester fibre top product \u00a0<\/span>marketed by\u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0. In my memory its industrial production in two fundamental \u00a0process steps, melt spinning and drawing, represents an unforgettable experience.<\/p>\nOn the \u201cSpinnb\u00fchne\u201d (how the Glanzstoff- workers called the spinning room level), the different spinning chambers were arranged in a long row. The spinning process was quiet, only a distant humming from the winding room penetrated from the bottom of the spinning chambers. At the top of the spinning chamber the hot and fluid polyester resin was pumped through the holes of the spinneret and on its way down to the bottom of the chamber the filament bundle was cooled down and solidified by an air stream with constant temperature and humidity. Then the yarn bundle left the \u201dSpinnb\u00fchne\u201d- level and entered the take-up-room below. There a system of a take up-godet and an idle roller led the filament to<\/span><\/i>\u00a0the traverse guid<\/span><\/i>e, which laid the yarn onto<\/span>\u00a0the rotating yarn package driven by the take-up roll.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\nThe Diolen production was an endless process, i.e. \u00a0<\/span>the spinning machines could not be stopped. So it was necessary to replace full packages by new tubes while the speed of the oncoming filament was several thousand m\/min. For a newcomer it seemed like magic when a skilled operator with a suction gun threaded the fiber bundle round the godets, rollers and pins through the traverse guide and finally on the new spool.<\/i><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>In order to obtain a yarn with high tensile strength and elasticity the spun yarn underwent the so called drawing process, the second fundamental step of Diolen production. When I entered\u00a0 the drawing room I was struck by \u00a0a buzzing noise coming from the spindles of the drawing machines arranged \u00a0in several seemingly endless production lines. The yarn of the full bobbins coming from the spinning factory was stretched between two godets and an intermediate \u00a0heating plate. The ratio of the surface speeds of the two godets defined the drawing ratio of the end product.\u00a0 The drawn yarn passed down to the spindle assembly, where it was \u00a0wound up on a bobbin fixed on a spindle rotating with about 20 000 rpm. A special machine element was the ring and traveller system which laid the yarn on the bobbin while at the same time \u00a0inserting \u00a0twist into the stretched fiber to bind the different filaments together. The up and down motion of the ring created the typical biconical cop form of the full bobbin of drawn yarn, ready for further processing.<\/i><\/p>\nComing from a research institute the encounter with the industry of\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>Oberbruch was an entirely new experience which, with regard to\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>ambitions and way of working, strongly influenced my professional life. But not only the working environment but our life in North West Germany was so different from what I was accustomed to.<\/p>\nWhen in an evening\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>of the year 1970 I arrived for the first time at Oberbruch, a small village in the Niederrhein region, I discovered\u00a0 a new world. Born and educated in Bavaria I was used \u00a0to scattered villages with \u00a0houses in various colors grouped around a church and a marketplace in the center. At Oberbruch the houses were exclusively red-brick buildings, similar to the nearby Netherlands, \u00a0\u00a0aligned along a main street. The space \u00a0between the houses were often closed by gates\u00a0 creating a little gloomy \u00a0impression as if the village was a little fortress.<\/p>\nThe reason for my trip to the border between Germany and the Netherlands was a job interview for the position of the manager \u00a0<\/span>of the Physical\/ Mathematical laboratory of\u00a0Enka Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0Oberbruch.\u00a0\u00a0Enka Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0was the world market leader for synthetic fibers mainly for the textile industry. Essential products of the wide Glanzstoff range were Rayon, a cellulose fiber, and synthetic filaments out of Perlon , chemically \u00a0Polyamid 6, and Polyester , with the brand name\u00a0Diolen<\/i>. Rayon cord is an important reinforcing component of the tire carcass . Around 1960\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>broadened his product range for tire reinforcement materials \u00a0by the production of steel cord.<\/p>\nAs head of the Physical\/Mathematical laboratory I worked together with a team of about 15 physics laboratory assistants , who most of their time were not in the laboratory but in the different production units . Their principal role was to assist the engineering and production departments in troubleshooting activities. They identified the causes of manufacturing problems by measuring the critical process parameters \u00a0<\/span>and controlled the success of the corrective measures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>A Different Way of Working<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\nThe first characteristic which made my work so different was purely the dimension of the\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>Oberbruch factory. Spread over 100 ha this factory with more than 7000 workers was more than a production unit it was an entity for itself , an impression which was reinforced by the fact , that the factory was surrounded by houses for the managers and their families with\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>recreation facilities as\u00a0 tennis courts.<\/p>\nNot only the environment but also the way of working in the\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>factory was fundamentally different to what I was used to. Before I joined Oberbruch I started my professional career after my studies of physics as a scientific assistant with\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0at Oberpfaffenhofen, a center for aerospace research near Munich. My project was a theoretical and experimental investigation on spin stabilized\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>satellites. This analysis was \u00a0general research with a similar character as the experimental work I had to do for my diploma. There was no rigid organization concerning the timeline and I had a high amount of freedom for this scientific work.<\/p>\nThe work of the\u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0Physical\/Mathematical lab was exclusively operational, i.e. providing technical assistance to make sure that the manufacturing runs continuously. So the rhythm and the planning of the tasks were dictated by the problems hampering the production process.<\/span><\/p>\nThe daily starting point was the \u201cwhite cloud\u201d.\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>was dominated by chemists wearing white lab coats. Each morning they met in the factory forming the \u201cwhite cloud\u201d, adjusting production to the planning and identifying the quality issues. \u201c Sprinkled\u201d into the \u201cwhite cloud\u201d were the people with the blue working coats, the engineers and the technicians, who together with the quality people and the Physics\/Math lab decided how to tackle and solve the quality problems .<\/span><\/p>\nAlready before the \u201cwhite cloud\u201d formed in the factory the Physics\/Math \u00a0<\/span>lab team met in order to make an update of the different ongoing measurements and projects. There was a wide range of measurements: temperatures, humidity, mechanical tensions, flow velocities, rotational speeds, usually\u00a0 simple measurement quantities. The problem very often was to measure in the specific manufacturing conditions. For example to measure the temperature of the spinneret\u00a0 demands either special spinnerets with a bore hole to use a thermocouple or\u00a0 a contactless temperature measurement with a precise calibration of the system spinneret\u00a0 surface and radiometer. More complex tasks were for example the analysis of the high speed spinning and drawing process with a high speed camera, analysis of oxygen partial pressure in the polyester \u00a0condensation autoclave, normally inaccessible, determination of the necessary climate conditions for storage of steel cord,\u2026\u2026.various tasks covering a wide range of measurement parameters.<\/p>\nBut common to all these tasks was to solve a production quality issue and consequently \u00a0<\/span>it was paramount to obtain \u00a0the results fast. Furthermore \u00a0it was not acceptable to disturb\u00a0 the flow of the production process. So the Physics lab people had a challenging job to do. They had to adapt the measurements and experiments ingeniously to the specific production environment \u00a0and to plan and organize according to a tight time table in order to eliminate the quality problems as soon as possible. After the completion and evaluation of the measurement, the results and conclusions were documented and the protocol dispatched to the operational people concerned.<\/p>\nBesides these operations with a certain troubleshooting character the physics lab was in charge of developing new working tools and measurement devices for the production and quality control. Examples are a robust but sophisticated handtool\u00a0with which a steel cord worker could easily link the two ends of a broken wire rope or a contactless measurement method to determine the tangle distance of entangled yarn and finally an apparatus allowing to determine the amount of finishes (Lubricants, antistatic agents \u2026.) of the spun yarn by measuring the electrical resistance of a yarn package. In my team there were excellent technical experts as for example Jupp Welfers, who was in charge of these more complex tasks and we filed several utility models.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhile the factory was working in 3 shifts round the clock 7days a week, the laboratory people worked from Monday to Friday with an alternating emergency service on Saturday morning.\u00a0<\/span>The working hours were 40 hours per week.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Physical\/Mathematical laboratory was part of the Physical Department , which included also the Measurement and Control Technology and the Spinneret Unit which developed and manufactured the spinnerets for the\u00a0Enka Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>fiber production. Max Schwab, a physicist was the head of the department and we met every working day between 6 and 7 pm to discuss the results of the measurement projects. Schwab was an \u201cold hand\u201d in the fiber industry \u00a0and from him I learned to work professionally\u00a0 and to develop the right feeling for priorities. Every Friday the Physical department together with the top management from production met the Technical Director Ensslin to exchange information about the main issues of the week and the solutions which had been obtained or were on the way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Living Near the Netherlands Border<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\nThere were several entrances to the company\u2019s premises. Next to the entrance\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>-Stra\u00dfe the houses for the\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>executive people were situated. Our appartment was in one of the red brick houses in the Birkenweg, surrounded\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>by a small garden. The Birkenweg was a dead end, so it\u00a0 was a quiet place to live and ideally situated to the working place. There were only 200 m to the entrance of the factory area and another 300m to the laboratory. One of the advantages was that duringx noon break it was possible to go home for a quick lunch. Typically a sulphuric smell was hanging in the air caused by the manufacturing of the semi synthetic Rayon fiber. With time you got used to it, but today in our health conscious era nobody would accept this.<\/p>\nThe neighbours were of course \u00a0<\/span>the persons with whom you worked together during the day and when you played tennis at the nearby situated company owned tennis club you met your colleagues once again. So\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>was a big family and like in any family everybody knew almost everything about each other, which is a very particular situation. Only a small part of the management people was of Niederrhein origin. Most came from different German regions. So for my wife and myself it was easy to make first private contacts and to find friends.<\/p>\nAfter a certain start-up time in the company I had more leisure time and joined the soccer club FC Heinsberg which played in the district league B. A particularity which was new to me were the cinder soccer fields which were not only used for training but also for competition matches. These fields \u00a0<\/span>were very resistant to bad weather conditions, but a sliding tackling on such a ground caused painful skin abrasions. So it was better to restrict sliding only to the rather rare moments to score a goal. I was less tense than in the past and played some good games with a number of beautiful goals. I had no talent for tennis, which I practiced later, but I was certainly gifted for soccer, which I played from my very young years. Physically not very strong, I had a good ball control and was a tricky dribbler. This was not just an advantage because soccer primarily \u00a0is a team play and it took me several years to adopt this.<\/p>\nBut my soccer career came close to its end and so I started to play tennis at the company tennis club. Physically it was less challenging than soccer and not so risky concerning injuries. Moreover this was an opportunity to have a sports activity together with my wife. In the Glanzstoff\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>tennis club I used to play in the second competition team, but I never succeeded to become a good player. Later in France I participated at smaller tournaments, but usually I was out after the second round and I could relax. With my wife it was different, she was a natural tennis talent. It was not so much the technical perfection of her strokes which can be difficult for a late beginner, but the good mental stability in a competition which made her a strong player. She stayed \u201ccool\u201d – as you would say today – in difficult phases of a match and could so beat players which were more experienced than her. During the following years she won some smaller tournaments and was ranked number one in the clubs, where our itinerant life took us.<\/p>\nMy wife took on the job of a secretary at the local editorial office of the daily newspaper\u00a0Aachener Nachrichten<\/i>. This was not exactly appropriate for her education as trilingual secretary but offered \u00a0<\/span>the opportunity of being in daily contact with the local people and events. The people were open-minded\u00a0 and spoke a typical dialect, the Niederrheinisch Plattdeutsch. The Rheinland is the home of the German Carnival, which is called by its passionate supporters the \u201cfifth season\u201d. Every year some of the lab technicians took several days off from the first top event, the Altweiberfastnacht, when women assume control over the cities and their town halls, not coming back before Ash Wednesday.<\/p>\nThe Niederrhein region with the major cities M\u00f6nchengladbach, Duisburg \u00a0<\/span>and D\u00fcsseldorf \u00a0was neighbouring the Ruhr district. Essen is one of the major cities of the Ruhrgebiet and was the place of residence of my father\u2019s family.<\/p>\nAt the end of the 18th<\/sup>\u00a0century, at the time of the French revolution, Carl Friedrich Gotthilf K\u00f6ppen had a shop for bookselling and book-printing at Dortmund in the Ruhr district. Edmund K\u00f6ppen, born 1873, was his grandson and in 1904, at that time he was managing the coffee roasting\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>business of the brand\u00a0Tengelmann<\/i>\u00a0in Heidelberg, he married \u00a0Eugenie Stellwag. They had 3 children: Grete , my father Rudolf and his younger brother Werner. \u00a0During World War II Werner died of an insidious infectious disease at the age of only 28. My grandfather and grandmother passed away in 1948 respectively 1968 and my father died in 1961. So when we lived at Oberbruch aunt Grete was the member of my paternal ancestors still alive. She had owned a grocery shop in Essen but at that time had already retired. While living in Bavaria we had only few occasions to meet her. But now we had the opportunity to see each other more regularly and my wife and I learned to appreciate Grete as a warmhearted generous person. She never married and after her mother\u2019s death she lived alone. Grete died on January 4th 1973, 100 years after her father\u2019s birth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>The Decline of the Market Leader<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\nIn June 2013 I stood once again in front of the entrance\u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>-Stra\u00dfe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>I had had a meeting with a consulting firm in Aachen offering \u00a0computer software using splines , which I needed to calculate progressive lens designs and I took this opportunity to make a 60 km trip to Oberbruch. But the gate to the\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>premises was closed, no people between the red brick factory buildings, no smoking chimneys, no typical sulphuric smell ,\u2026\u2026. \u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>did not exist anymore. It had been transformed to the\u00a0Industrypark \u00a0Oberbruch<\/i>\u00a0with about 20 smaller companies from various industry sectors. The only fiber company I found was the Japanese \u00a0carbon fiber producer \u00a0Toho Tenax.<\/i><\/p>\nIn the second half of the 1970s\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>a crisis shook the fiber producing industry. It was the consequence of several structural changes. More and more Asian fiber producers learned to control the technology. Possibly \u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>who\u00a0<\/i>owned\u00a0 the spinning machine manufacturer\u00a0Barmag\u00a0<\/i>should have been a little more\u00a0 cautious in selling their technology. First consequences were increasing low price imports in Europe and later a rapid growth of the Far East textile companies. Today a high percentage of textile fabrics come from China, India, Korea and Taiwan. In addition the low wages in Asia made it much more attractive for the European apparel industry to outsource their production. The consequences for\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>as for other European fiber manufacturers were at the beginning part-time work, then downsizing, investment cut-back and restructuring. There were intermediate efforts to increase the efficiency of polyester spinning and investing in the manufacturing of modern high performance carbon fibers signing a license agreement with\u00a0Toho Rayon<\/i>\u00a0in Tokyo. But the decline continued. In 1991 the parent company\u00a0Akzo\u00a0<\/i>stopped their steelcord production for tyres. In 1993 rayon fiber\u00a0Cordenka<\/i>\u00a0manufacturing was discontinued. Workforce fell to below 2000 people. Former technical equipment and installation division, central workshops and the different business units became autonomous enterprises. They were merging with new partners, initiating a change from a homogenous firm to an open industrial park. The former Group parent\u00a0Akzo Nobel<\/i>\u00a0parted completely with the man-made fiber division which was moved to the Far East and integrated in a new company named\u00a0Acordis,<\/i>\u00a0which was sold to an British American investment group which broke them down into several single enterprises.<\/p>\nSo\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>Oberbruch which used to supply the whole world with synthetic fibers still in the 1970s, had disappeared from the market at the beginning of the third millennium.<\/span><\/p>\nA detailed description of the\u00a0Glanzstoff \u00a0<\/i>history can be found in the chapter \u201cOberbruch Industry Park\u201d at Wikipedia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>First Years at Landshut: My Parents<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\nI was born at Landshut on April 4, 1941. Landshut was (and still is) the capital of Lower Bavaria, but nevertheless a small city of about 50 thousand inhabitants.<\/p>\n
My mother\u2019s roots were in in the Lower Saxony in northern Germany. At the end of the 18th century Hans Heinrich Schlumbohm lived in Bispingen in the L\u00fcneburg Heath. His grand-grandson was Wilhelm Schlumbohm, who in 1912 married Margarethe Brandt in the old Hanseatic City of Stade. My grandfather Wilhelm had an eventful professional career all over Germany from the South to the North with intermediate stations at N\u00fcrnberg and Ergolding, near Landshut, before he finally became general manager of the\u00a0Celler Presswerke<\/i>\u00a0, a company manufacturing plastic articles at Celle, in his native region.<\/p>\n
The Schlumbohm family had three children, two sons and a daughter, my mother Elisabeth. Elisabeth was born in Stade in 1915. My uncle Richard, born in 1918, died in the battle of Stalingrad. In his letter to my parents some days after Christmas 1942, only some weeks before the capitulation of the 6th<\/sup>\u00a0army, he describes how he celebrated Christmas with his comrades and how they were longing for peace. The other son died shortly after birth.<\/p>\nAs already\u00a0 described\u00a0 my father\u2019s ancestors\u00a0 came from\u00a0 the Ruhr district. In 1906 Rudolf was born in Heilbronn where his father Edmund was for some years responsible for the coffee-roasting activity of the Tengelmann company.\u00a0 Rudolf had a commercial education and from 1935 on was\u00a0 employee of the Biscuit and Chocolate Factory in Landshut, where he finally was promoted managing director of the Technical Departments.\u00a0 My mother was working in the drugstore Muggenthaler in the Zweibr\u00fcckenstrasse. My father became one of Muggenthaler\u2019s\u00a0 best customers and finally\u00a0married my mother in October 1938.<\/p>\n
Landshut is a historical medieval city, known by the Landshut Wedding one of the largest historical pageants in the world. It commemorates the wedding between Hedwig Jagiellon, the Polish King’s daughter, and George the Rich, the son of the Duke of Bavaria-Landshut from the House of Wittelsbach in the 15th<\/sup>\u00a0century. The scenery of the pageant are the two broad magnificent streets Altstadt and Neustadt, which are entirely preserved with their gothic style houses and their typical crow-stepped gables. During the first years of my childhood we used to live in a house in Stetheimer street at the periphery of Landshut. I still remember my first friends, when we moved right into the historical center of Landshut, the Altstadt.\u00a0 There my parents opened a rather big grocery store in the so called Grasbergerhaus, Altstadt 300, \u201cunter\u00a0 den B\u00f6gen\u201d, which means \u201cunder the arcades\u201d,as one line of the Altstadt houses had arcades towards the side of the street. The Grasbergerhaus was built in 1453 and in 1475\u00a0 became the home\u00a0 of the polish bride Hedwig. It was a marvelous home. While the shop was on the ground floor, our home was on the first floor. Eight large rooms arranged around a hallway which, to my estimate, was 30 m long. At least it was long enough for me to do roller skating . Four families used to live in this flat. We had the chance to have 4 rooms for us. One of them was divided in a kitchen and a bathroom. At the end of the hallway there was one toilet for all the families.<\/p>\nThe rooms were about 3 m high. So in winter they were difficult to get warm. Central heating did not yet exist, so the living room was heated by a coal stove and the sleeping rooms were not heated at all. As insulating double pane windows did not yet exist, we had had beautiful ice flowers covering the windows in winter, but the bed coverings had to be very thick to keep us warm.<\/p>\n
Most of my spare time I met with my friends in the courtyard or in the streets. The Altstadt and the narrow streets , called \u201cdie Gassen\u201d in German, which linked the Altstadt with the Neustadt\u00a0 were an ideal playground. In bad weather the spacious hallway of our home offered special playing opportunities, roller skating for example, not always appreciated\u00a0 by the other families. I had a younger brother Peter: He was born in 1945 and the age difference was possibly one of the reasons\u00a0 that we rarely played together. But the main reason was that we were very different in character. While I was somewhat a loner despite my friends , my brother was much more social joining the boy scout movement at very early age. He stayed active with them for a long time. And he was not particularly interested in sports, which was my passion. So we developed very differently and the fact that I left Landshut after my studies was the reason why we had only little contact. Peter stayed at Landshut and made a successful career as headmaster of the primary school in Vilsbiburg.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n<\/a>Doing Sports, my First Passion<\/h3>\n<\/div>\nAt that time TV was not affordable for normal families. There were only a few restaurants starting being equipped, which was an additional contribution to their profit, at least when the big soccer matches were transmitted. That period was the big era of the cinema. My weekly pocket money was equivalent to three cinema tickets on the cheapest places and certainly twice a week I went to a movie. My preference were western movies with the great \u201cheros\u201d of my time : Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Gregory Peck\u2026\u2026 What a generation! After 3 cinema visits my pocket money was almost used up, so there was certainly need for a non- expensive hobby and this was sports. Sports became an important factor for my whole life. As already mentioned I did some\u00a0 roller skating,\u00a0 but I found it a little boring. Only later when I played some ice hockey I practiced\u00a0 ice skating all winter on the Landshut ice rink. But the first sport which I practiced continuously and systematically was swimming. I became a rather good crawl swimmer and\u00a0 became one of the best in my age class. But finally I did not continue because I discovered my great sporting passion: soccer. Soccer was the most popular sport in Germany, particularly when Germany won the world championship title in 1954. This success was a major event for post war Germany, because after the World War II catastrophe and the years of economic misery\u00a0 this event\u00a0 became the symbol that Germany had not entirely vanished. This new self-esteem also became a guideline for the economic development of the following years, the years of the German Wirtschaftswunder.<\/p>\n
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FC Rapid Vilsheim 1966<\/p>\n
In those days I played in different soccer teams in and around Landshut, for example ETSV Landshut 09, Rapid Vilsheim and FC Ergolding. It was a wonderful time which I shared with my friends Roland Widuch and Johannes Lang. After my retirement I was able to contact Roland who had made a management career in the industry, among others with IBM, and at the end of his professional career became General Manager of a software company near Stuttgart. Johannes Lang had become a teacher for special education and now lives at Regensburg.<\/p>\n
Until the age of 35 I continued to play football in competition in different clubs playing in the district leagues of southern and northern Germany.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n<\/a>University and Difficult Years<\/h3>\n<\/div>\nI lived at Landshut until the end of my physics studies in 1968. 4 years elementary school,\u00a0 9 years secondary school with the German Abitur (qualification for university entrance) in 1960. During my years in the secondary school I became fascinated by natural sciences and hesitated a long time to choose either chemistry or physics. Finally I took the decision for experimental physics and started my studies at the Technical University in Munich, which I left after the first semester in order to continue at the Ludwig Maximilian University, also in Munich. This period until 1968 was a wonderful time of discovering the view of the world governed by the laws of nature.<\/p>\n
At this time I would not know that I would pass major a part of my professional career in activities where my knowledge of physics was not directly applied. But the way to analyze a problem, to find a solution and to implement it, which is so typical for the working method of a physicist, helped me a lot to organize the work and to implement new methods while working in the Marketing and Quality area. My interest in physics remained strong, so\u00a0 after my retirement\u00a0 I attended\u00a0 lectures about special and general relativity as well as quantum field theory at the University of Freiburg. These topics are the building blocks for the understanding of the fantastic evolution of our World.<\/p>\n
Munich was about 60 km far from Landshut and the train took about 1 hour from my home town to the Bavarian capital. I could have had the opportunity to live in a student hostel at Munich, but I decided to stay close to my friends and the football activities and travelled twice a day between Landshut and Munich. Today I think this was not necessarily a good decision to miss this opportunity for new social contacts.<\/p>\n
At the university there were no tuition fees except a rather small enrolment fee. I was lucky to receive a special top level study grant available in Bavaria, the Hundhammer scholarship. In 1960\u00a0 the average salary per person per year was DM 6000,-. The monthly\u00a0 amount of the study grant of DM 250,- was enough to cover my cost of living. So it was possible to spend most of the semester holidays for recreational activities with my friends. During the semester I worked very hard to attend the lectures and to pass the seminar tests, but in the semester holidays, I did not work on physics except during the period before the exams. I was mainly doing sports, swimming and soccer. During the evenings we very often played Schaffkopf (a Bavarian card game) with small stakes, evident for a student. My situation was more favorable than for some of my friends who had to earn money for their studies working during the holidays either for administration or industry. My brother chose another option for financing his studies. He enlisted for some years for the German army.<\/p>\n
During the last years of our school education it was our mother who took care of us. After the first successful years of the grocery shop, when my parents even could start a branch in Lower Bavaria the upcoming competition of food chains and specialized delicatessen shops were hard for the existence of small groceries. In the end my parents had to give up their business and my father became general sales representative of\u00a0Hammesfahr<\/i>, a tyre retreading company. This was a tedious job. My father had to travel the whole week trying to take orders. My mother was responsible for the management of the stock in the Schwesterngasse and the income was moderate. So I had only little time to spend with my father and did not notice how the relationship between him and my mother grew worse. Possibly there was also a certain indifference on my side. In the late fifties they separated and got divorced in 1961. In the same year my father died of a heart attack. He was only 55 years old. After the separation from her husband my mother worked as a secretary for the\u00a0Jenaer Glaswerke Schott & Genossen<\/i>. Her boss was the Technical Director of the Landshut branch for electronic packaging, Dr. Fuchs, a physicist. I graduated from school in 1960, my brother did the Abitur 4 to 5 years later. So during the last years in secondary school there was only our mother who took care of us. Working 6 days a week plus doing the household was a terrible stress. Later, while we were at college there was some financial support because of my study grant and the fact that my brother financed his studies doing his military service.\u00a0 But the years of permanent stress had ruined her health and that left her only a few years to enjoy retirement until she died of a heart attack at the age of only 65 years.<\/p>\n
My parents showed a very strong sense of responsibility for their children and during the difficult economic conditions in Post-War Germany they had to make great sacrifices. I am so grateful that they gave us a carefree childhood and a profound education which became the base for a solid professional career for my brother and myself.<\/p>\n
I had a couple of friends from school and from my soccer activity. Some of my school friends I still meet today. Christian Lorenz, who had become a judge at the Landgericht, Ludwig Oswald, our\u00a0 class representative and later a primary school teacher as well as Ursula K\u00f6bl, who went teaching social law at the Freiburg University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n<\/a>The DFVLR, a Major Experience for Orientation<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\nI worked on my diploma thesis in the institute for X-ray physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University. The head of the institute was Professor Alfred Faessler and the title of my thesis was\u00a0Analysis of the K\u03b1-and K\u03b2-X- Ray Emission Spectra of Sulphur and some Sulphur Compounds\u00a0<\/i>[1]. In all the disciplines of my examination the results were excellent and now the world seemed open to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>I had only to decide either between the research work at the university or to offer my knowledge on the free market. I thought to do both, when I joined the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>,\u00a0the German Research und Test Center for Aerospace<\/i>\u00a0in Oberpfaffenhofen, west of Munich. A friend of my family, somewhat older than me, worked at the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0and he described me the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0as an opportunity to make the doctor grade in physics and being paid as a scientist of the Institute. So I joined the\u00a0Institute\u00a0 for<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0Dynamics of Flight Systems<\/i>\u00a0of the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>. My first big project was the investigation of a nutation damper, a device which should avoid that spin stabilized satellites will lose its fixed orientation by external disturbing forces [[2]\u00a0report ESRO TT-152: Theoretical and Experimental Studies of Annular Nutation Dampers<\/i>].\u00a0 The initial part of the investigation consisted of the mathematical analysis of the satellite-damper system using the laws of mechanics and fluid mechanics. To check the results and to determine the parameters of the fluid motion (difficult to describe theoretically) we constructed a passive motion simulator. The simulator construction, its driving mechanism and its measurement system was a rather sophisticated experimental device. In principle the simulator table was supported in its center of gravity by a special air bearing. So it represented a near approximation of a force-free satellite. The damper was a circular ring filled with mercury. The damping process was registered by a position measuring device transforming the inclination of the table into the intensity variation of a light source. The combination of theoretical and experimental results allowed to understand how a passive fluid damper could stabilize the position of spinning satellites (determine the influence of the geometrical damper parameters, of the damper fluid and the degree of filling.).When I left the\u00a0DFVLR\u00a0<\/i>end of 1970 this project was almost finished, the English report was still under preparation.<\/p>\nThe\u00a0Institute for Dynamics of Flight Systems<\/i>\u00a0had been recently created and was about to determine its management structure. The special feature of this organization process was the strong participation of the scientific staff. So there were many political and not seldom controversial discussions between the different groups of interest. Finally the project of self- organization failed and the Executive Board of the\u00a0DFVLR\u00a0<\/i>appointed the managing director for the institute. So in my memory the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0was a research institute with highly qualified scientists\u00a0<\/span>working with a high degree of personal freedom. The work of the project teams was very creative but for some projects the time schedule was rather generous and the project organization was sometimes not very stringent. So with the time I developed some doubts if the research work would be the right work for me and I started considering to try the industry as a career alternative.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>B\u00e4rbl<\/h2>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wernerkoeppen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Baerbel-Jung-und-schoen-3-2-267x300.png\")
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\nWorking for the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0I moved now to Munich. I rented a room in Pasing, a quarter of Munich lying on the railway line to Oberpfaffenhofen. Only at the beginning I returned still to Landshut at the weekends. To follow my passion and to find new friends I joined the soccer club SC Wessling, Wessling being a small village near to the research center. For some years I played in the A-district league county of Starnberg, a period \u00a0<\/span>interrupted by a heavy meniscus injury and its surgery.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wernerkoeppen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Werner-Wessling2-300x206.jpg\")
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SC Wessling 1969<\/p>\n
In the noon pauses of summer the flexible working hours of the research institute offered the possibility to take a\u00a0<\/span>swim in the nearby lake of Wessling and this was there where I met B\u00e4rbl. She was\u00a0<\/span>working as trilingual secretary in another department of the Institut f\u00fcr Steuer-und Regeltechnik. She was a very pretty young lady with black hair with a steel blue touch and lovely brown eyes. During our noon excursions I had the opportunity to talk to her and liked her open, friendly straightforward attitude. Over time I decided to get to know her better and to invite her for a dancing evening in a dance club in M\u00fcnchen Schwabing. What a brave act! What, if she would say no? But if she would say yes, there was still a problem, because I was a real lousy dancer? Finally I estimated\u00a0 that this was no serious problem as the popular music in the dancing clubs was Boogie and Rock \u2018n Roll, where\u00a0 with some feeling for the rhythm no special dancing experience was necessary and as a soccer player I was accustomed to move. A little more annoying was that, at an age of 27 years, I had no driver\u2019s license nor a car. B\u00e4rbl was living with her parents in Gilching\u00a0 in the countryside. At that time the Munich commuter train system S-Bahn did not yet exist and it was somewhat complicated to go to Munich by train. So I proposed her to meet. She accepted\u00a0 she did and I was\u00a0 happy to see her, stepping off\u00a0 the\u00a0 train arriving from Gilching at Pasing. We spent a wonderful evening, dancing was no problem at all and most of the time we talked.<\/p>\nB\u00e4rbl was only 25 years old but had already travelled rather a lot. She had an education in hotel management and diploma in English and French. Her education and her hotel jobs had taken her to London, to Geneva in French speaking Switzerland and to different places all over Germany between Garmisch Partenkirchen and Bad Harzburg. So listening to her she made me curious \u00a0<\/span>to move around, take other jobs and meet new people.<\/p>\nAfter our first rendez-vous B\u00e4rbl and I spent a lot of our time together and I moved to Gilching to be closer to her. During weekends we made hiking trips to the mountains and lakes around Munich, though I did not like walking, but B\u00e4rbl convinced me. All these excursions were a wonderful opportunity to talk about us, our interests, our opinions, our wishes and we discovered that we\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>shared some important viewpoints: personal independence, looking for a life not restricted to the same local area and the same business \u00a0organization. The research center DFVLR in Oberpfaffenhofen should be only a starting point. In March 1969 we married in Herrsching, which was to be our home for about one year. At the end of 1970 we left the\u00a0DFVLR\u00a0<\/i>and Bavaria for a first experience in the industry. \u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0Oberbruch, situated near the border to the Netherlands at Roermond, was looking for a manager for their Physical \/Mathematical laboratory.<\/p>\nThis was the beginning of a 30 years long\u00a0 itinerary life. At Oberbruch B\u00e4rbl worked as an assistant of the managing editor of the local newspaper. We lived in a company owned house in a residential area for the company mangement . To meet\u00a0 the same people after work as during the whole day in the offices ,was not always an advantage , but one of the pleasant sides was the companies tennis club where B\u00e4rbl and I started to play tennis .<\/p>\n
B\u00e4rbl was a very talented tennis player and when we were back in Munich she joined the tennis club TC Gernlinden and became number one of the women’s ranking list . Playing\u00a0 the local club tournamentnts she also was successful and won her first finals. Later having moved to Paris she became number one of the tennis club in Yerres (in the\u00a0 banlieue of Paris) and won\u00a0 the club tournament.<\/p>\n
I served (with pleasure) as practicing partner and when in the beginning of the nineties I had to finish playing tennis because of\u00a0 my knee problems\u00a0 B\u00e4rbl stopped her career. It was a pity that B\u00e4rbl started playing tennis so late because she was an absolute talent.\u00a0 Her strengthe was to stay relaxed in tight match situations, an enormous advantage in a sport where mental strength very often decides the match.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This courage and determination characterized B\u00e4rbl’s life.We moved 9 times in our life to a new place, which meant to leave a familiar environment with friends ,\u00a0 leave a wonderful house country style we had constructed only 3 years ago, B\u00e4rbl stayed always positive and supported the project. I think, she was most courageous person I met im my life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
And this outstanding character she showed also when she passed away. She never complained about pains caused by an insidious desease or the torture of an ( in my opinion) inhuman medical treatment.<\/p>\n
Today I have doubts if I expressed my gratitude to her as she had deserved it.<\/p>\n
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\n\n\n<\/a>The Customer is Always Right<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\nIn the first chapters of this chronicle I have described our stay in the Niederrhein region. I was excited about\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Glanzstoff,<\/i>\u00a0its industrial character, the young team of laboratory assistants and our efficient work. I loved the somewhat melancholic landscape and the red brick houses of the villages, the straightforward\u00a0 open-minded joyful people and the\u00a0 trips across the Netherlands border to Venlo, Sittard and Roermond . But considering the long-term aspects the perspective for the professional evolution of a physicist in a company, dominated by chemists, was not clear. Moreover we felt a little constricted by the ghetto in which the Glanzstoff management people lived.\u00a0 So finally we decided to quit Glanzstoff and the Oberbruch region for a new challenge.<\/p>\nAt that time I found an interesting offer of a rather small privately owned company,\u00a0Buck<\/i>, at Bad Reichenhall, in the Bavarian Alps near the border to Austria. They were looking for executives managing projects\u00a0<\/span>for the German Defence Ministry. I should explain that in the first years of my professional activity I had no clearly defined plan to build a professional career. I was convinced of my scientific technical capacities and skills\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and I had the feeling that with my wide education as physicist there was no challenge that I could not meet. I was guided by my interest to face new challenges in new organizations with new people. And in the case of\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0life near Salzburg, one of the most famous cities of old Europe was extremely attractive. So we crossed Germany from the Netherland\u2019s to the Austrian border.<\/p>\nThe\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0research unit was situated in Fronau a very small village of only some houses offering enough space for secret military projects. Fronau was embedded in the marvelous Alpine Area with blossoming meadows, cool woods\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and picturesque mountains. A special highlight was the military training ground Reiteralpe,\u00a0a table mount about 1700 m high where an area was reserved to the German army and where\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0could test its developed products. After a dizzying ride with the cable car we arrived at the top station of the Reiteralm and there was still a 30 minutes walk to the mountain lodge. The walk on the rocky paths to the lodge was a unique event. In the crisp clear air there was no other sound than the birds singing. Between the mountain pines colourful meadows extended, meadows full of columbines, alpine roses and different kinds of gentian, flowers only existing in the mountains. The lodge was a small cottage\u00a0<\/span>for final preparation of the projectiles for the launch and where some people could spend the night.<\/p>\nMy first project was to develop projectiles to deviate missiles equipped with infrared seekers. In simple words the projectile was a small rocket which after explosion set free hundreds of flaming flares forming an extended object of infrared radiation. \u00a0<\/span>Such defense weapons could be used for example by a\u00a0 fighter jet attacked by a missile locked on the target by a infrared tracer. The rocket and its propulsion system were standard. The object of development was the heat emitting cloud. But the standard rocket defined by the launcher system was rather small and the space available for about 1000 flares only roughly 5000 cm3. A propellant charge shot the rocket in a height of about 100 m where an axial igniter destructor charge dispersed and ignited the flare cloud .The flares were circular sector shaped and consisted of a combustible paste on a carrier foil. The specification was to deviate the missiles equipped with a infrared seeker by a heat cloud of a certain minimum intensity burning \u00a0a certain minimum time.<\/p>\nFor the first time I learned the stringent execution of the different phases of a technical project: \u00a0<\/span>concept, definition, development and production. The results of these different project stages were tested on the military training grounds of the German Bundeswehr all over Germany. The concept tests were done on the training ground\u00a0on nearby Reiteralm. As the launching section of the projectile was fixed by the compatibility with the existing launcher, these first trials concentrated on the expelling and ignition of the flares. We tested two different kind of flares, the first type with phosphorus as combustible material, the second type consisted of flares coated with metal powder layers like boron powder for example. The concept testing was nothing but perfect, from the projectile launching, over the explosive disassembly, the quantitative ignition of the flares until the formation of the heat cloud. For preparation and organization of the test I had the support of an excellent mechanic, Baumgartner, a very talented young man.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>There was only one feature which was not entirely complying with the specifications. It was easy to set a phosphorus flare on fire, but unfortunately it \u00a0burnt also very fast, so \u00a0the burning time of the flares was too short. Therefore\u00a0 the main goal for the development phase was to obtain a longer burning time complying with the specifications .<\/p>\nAfter the successful test I was nominated head of the physics project department. These tests were not only a welcome training for me to organize a project, but also the occasion for a first profound contact with the customer. For\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0there was only one customer the German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr. The\u00a0Bundeswehrbeschaffungsamt (BWB)<\/i>\u00a0in Koblenz was in charge of the defense procurement including the\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>development and\u00a0 and tests in cooperation with external firms as\u00a0Buck<\/i>. So the\u00a0BWB<\/i>\u00a0official was a very influential man and pampered by the special care and attention of\u00a0Buck\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>top management and commercial people. I met this person for the first time at the launch test of the concept phase. I was naively not aware that the technical success was only a necessary condition to convince and overwhelmed by the flawless test results I did not devote the appropriate time to him, which he could expect as the single customer. During future project progress I always had a hard time to establish a good working relation with him. It was a first lesson for me that technical expertise is not enough to succeed in the professional career.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Living between Berchtesgaden and Salzburg<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\nWe had rented an apartment in Bayerisch Gmain , a small community\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>close to Bad Reichenhall. Driving through the Saalach valley it took me about 20 minutes to get to the lab by car. I think, that Bayerisch Gmain was the most picturesque region we ever lived. Embedded in the massifs of the Alps it was situated directly at the Austrian border. So we made regularly weekend trips to Salzburg, which was about\u00a0 30 min by car. The city center below the castle Hohensalzburg is a historical jewel, a protected UNESCO monument. The Getreidegasse, where the house of Mozart\u2019s birth in 1756 is situated, is probably the most famous part. The medieval house fronts and their windows are marvelously decorated\u00a0 \u00a0and characterized by wrought iron craft symbols over the old shops. The houses in the narrow streets show no crow stepped gables as in Landshut and the roofs are not visible. Another famous site is the Cathedral built in the baroque style. On the place in front of the cathedral every year during the Salzburg Festival the play\u00a0Jedermann<\/i>\u00a0von Hugo von Hoffmannsthal is performed. As Buck invited customers to the festival spectacles we had access to the rare tickets and were able to watch Curd J\u00fcrgens performing as\u00a0Jedermann<\/i>.<\/p>\nAnother Austrian attraction was the way of living, which is more relaxed than in Germany. It was characterized by the excellent cuisine and its wine culture. The Friesacher Heurige near Salzburg was a cozy wine tavern typical for this country and a preferred destination for local people and tourists. Even if there is a certain rivalry between Bavarians and Austrians we remember very friendly and warmhearted discussions\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>in the Friesacher\u00a0 Heurigen tavern.<\/p>\nSo basically we had a wonderful private life, we continued to play tennis, not in a club this time and I played some soccer matches for the Buck company team, where the meeting after the match enjoying some glasses of beer was as important as the match itself. But this period was also clouded by our sorrow to have children. B\u00e4rbel had a difficult surgical intervention and also I had to pass some exams, but later years showed that we were not lucky to have children. \u00a0<\/span>Probably in vitro fertilization would have helped us, but it was only at the beginning of its development at that time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Finishing the Project at Sea and Leaving Buck<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\nOur development efforts to increase the burning time of the flares were successful by covering the big part of the phosphorus flare surface with a less combustible passivation layer, leaving a smaller part of the phosphorus flare free for ignition. Another problem to solve for prototype testing was manufacturing of the flares on an industrial scale. The concept tests were still done with handmade flares, a very tedious work. The industrial process which we finally \u00a0<\/span>developed was the coating of extended foils by a squeegee coating machine and subsequent punching out of the flares.<\/p>\nIn autumn we tested the prototypes in Eckernf\u00f6rde bay at the Baltic Sea. There was a large Bundeswehr testing ground. We were in competition with a defense technology company much bigger than\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0and I remember the first night when the\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0crew of development and sales people gathered behind the window of one of our hotel rooms observing the test shooting\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>of our competitor. The solution proposed by our competitor was a point-like infrared source which had the problem that it had to be very intense in order to be equivalent with light intensity of the heated flare cloud. The next day there was the test shooting of our prototypes and it was a full success. The following day the test results measured by the army experts were communicated to\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0and all the major specifications regarding IR intensity and combustion time were fulfilled. In comparison to our competitor we had the advantage that our flare solution simulated an extended target.<\/p>\nDespite of this success I left\u00a0Buck\u00a0<\/i>at the end of the year. The main reason was the uncertain future of the company. On one hand the defense technology seemed to be a market,\u00a0<\/span>even in the long term, with a steady demand by the state military organizations. On the other hand this demand was strongly dependent from the political situation from national, EU wide and global events. Buck was only a small company on a very competitive market, its future seemed not very clear and secure. So at the end of 1976 we decided to leave this lovely place at the German Austrian border and move to Munich, the Bavarian capital. In the 1990s after the end of the cold war, when worldwide and particularly in Germany the military spending was strongly reduced,\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0was taken over by Rheinmetall, a listed German defense supplier.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Postwar Politics: From Konrad Adenauer to Helmut Schmidt, Strong Personalities with Rough Edges<\/h2>\n<\/div>\nAs for any young generation politics had no priority for us. Doubtless subject number one was\u00a0 sports. All\u00a0 my friends were active sportsmen, some played tennis or handball but most of them played soccer. When we met our talks dealt mainly with the results of the soccer Bundesliga or other sports events. Nevertheless when we went to college we developed a stronger interest in politics and political parties and added the national press to the regional press (primarily appreciated for its sports pages), for example the\u00a0S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/i>,\u00a0 and weekly magazines like the\u00a0Spiegel<\/i>. Our political orientation was split between conservative standpoints represented in Bavaria by the CSU and moderate socialist opinions, which meant SPD. The third party were the liberals FDP, the radical communist party KPD\u00a0 had been prohibited (reestablished as DKP in 1960).<\/p>\n
The German postwar political parties were distinguished by strong personalities. Germany\u2019s first chancellor was\u00a0 Konrad Adenauer, former Mayor of Cologne, taking his responsibility when he was already 73 years old, having passed the last ten years of the third Reich as retiree. In the roaring twenties he had lost his fortune speculating with shares of\u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>. After Erhard and Kiesinger followed another remarkable chancellor, Willy Brandt, which had passed the years of the Nazi regime in Norwegian exile supporting the left socialists in Germany. As chancellor he opened the German foreign policy to the states of the Soviet Republic and concluded the treaties with the Warsaw Pact states, whose main goal\u00a0 was the mutual renunciation of force. His successor was Helmut Schmidt, a very smart guy, who was the leader of Germany in its battle against the terror organization RAF culminating in the high-jacking of the Lufthansa plane Landshut\u00a0 and its spectacular liberation\u00a0 by the special forces unit GSG 9. But there were other strong personalities as Erhard\u00a0 and Kiesinger from the CDU , who both became also chancellor of Germany, Bahr and Wehner prominent supporters\u00a0 of Willy Brandt.\u00a0 And there was Franz Josef Strauss, the most sparkling personality of the German post war policy.<\/p>\n
In the debates in the German Bundestag these people were fighting for their opposite viewpoints with regard to the foreign policy during the period of cold war, the right social policy in a flourishing German economy, the question of Germany\u2019s rearmament in order to take international responsibility\u2026.\u00a0 There was an exchange of arguments followed by crucial votes. These men (yes, there were only a few women) were ready to take responsibility for their country, they were proud of their nation, and did not follow any ideological directives. It was fascinating to follow a debate head to head between Wehner and Strauss.<\/p>\n
This patriotism was also present in our young people, may be particularly in the group of my friends because we followed with great enthusiasm the success of the sports heroes of postwar Germany. We identified ourselves with Fritz Walter, Helmut Rahn and their teammates winning the first Soccer World Championship after World War II , with Hary, Germar und Kaufmann,\u00a0 the great generation of German world class sprinters , the German ice hockey team winning the olympic Bronze medal at Innsbruck with some top players from Landshut, \u2026\u2026\u00a0 .<\/p>\n
The \u201cWirtschaftswunder\u201d during the 1950s and 1960s substantially increased Germany\u2019s reputation abroad. We appreciated our German identity, different from a part of the German people today at the beginning of the third millennium, when they deny the German history and tradition, and indoctrinated by school, politics and mass media\u00a0 seeing themselves as member of the \u201cpeople of perpetrators\u201d which has to atone for the \u201csins of the past\u201d.<\/p>\n
We were well aware of the terrible crime of the Nazis, but for us\u00a0 this was not the total German history. Germany\u2019s roots date back to the east franc empire under Otto I in tenth century. Until the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century it exists as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which is the association of territory states, unified in 1871 by Preussen to a national state with the substantial involvement of Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian Prime Minister. Germany for us was the country of Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Heine,\u2026.Bach, H\u00e4ndel, Brahms, Liszt, Orff\u2026., Kepler, Leibniz , R\u00f6ntgen, Planck, Einstein, Hahn\u2026. For us, despite the horrible period of the Nazi Regime, it was also the country of the poets , scientists and philosophers .<\/p>\nInformation concerning the Third Reich and the Holocaust\u00a0 in the press, as well in our school education\u00a0 were scarce and superficial. It was certainly a big problem for the adults to explain why a whole nation adhered to the insane ideology of National Socialism. Probably a big part of the atrocities in the concentration camps were not known, but the disappearance of Jewish families and events like the \u201cReichskristallnacht\u201d could not be ignored . Considering Germany and its evolution with the years I am afraid, that the German people are characterized by a certain search for consensus\u00a0 and a lack of individualism, which makes them vulnerable for ideologies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n<\/a>The Period of Political Correctness<\/h3>\n<\/div>\nToday Germany is under the influence of another less horrible ideology which paralyzes the open and critical political discussion, the so called \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d. Having its origin in the student movements of the 1960\u2019s its left-liberalistic-ecological ideas have been developed\u00a0 by a generation of politically red-green oriented people today occupying\u00a0 many\u00a0 leading positions in the media and politics . Simplified \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d means a list of behavioral measures what you should think and say in public life, supervised by politics and media, the philistines of political correctness\u00a0 [3]. Some of these rules set high moral standards, some of them are doctrines , often of sociological nature. As for any ideology the political correctness is not a base for discussion, the rules are definite, critique and discussion are excluded. If you are violating this rules you risk to become socially isolated.\u00a0 A brochure of the German Umweltbundesamt names and shames scientists doubting the anthropogenic character of global warming . Eva Herman, popular German TV newsreader got fired because she had said that in the NS regime the family was respected in contrast of today\u2019s Germany, where, as a consequence of the 1968 movement, the traditional role of the mother is denied and so the birth rate is declining. Thilo Sarrazin, board member of the German Federal Bank, wrote a book \u00a0 \u201cGermany abolishes itself \u201c. One of his thesis is, that the immigration of muslim people combined with their\u00a0 high fertility lowers Germany\u2019s\u00a0 average intelligence and education level. The German president Wulf dismissed Sarrazin. The \u201cghostwriters\u201d of Wikipedia write that Sarrazin had resigned from his post, what is not true. The newspaper\u00a0 Westfalen-Blatt\u00a0 terminates the contract of a columnist because she responded to a father who was concerned about participating with his two daughters at a homosexual marriage.\u00a0 She advised not to take them with him. Sometimes the opinions may be border-line, some people may totally disagree, but western civilization has fought\u00a0 a long time for\u00a0 its\u00a0 right to express opinion freely. Particularly Germany should be sensitive having passed\u00a0 a period when it was dangerous to express one\u2019s opinion.<\/p>\n
So in today\u2019s\u00a0 political life the\u00a0 debate with arguments is more and more replaced by public defamation of the opponent. In Germany the way\u00a0 to condemn a person violating the rules of political correctness is to call him a Nazi, i.e. a person who is still infected by the ideology of the German past. This works extraordinarily well : German politicians, journalists and state subsidized experts, the philistines of political correctness, are\u00a0 united in fighting against right wing extremists. So for example a public survey organized by the Allensbach Institute shows, that 45 % of the population say, that in Germany you have to be cautious\u00a0 to express your opinion concerning the current immigration problem [4].<\/p>\n
All the bigger German political partys nowadays have left- ecological programs\u00a0 and the differences between them become smaller and smaller. The person, who has created\u00a0 this political uniformity and who is representing it, is Angela Merkel. Any party\u00a0 trying to preserve tradition and values , opposing\u00a0 the disappearance of Germany in an amorphous European administration, taking position against spoiling the people\u2019s income\u00a0 for big banking houses\u00a0 and large corporations is defamed as\u00a0 right-extreme party. Only recently after the unlimited flooding of Germany by people coming from Asia and Africa following the invitation of Angela Merkel, political resistance is awakening.\u00a0 A conservative party AFD has been founded\u00a0 and now rates about 15 %\u00a0 in the polls.<\/p>\n
One of the roots of the development of the \u201cmainstream\u201d Germany is the student protest movement at the end of the 1960s . The reasons for the students\u2019 revolt were manifold. Generally it was not\u00a0 a German but more an international phenomenon. It was characterized, among others, by the protest against the Vietnam War, the support of Martin Luther King\u2019s fight against\u00a0 racial discrimination, the idolization of Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Minh and\u00a0 communist ideas. In Germany additional conflicts were the confrontation between the war generation and the post war generation, the uprising against authority in politics and education. One of the consequences of this movement was, that the perception of the family changed . The traditional family was now only one of several options. For example women discovered professional careers as a preferable alternative. The\u00a0 role image of women and men changed .The contraceptive pill was a welcome aid for easier realization of these alternative life plans. In the 1970\u2019s the birth rate in Germany fell to less than 1.5 and remained almost unchanged until today. Therefore Germany has the serious demographic problem of an ageing population. This fact was known for a long time, but no German government dared to put the historically critical topic of family planning on its agenda. So today Germany doubtless needs immigration. A reasonable solution to preserve Germany\u2019s economic strength, seems to be qualified immigration like in Canada or Australia.\u00a0 Besides that the German constitution grants asylum to all persons fleeing war and persecution. But unlimited uncontrolled flooding\u00a0 with refugees as provoked by Merkel and concealed by humanitarian considerations, will ruin German economy and particularly the German social system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cProgressive Memories\u201d illustrates the history of the spectacle lens industry following the development and commercialization of the progressive lens.The ophthalmic optical industry however was only one of the stages of my professional career.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonal Memories\u201d tells the story of this itinerant life and describes the\u00a0various \u00a0stations as well as the professional and private experiences with different cultures and people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Click on the different chapters in the Navigation Bar on the left side. If you prefer to read the contents page by page (like in a book) \u00a0please open the following pdf.<\/p>\n
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>\u00a0Personal Memories: An Itinerant Life between Post-War Germany and the Period of Political Correctness<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Diolen<\/span><\/i>\u00a0was the brandname of a polyester fibre top product \u00a0<\/span>marketed by\u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0. In my memory its industrial production in two fundamental \u00a0process steps, melt spinning and drawing, represents an unforgettable experience.<\/p>\n On the \u201cSpinnb\u00fchne\u201d (how the Glanzstoff- workers called the spinning room level), the different spinning chambers were arranged in a long row. The spinning process was quiet, only a distant humming from the winding room penetrated from the bottom of the spinning chambers. At the top of the spinning chamber the hot and fluid polyester resin was pumped through the holes of the spinneret and on its way down to the bottom of the chamber the filament bundle was cooled down and solidified by an air stream with constant temperature and humidity. Then the yarn bundle left the \u201dSpinnb\u00fchne\u201d- level and entered the take-up-room below. There a system of a take up-godet and an idle roller led the filament to<\/span><\/i>\u00a0the traverse guid<\/span><\/i>e, which laid the yarn onto<\/span>\u00a0the rotating yarn package driven by the take-up roll.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n The Diolen production was an endless process, i.e. \u00a0<\/span>the spinning machines could not be stopped. So it was necessary to replace full packages by new tubes while the speed of the oncoming filament was several thousand m\/min. For a newcomer it seemed like magic when a skilled operator with a suction gun threaded the fiber bundle round the godets, rollers and pins through the traverse guide and finally on the new spool.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>In order to obtain a yarn with high tensile strength and elasticity the spun yarn underwent the so called drawing process, the second fundamental step of Diolen production. When I entered\u00a0 the drawing room I was struck by \u00a0a buzzing noise coming from the spindles of the drawing machines arranged \u00a0in several seemingly endless production lines. The yarn of the full bobbins coming from the spinning factory was stretched between two godets and an intermediate \u00a0heating plate. The ratio of the surface speeds of the two godets defined the drawing ratio of the end product.\u00a0 The drawn yarn passed down to the spindle assembly, where it was \u00a0wound up on a bobbin fixed on a spindle rotating with about 20 000 rpm. A special machine element was the ring and traveller system which laid the yarn on the bobbin while at the same time \u00a0inserting \u00a0twist into the stretched fiber to bind the different filaments together. The up and down motion of the ring created the typical biconical cop form of the full bobbin of drawn yarn, ready for further processing.<\/i><\/p>\n Coming from a research institute the encounter with the industry of\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>Oberbruch was an entirely new experience which, with regard to\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>ambitions and way of working, strongly influenced my professional life. But not only the working environment but our life in North West Germany was so different from what I was accustomed to.<\/p>\n When in an evening\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>of the year 1970 I arrived for the first time at Oberbruch, a small village in the Niederrhein region, I discovered\u00a0 a new world. Born and educated in Bavaria I was used \u00a0to scattered villages with \u00a0houses in various colors grouped around a church and a marketplace in the center. At Oberbruch the houses were exclusively red-brick buildings, similar to the nearby Netherlands, \u00a0\u00a0aligned along a main street. The space \u00a0between the houses were often closed by gates\u00a0 creating a little gloomy \u00a0impression as if the village was a little fortress.<\/p>\n The reason for my trip to the border between Germany and the Netherlands was a job interview for the position of the manager \u00a0<\/span>of the Physical\/ Mathematical laboratory of\u00a0Enka Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0Oberbruch.\u00a0\u00a0Enka Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0was the world market leader for synthetic fibers mainly for the textile industry. Essential products of the wide Glanzstoff range were Rayon, a cellulose fiber, and synthetic filaments out of Perlon , chemically \u00a0Polyamid 6, and Polyester , with the brand name\u00a0Diolen<\/i>. Rayon cord is an important reinforcing component of the tire carcass . Around 1960\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>broadened his product range for tire reinforcement materials \u00a0by the production of steel cord.<\/p>\n As head of the Physical\/Mathematical laboratory I worked together with a team of about 15 physics laboratory assistants , who most of their time were not in the laboratory but in the different production units . Their principal role was to assist the engineering and production departments in troubleshooting activities. They identified the causes of manufacturing problems by measuring the critical process parameters \u00a0<\/span>and controlled the success of the corrective measures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The first characteristic which made my work so different was purely the dimension of the\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>Oberbruch factory. Spread over 100 ha this factory with more than 7000 workers was more than a production unit it was an entity for itself , an impression which was reinforced by the fact , that the factory was surrounded by houses for the managers and their families with\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>recreation facilities as\u00a0 tennis courts.<\/p>\n Not only the environment but also the way of working in the\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>factory was fundamentally different to what I was used to. Before I joined Oberbruch I started my professional career after my studies of physics as a scientific assistant with\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0at Oberpfaffenhofen, a center for aerospace research near Munich. My project was a theoretical and experimental investigation on spin stabilized\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>satellites. This analysis was \u00a0general research with a similar character as the experimental work I had to do for my diploma. There was no rigid organization concerning the timeline and I had a high amount of freedom for this scientific work.<\/p>\n The work of the\u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0Physical\/Mathematical lab was exclusively operational, i.e. providing technical assistance to make sure that the manufacturing runs continuously. So the rhythm and the planning of the tasks were dictated by the problems hampering the production process.<\/span><\/p>\n The daily starting point was the \u201cwhite cloud\u201d.\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>was dominated by chemists wearing white lab coats. Each morning they met in the factory forming the \u201cwhite cloud\u201d, adjusting production to the planning and identifying the quality issues. \u201c Sprinkled\u201d into the \u201cwhite cloud\u201d were the people with the blue working coats, the engineers and the technicians, who together with the quality people and the Physics\/Math lab decided how to tackle and solve the quality problems .<\/span><\/p>\n Already before the \u201cwhite cloud\u201d formed in the factory the Physics\/Math \u00a0<\/span>lab team met in order to make an update of the different ongoing measurements and projects. There was a wide range of measurements: temperatures, humidity, mechanical tensions, flow velocities, rotational speeds, usually\u00a0 simple measurement quantities. The problem very often was to measure in the specific manufacturing conditions. For example to measure the temperature of the spinneret\u00a0 demands either special spinnerets with a bore hole to use a thermocouple or\u00a0 a contactless temperature measurement with a precise calibration of the system spinneret\u00a0 surface and radiometer. More complex tasks were for example the analysis of the high speed spinning and drawing process with a high speed camera, analysis of oxygen partial pressure in the polyester \u00a0condensation autoclave, normally inaccessible, determination of the necessary climate conditions for storage of steel cord,\u2026\u2026.various tasks covering a wide range of measurement parameters.<\/p>\n But common to all these tasks was to solve a production quality issue and consequently \u00a0<\/span>it was paramount to obtain \u00a0the results fast. Furthermore \u00a0it was not acceptable to disturb\u00a0 the flow of the production process. So the Physics lab people had a challenging job to do. They had to adapt the measurements and experiments ingeniously to the specific production environment \u00a0and to plan and organize according to a tight time table in order to eliminate the quality problems as soon as possible. After the completion and evaluation of the measurement, the results and conclusions were documented and the protocol dispatched to the operational people concerned.<\/p>\n Besides these operations with a certain troubleshooting character the physics lab was in charge of developing new working tools and measurement devices for the production and quality control. Examples are a robust but sophisticated handtool\u00a0with which a steel cord worker could easily link the two ends of a broken wire rope or a contactless measurement method to determine the tangle distance of entangled yarn and finally an apparatus allowing to determine the amount of finishes (Lubricants, antistatic agents \u2026.) of the spun yarn by measuring the electrical resistance of a yarn package. In my team there were excellent technical experts as for example Jupp Welfers, who was in charge of these more complex tasks and we filed several utility models.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While the factory was working in 3 shifts round the clock 7days a week, the laboratory people worked from Monday to Friday with an alternating emergency service on Saturday morning.\u00a0<\/span>The working hours were 40 hours per week.<\/span><\/p>\n The Physical\/Mathematical laboratory was part of the Physical Department , which included also the Measurement and Control Technology and the Spinneret Unit which developed and manufactured the spinnerets for the\u00a0Enka Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>fiber production. Max Schwab, a physicist was the head of the department and we met every working day between 6 and 7 pm to discuss the results of the measurement projects. Schwab was an \u201cold hand\u201d in the fiber industry \u00a0and from him I learned to work professionally\u00a0 and to develop the right feeling for priorities. Every Friday the Physical department together with the top management from production met the Technical Director Ensslin to exchange information about the main issues of the week and the solutions which had been obtained or were on the way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There were several entrances to the company\u2019s premises. Next to the entrance\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>-Stra\u00dfe the houses for the\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>executive people were situated. Our appartment was in one of the red brick houses in the Birkenweg, surrounded\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>by a small garden. The Birkenweg was a dead end, so it\u00a0 was a quiet place to live and ideally situated to the working place. There were only 200 m to the entrance of the factory area and another 300m to the laboratory. One of the advantages was that duringx noon break it was possible to go home for a quick lunch. Typically a sulphuric smell was hanging in the air caused by the manufacturing of the semi synthetic Rayon fiber. With time you got used to it, but today in our health conscious era nobody would accept this.<\/p>\n The neighbours were of course \u00a0<\/span>the persons with whom you worked together during the day and when you played tennis at the nearby situated company owned tennis club you met your colleagues once again. So\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>was a big family and like in any family everybody knew almost everything about each other, which is a very particular situation. Only a small part of the management people was of Niederrhein origin. Most came from different German regions. So for my wife and myself it was easy to make first private contacts and to find friends.<\/p>\n After a certain start-up time in the company I had more leisure time and joined the soccer club FC Heinsberg which played in the district league B. A particularity which was new to me were the cinder soccer fields which were not only used for training but also for competition matches. These fields \u00a0<\/span>were very resistant to bad weather conditions, but a sliding tackling on such a ground caused painful skin abrasions. So it was better to restrict sliding only to the rather rare moments to score a goal. I was less tense than in the past and played some good games with a number of beautiful goals. I had no talent for tennis, which I practiced later, but I was certainly gifted for soccer, which I played from my very young years. Physically not very strong, I had a good ball control and was a tricky dribbler. This was not just an advantage because soccer primarily \u00a0is a team play and it took me several years to adopt this.<\/p>\n But my soccer career came close to its end and so I started to play tennis at the company tennis club. Physically it was less challenging than soccer and not so risky concerning injuries. Moreover this was an opportunity to have a sports activity together with my wife. In the Glanzstoff\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>tennis club I used to play in the second competition team, but I never succeeded to become a good player. Later in France I participated at smaller tournaments, but usually I was out after the second round and I could relax. With my wife it was different, she was a natural tennis talent. It was not so much the technical perfection of her strokes which can be difficult for a late beginner, but the good mental stability in a competition which made her a strong player. She stayed \u201ccool\u201d – as you would say today – in difficult phases of a match and could so beat players which were more experienced than her. During the following years she won some smaller tournaments and was ranked number one in the clubs, where our itinerant life took us.<\/p>\n My wife took on the job of a secretary at the local editorial office of the daily newspaper\u00a0Aachener Nachrichten<\/i>. This was not exactly appropriate for her education as trilingual secretary but offered \u00a0<\/span>the opportunity of being in daily contact with the local people and events. The people were open-minded\u00a0 and spoke a typical dialect, the Niederrheinisch Plattdeutsch. The Rheinland is the home of the German Carnival, which is called by its passionate supporters the \u201cfifth season\u201d. Every year some of the lab technicians took several days off from the first top event, the Altweiberfastnacht, when women assume control over the cities and their town halls, not coming back before Ash Wednesday.<\/p>\n The Niederrhein region with the major cities M\u00f6nchengladbach, Duisburg \u00a0<\/span>and D\u00fcsseldorf \u00a0was neighbouring the Ruhr district. Essen is one of the major cities of the Ruhrgebiet and was the place of residence of my father\u2019s family.<\/p>\n At the end of the 18th<\/sup>\u00a0century, at the time of the French revolution, Carl Friedrich Gotthilf K\u00f6ppen had a shop for bookselling and book-printing at Dortmund in the Ruhr district. Edmund K\u00f6ppen, born 1873, was his grandson and in 1904, at that time he was managing the coffee roasting\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>business of the brand\u00a0Tengelmann<\/i>\u00a0in Heidelberg, he married \u00a0Eugenie Stellwag. They had 3 children: Grete , my father Rudolf and his younger brother Werner. \u00a0During World War II Werner died of an insidious infectious disease at the age of only 28. My grandfather and grandmother passed away in 1948 respectively 1968 and my father died in 1961. So when we lived at Oberbruch aunt Grete was the member of my paternal ancestors still alive. She had owned a grocery shop in Essen but at that time had already retired. While living in Bavaria we had only few occasions to meet her. But now we had the opportunity to see each other more regularly and my wife and I learned to appreciate Grete as a warmhearted generous person. She never married and after her mother\u2019s death she lived alone. Grete died on January 4th 1973, 100 years after her father\u2019s birth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In June 2013 I stood once again in front of the entrance\u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>-Stra\u00dfe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>I had had a meeting with a consulting firm in Aachen offering \u00a0computer software using splines , which I needed to calculate progressive lens designs and I took this opportunity to make a 60 km trip to Oberbruch. But the gate to the\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>premises was closed, no people between the red brick factory buildings, no smoking chimneys, no typical sulphuric smell ,\u2026\u2026. \u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>did not exist anymore. It had been transformed to the\u00a0Industrypark \u00a0Oberbruch<\/i>\u00a0with about 20 smaller companies from various industry sectors. The only fiber company I found was the Japanese \u00a0carbon fiber producer \u00a0Toho Tenax.<\/i><\/p>\n In the second half of the 1970s\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>a crisis shook the fiber producing industry. It was the consequence of several structural changes. More and more Asian fiber producers learned to control the technology. Possibly \u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>who\u00a0<\/i>owned\u00a0 the spinning machine manufacturer\u00a0Barmag\u00a0<\/i>should have been a little more\u00a0 cautious in selling their technology. First consequences were increasing low price imports in Europe and later a rapid growth of the Far East textile companies. Today a high percentage of textile fabrics come from China, India, Korea and Taiwan. In addition the low wages in Asia made it much more attractive for the European apparel industry to outsource their production. The consequences for\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>as for other European fiber manufacturers were at the beginning part-time work, then downsizing, investment cut-back and restructuring. There were intermediate efforts to increase the efficiency of polyester spinning and investing in the manufacturing of modern high performance carbon fibers signing a license agreement with\u00a0Toho Rayon<\/i>\u00a0in Tokyo. But the decline continued. In 1991 the parent company\u00a0Akzo\u00a0<\/i>stopped their steelcord production for tyres. In 1993 rayon fiber\u00a0Cordenka<\/i>\u00a0manufacturing was discontinued. Workforce fell to below 2000 people. Former technical equipment and installation division, central workshops and the different business units became autonomous enterprises. They were merging with new partners, initiating a change from a homogenous firm to an open industrial park. The former Group parent\u00a0Akzo Nobel<\/i>\u00a0parted completely with the man-made fiber division which was moved to the Far East and integrated in a new company named\u00a0Acordis,<\/i>\u00a0which was sold to an British American investment group which broke them down into several single enterprises.<\/p>\n So\u00a0Glanzstoff\u00a0<\/i>Oberbruch which used to supply the whole world with synthetic fibers still in the 1970s, had disappeared from the market at the beginning of the third millennium.<\/span><\/p>\n A detailed description of the\u00a0Glanzstoff \u00a0<\/i>history can be found in the chapter \u201cOberbruch Industry Park\u201d at Wikipedia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I was born at Landshut on April 4, 1941. Landshut was (and still is) the capital of Lower Bavaria, but nevertheless a small city of about 50 thousand inhabitants.<\/p>\n My mother\u2019s roots were in in the Lower Saxony in northern Germany. At the end of the 18th century Hans Heinrich Schlumbohm lived in Bispingen in the L\u00fcneburg Heath. His grand-grandson was Wilhelm Schlumbohm, who in 1912 married Margarethe Brandt in the old Hanseatic City of Stade. My grandfather Wilhelm had an eventful professional career all over Germany from the South to the North with intermediate stations at N\u00fcrnberg and Ergolding, near Landshut, before he finally became general manager of the\u00a0Celler Presswerke<\/i>\u00a0, a company manufacturing plastic articles at Celle, in his native region.<\/p>\n The Schlumbohm family had three children, two sons and a daughter, my mother Elisabeth. Elisabeth was born in Stade in 1915. My uncle Richard, born in 1918, died in the battle of Stalingrad. In his letter to my parents some days after Christmas 1942, only some weeks before the capitulation of the 6th<\/sup>\u00a0army, he describes how he celebrated Christmas with his comrades and how they were longing for peace. The other son died shortly after birth.<\/p>\n As already\u00a0 described\u00a0 my father\u2019s ancestors\u00a0 came from\u00a0 the Ruhr district. In 1906 Rudolf was born in Heilbronn where his father Edmund was for some years responsible for the coffee-roasting activity of the Tengelmann company.\u00a0 Rudolf had a commercial education and from 1935 on was\u00a0 employee of the Biscuit and Chocolate Factory in Landshut, where he finally was promoted managing director of the Technical Departments.\u00a0 My mother was working in the drugstore Muggenthaler in the Zweibr\u00fcckenstrasse. My father became one of Muggenthaler\u2019s\u00a0 best customers and finally\u00a0married my mother in October 1938.<\/p>\n Landshut is a historical medieval city, known by the Landshut Wedding one of the largest historical pageants in the world. It commemorates the wedding between Hedwig Jagiellon, the Polish King’s daughter, and George the Rich, the son of the Duke of Bavaria-Landshut from the House of Wittelsbach in the 15th<\/sup>\u00a0century. The scenery of the pageant are the two broad magnificent streets Altstadt and Neustadt, which are entirely preserved with their gothic style houses and their typical crow-stepped gables. During the first years of my childhood we used to live in a house in Stetheimer street at the periphery of Landshut. I still remember my first friends, when we moved right into the historical center of Landshut, the Altstadt.\u00a0 There my parents opened a rather big grocery store in the so called Grasbergerhaus, Altstadt 300, \u201cunter\u00a0 den B\u00f6gen\u201d, which means \u201cunder the arcades\u201d,as one line of the Altstadt houses had arcades towards the side of the street. The Grasbergerhaus was built in 1453 and in 1475\u00a0 became the home\u00a0 of the polish bride Hedwig. It was a marvelous home. While the shop was on the ground floor, our home was on the first floor. Eight large rooms arranged around a hallway which, to my estimate, was 30 m long. At least it was long enough for me to do roller skating . Four families used to live in this flat. We had the chance to have 4 rooms for us. One of them was divided in a kitchen and a bathroom. At the end of the hallway there was one toilet for all the families.<\/p>\n The rooms were about 3 m high. So in winter they were difficult to get warm. Central heating did not yet exist, so the living room was heated by a coal stove and the sleeping rooms were not heated at all. As insulating double pane windows did not yet exist, we had had beautiful ice flowers covering the windows in winter, but the bed coverings had to be very thick to keep us warm.<\/p>\n Most of my spare time I met with my friends in the courtyard or in the streets. The Altstadt and the narrow streets , called \u201cdie Gassen\u201d in German, which linked the Altstadt with the Neustadt\u00a0 were an ideal playground. In bad weather the spacious hallway of our home offered special playing opportunities, roller skating for example, not always appreciated\u00a0 by the other families. I had a younger brother Peter: He was born in 1945 and the age difference was possibly one of the reasons\u00a0 that we rarely played together. But the main reason was that we were very different in character. While I was somewhat a loner despite my friends , my brother was much more social joining the boy scout movement at very early age. He stayed active with them for a long time. And he was not particularly interested in sports, which was my passion. So we developed very differently and the fact that I left Landshut after my studies was the reason why we had only little contact. Peter stayed at Landshut and made a successful career as headmaster of the primary school in Vilsbiburg.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At that time TV was not affordable for normal families. There were only a few restaurants starting being equipped, which was an additional contribution to their profit, at least when the big soccer matches were transmitted. That period was the big era of the cinema. My weekly pocket money was equivalent to three cinema tickets on the cheapest places and certainly twice a week I went to a movie. My preference were western movies with the great \u201cheros\u201d of my time : Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Gregory Peck\u2026\u2026 What a generation! After 3 cinema visits my pocket money was almost used up, so there was certainly need for a non- expensive hobby and this was sports. Sports became an important factor for my whole life. As already mentioned I did some\u00a0 roller skating,\u00a0 but I found it a little boring. Only later when I played some ice hockey I practiced\u00a0 ice skating all winter on the Landshut ice rink. But the first sport which I practiced continuously and systematically was swimming. I became a rather good crawl swimmer and\u00a0 became one of the best in my age class. But finally I did not continue because I discovered my great sporting passion: soccer. Soccer was the most popular sport in Germany, particularly when Germany won the world championship title in 1954. This success was a major event for post war Germany, because after the World War II catastrophe and the years of economic misery\u00a0 this event\u00a0 became the symbol that Germany had not entirely vanished. This new self-esteem also became a guideline for the economic development of the following years, the years of the German Wirtschaftswunder.<\/p>\n FC Rapid Vilsheim 1966<\/p>\n In those days I played in different soccer teams in and around Landshut, for example ETSV Landshut 09, Rapid Vilsheim and FC Ergolding. It was a wonderful time which I shared with my friends Roland Widuch and Johannes Lang. After my retirement I was able to contact Roland who had made a management career in the industry, among others with IBM, and at the end of his professional career became General Manager of a software company near Stuttgart. Johannes Lang had become a teacher for special education and now lives at Regensburg.<\/p>\n Until the age of 35 I continued to play football in competition in different clubs playing in the district leagues of southern and northern Germany.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I lived at Landshut until the end of my physics studies in 1968. 4 years elementary school,\u00a0 9 years secondary school with the German Abitur (qualification for university entrance) in 1960. During my years in the secondary school I became fascinated by natural sciences and hesitated a long time to choose either chemistry or physics. Finally I took the decision for experimental physics and started my studies at the Technical University in Munich, which I left after the first semester in order to continue at the Ludwig Maximilian University, also in Munich. This period until 1968 was a wonderful time of discovering the view of the world governed by the laws of nature.<\/p>\n At this time I would not know that I would pass major a part of my professional career in activities where my knowledge of physics was not directly applied. But the way to analyze a problem, to find a solution and to implement it, which is so typical for the working method of a physicist, helped me a lot to organize the work and to implement new methods while working in the Marketing and Quality area. My interest in physics remained strong, so\u00a0 after my retirement\u00a0 I attended\u00a0 lectures about special and general relativity as well as quantum field theory at the University of Freiburg. These topics are the building blocks for the understanding of the fantastic evolution of our World.<\/p>\n Munich was about 60 km far from Landshut and the train took about 1 hour from my home town to the Bavarian capital. I could have had the opportunity to live in a student hostel at Munich, but I decided to stay close to my friends and the football activities and travelled twice a day between Landshut and Munich. Today I think this was not necessarily a good decision to miss this opportunity for new social contacts.<\/p>\n At the university there were no tuition fees except a rather small enrolment fee. I was lucky to receive a special top level study grant available in Bavaria, the Hundhammer scholarship. In 1960\u00a0 the average salary per person per year was DM 6000,-. The monthly\u00a0 amount of the study grant of DM 250,- was enough to cover my cost of living. So it was possible to spend most of the semester holidays for recreational activities with my friends. During the semester I worked very hard to attend the lectures and to pass the seminar tests, but in the semester holidays, I did not work on physics except during the period before the exams. I was mainly doing sports, swimming and soccer. During the evenings we very often played Schaffkopf (a Bavarian card game) with small stakes, evident for a student. My situation was more favorable than for some of my friends who had to earn money for their studies working during the holidays either for administration or industry. My brother chose another option for financing his studies. He enlisted for some years for the German army.<\/p>\n During the last years of our school education it was our mother who took care of us. After the first successful years of the grocery shop, when my parents even could start a branch in Lower Bavaria the upcoming competition of food chains and specialized delicatessen shops were hard for the existence of small groceries. In the end my parents had to give up their business and my father became general sales representative of\u00a0Hammesfahr<\/i>, a tyre retreading company. This was a tedious job. My father had to travel the whole week trying to take orders. My mother was responsible for the management of the stock in the Schwesterngasse and the income was moderate. So I had only little time to spend with my father and did not notice how the relationship between him and my mother grew worse. Possibly there was also a certain indifference on my side. In the late fifties they separated and got divorced in 1961. In the same year my father died of a heart attack. He was only 55 years old. After the separation from her husband my mother worked as a secretary for the\u00a0Jenaer Glaswerke Schott & Genossen<\/i>. Her boss was the Technical Director of the Landshut branch for electronic packaging, Dr. Fuchs, a physicist. I graduated from school in 1960, my brother did the Abitur 4 to 5 years later. So during the last years in secondary school there was only our mother who took care of us. Working 6 days a week plus doing the household was a terrible stress. Later, while we were at college there was some financial support because of my study grant and the fact that my brother financed his studies doing his military service.\u00a0 But the years of permanent stress had ruined her health and that left her only a few years to enjoy retirement until she died of a heart attack at the age of only 65 years.<\/p>\n My parents showed a very strong sense of responsibility for their children and during the difficult economic conditions in Post-War Germany they had to make great sacrifices. I am so grateful that they gave us a carefree childhood and a profound education which became the base for a solid professional career for my brother and myself.<\/p>\n I had a couple of friends from school and from my soccer activity. Some of my school friends I still meet today. Christian Lorenz, who had become a judge at the Landgericht, Ludwig Oswald, our\u00a0 class representative and later a primary school teacher as well as Ursula K\u00f6bl, who went teaching social law at the Freiburg University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I worked on my diploma thesis in the institute for X-ray physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University. The head of the institute was Professor Alfred Faessler and the title of my thesis was\u00a0Analysis of the K\u03b1-and K\u03b2-X- Ray Emission Spectra of Sulphur and some Sulphur Compounds\u00a0<\/i>[1]. In all the disciplines of my examination the results were excellent and now the world seemed open to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>I had only to decide either between the research work at the university or to offer my knowledge on the free market. I thought to do both, when I joined the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>,\u00a0the German Research und Test Center for Aerospace<\/i>\u00a0in Oberpfaffenhofen, west of Munich. A friend of my family, somewhat older than me, worked at the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0and he described me the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0as an opportunity to make the doctor grade in physics and being paid as a scientist of the Institute. So I joined the\u00a0Institute\u00a0 for<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0Dynamics of Flight Systems<\/i>\u00a0of the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>. My first big project was the investigation of a nutation damper, a device which should avoid that spin stabilized satellites will lose its fixed orientation by external disturbing forces [[2]\u00a0report ESRO TT-152: Theoretical and Experimental Studies of Annular Nutation Dampers<\/i>].\u00a0 The initial part of the investigation consisted of the mathematical analysis of the satellite-damper system using the laws of mechanics and fluid mechanics. To check the results and to determine the parameters of the fluid motion (difficult to describe theoretically) we constructed a passive motion simulator. The simulator construction, its driving mechanism and its measurement system was a rather sophisticated experimental device. In principle the simulator table was supported in its center of gravity by a special air bearing. So it represented a near approximation of a force-free satellite. The damper was a circular ring filled with mercury. The damping process was registered by a position measuring device transforming the inclination of the table into the intensity variation of a light source. The combination of theoretical and experimental results allowed to understand how a passive fluid damper could stabilize the position of spinning satellites (determine the influence of the geometrical damper parameters, of the damper fluid and the degree of filling.).When I left the\u00a0DFVLR\u00a0<\/i>end of 1970 this project was almost finished, the English report was still under preparation.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Institute for Dynamics of Flight Systems<\/i>\u00a0had been recently created and was about to determine its management structure. The special feature of this organization process was the strong participation of the scientific staff. So there were many political and not seldom controversial discussions between the different groups of interest. Finally the project of self- organization failed and the Executive Board of the\u00a0DFVLR\u00a0<\/i>appointed the managing director for the institute. So in my memory the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0was a research institute with highly qualified scientists\u00a0<\/span>working with a high degree of personal freedom. The work of the project teams was very creative but for some projects the time schedule was rather generous and the project organization was sometimes not very stringent. So with the time I developed some doubts if the research work would be the right work for me and I started considering to try the industry as a career alternative.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Working for the\u00a0DFVLR<\/i>\u00a0I moved now to Munich. I rented a room in Pasing, a quarter of Munich lying on the railway line to Oberpfaffenhofen. Only at the beginning I returned still to Landshut at the weekends. To follow my passion and to find new friends I joined the soccer club SC Wessling, Wessling being a small village near to the research center. For some years I played in the A-district league county of Starnberg, a period \u00a0<\/span>interrupted by a heavy meniscus injury and its surgery.<\/p>\n SC Wessling 1969<\/p>\n In the noon pauses of summer the flexible working hours of the research institute offered the possibility to take a\u00a0<\/span>swim in the nearby lake of Wessling and this was there where I met B\u00e4rbl. She was\u00a0<\/span>working as trilingual secretary in another department of the Institut f\u00fcr Steuer-und Regeltechnik. She was a very pretty young lady with black hair with a steel blue touch and lovely brown eyes. During our noon excursions I had the opportunity to talk to her and liked her open, friendly straightforward attitude. Over time I decided to get to know her better and to invite her for a dancing evening in a dance club in M\u00fcnchen Schwabing. What a brave act! What, if she would say no? But if she would say yes, there was still a problem, because I was a real lousy dancer? Finally I estimated\u00a0 that this was no serious problem as the popular music in the dancing clubs was Boogie and Rock \u2018n Roll, where\u00a0 with some feeling for the rhythm no special dancing experience was necessary and as a soccer player I was accustomed to move. A little more annoying was that, at an age of 27 years, I had no driver\u2019s license nor a car. B\u00e4rbl was living with her parents in Gilching\u00a0 in the countryside. At that time the Munich commuter train system S-Bahn did not yet exist and it was somewhat complicated to go to Munich by train. So I proposed her to meet. She accepted\u00a0 she did and I was\u00a0 happy to see her, stepping off\u00a0 the\u00a0 train arriving from Gilching at Pasing. We spent a wonderful evening, dancing was no problem at all and most of the time we talked.<\/p>\n B\u00e4rbl was only 25 years old but had already travelled rather a lot. She had an education in hotel management and diploma in English and French. Her education and her hotel jobs had taken her to London, to Geneva in French speaking Switzerland and to different places all over Germany between Garmisch Partenkirchen and Bad Harzburg. So listening to her she made me curious \u00a0<\/span>to move around, take other jobs and meet new people.<\/p>\n After our first rendez-vous B\u00e4rbl and I spent a lot of our time together and I moved to Gilching to be closer to her. During weekends we made hiking trips to the mountains and lakes around Munich, though I did not like walking, but B\u00e4rbl convinced me. All these excursions were a wonderful opportunity to talk about us, our interests, our opinions, our wishes and we discovered that we\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>shared some important viewpoints: personal independence, looking for a life not restricted to the same local area and the same business \u00a0organization. The research center DFVLR in Oberpfaffenhofen should be only a starting point. In March 1969 we married in Herrsching, which was to be our home for about one year. At the end of 1970 we left the\u00a0DFVLR\u00a0<\/i>and Bavaria for a first experience in the industry. \u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>\u00a0Oberbruch, situated near the border to the Netherlands at Roermond, was looking for a manager for their Physical \/Mathematical laboratory.<\/p>\n This was the beginning of a 30 years long\u00a0 itinerary life. At Oberbruch B\u00e4rbl worked as an assistant of the managing editor of the local newspaper. We lived in a company owned house in a residential area for the company mangement . To meet\u00a0 the same people after work as during the whole day in the offices ,was not always an advantage , but one of the pleasant sides was the companies tennis club where B\u00e4rbl and I started to play tennis .<\/p>\n B\u00e4rbl was a very talented tennis player and when we were back in Munich she joined the tennis club TC Gernlinden and became number one of the women’s ranking list . Playing\u00a0 the local club tournamentnts she also was successful and won her first finals. Later having moved to Paris she became number one of the tennis club in Yerres (in the\u00a0 banlieue of Paris) and won\u00a0 the club tournament.<\/p>\n I served (with pleasure) as practicing partner and when in the beginning of the nineties I had to finish playing tennis because of\u00a0 my knee problems\u00a0 B\u00e4rbl stopped her career. It was a pity that B\u00e4rbl started playing tennis so late because she was an absolute talent.\u00a0 Her strengthe was to stay relaxed in tight match situations, an enormous advantage in a sport where mental strength very often decides the match.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This courage and determination characterized B\u00e4rbl’s life.We moved 9 times in our life to a new place, which meant to leave a familiar environment with friends ,\u00a0 leave a wonderful house country style we had constructed only 3 years ago, B\u00e4rbl stayed always positive and supported the project. I think, she was most courageous person I met im my life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And this outstanding character she showed also when she passed away. She never complained about pains caused by an insidious desease or the torture of an ( in my opinion) inhuman medical treatment.<\/p>\n Today I have doubts if I expressed my gratitude to her as she had deserved it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the first chapters of this chronicle I have described our stay in the Niederrhein region. I was excited about\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Glanzstoff,<\/i>\u00a0its industrial character, the young team of laboratory assistants and our efficient work. I loved the somewhat melancholic landscape and the red brick houses of the villages, the straightforward\u00a0 open-minded joyful people and the\u00a0 trips across the Netherlands border to Venlo, Sittard and Roermond . But considering the long-term aspects the perspective for the professional evolution of a physicist in a company, dominated by chemists, was not clear. Moreover we felt a little constricted by the ghetto in which the Glanzstoff management people lived.\u00a0 So finally we decided to quit Glanzstoff and the Oberbruch region for a new challenge.<\/p>\n At that time I found an interesting offer of a rather small privately owned company,\u00a0Buck<\/i>, at Bad Reichenhall, in the Bavarian Alps near the border to Austria. They were looking for executives managing projects\u00a0<\/span>for the German Defence Ministry. I should explain that in the first years of my professional activity I had no clearly defined plan to build a professional career. I was convinced of my scientific technical capacities and skills\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and I had the feeling that with my wide education as physicist there was no challenge that I could not meet. I was guided by my interest to face new challenges in new organizations with new people. And in the case of\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0life near Salzburg, one of the most famous cities of old Europe was extremely attractive. So we crossed Germany from the Netherland\u2019s to the Austrian border.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0research unit was situated in Fronau a very small village of only some houses offering enough space for secret military projects. Fronau was embedded in the marvelous Alpine Area with blossoming meadows, cool woods\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and picturesque mountains. A special highlight was the military training ground Reiteralpe,\u00a0a table mount about 1700 m high where an area was reserved to the German army and where\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0could test its developed products. After a dizzying ride with the cable car we arrived at the top station of the Reiteralm and there was still a 30 minutes walk to the mountain lodge. The walk on the rocky paths to the lodge was a unique event. In the crisp clear air there was no other sound than the birds singing. Between the mountain pines colourful meadows extended, meadows full of columbines, alpine roses and different kinds of gentian, flowers only existing in the mountains. The lodge was a small cottage\u00a0<\/span>for final preparation of the projectiles for the launch and where some people could spend the night.<\/p>\n My first project was to develop projectiles to deviate missiles equipped with infrared seekers. In simple words the projectile was a small rocket which after explosion set free hundreds of flaming flares forming an extended object of infrared radiation. \u00a0<\/span>Such defense weapons could be used for example by a\u00a0 fighter jet attacked by a missile locked on the target by a infrared tracer. The rocket and its propulsion system were standard. The object of development was the heat emitting cloud. But the standard rocket defined by the launcher system was rather small and the space available for about 1000 flares only roughly 5000 cm3. A propellant charge shot the rocket in a height of about 100 m where an axial igniter destructor charge dispersed and ignited the flare cloud .The flares were circular sector shaped and consisted of a combustible paste on a carrier foil. The specification was to deviate the missiles equipped with a infrared seeker by a heat cloud of a certain minimum intensity burning \u00a0a certain minimum time.<\/p>\n For the first time I learned the stringent execution of the different phases of a technical project: \u00a0<\/span>concept, definition, development and production. The results of these different project stages were tested on the military training grounds of the German Bundeswehr all over Germany. The concept tests were done on the training ground\u00a0on nearby Reiteralm. As the launching section of the projectile was fixed by the compatibility with the existing launcher, these first trials concentrated on the expelling and ignition of the flares. We tested two different kind of flares, the first type with phosphorus as combustible material, the second type consisted of flares coated with metal powder layers like boron powder for example. The concept testing was nothing but perfect, from the projectile launching, over the explosive disassembly, the quantitative ignition of the flares until the formation of the heat cloud. For preparation and organization of the test I had the support of an excellent mechanic, Baumgartner, a very talented young man.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>There was only one feature which was not entirely complying with the specifications. It was easy to set a phosphorus flare on fire, but unfortunately it \u00a0burnt also very fast, so \u00a0the burning time of the flares was too short. Therefore\u00a0 the main goal for the development phase was to obtain a longer burning time complying with the specifications .<\/p>\n After the successful test I was nominated head of the physics project department. These tests were not only a welcome training for me to organize a project, but also the occasion for a first profound contact with the customer. For\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0there was only one customer the German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr. The\u00a0Bundeswehrbeschaffungsamt (BWB)<\/i>\u00a0in Koblenz was in charge of the defense procurement including the\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>development and\u00a0 and tests in cooperation with external firms as\u00a0Buck<\/i>. So the\u00a0BWB<\/i>\u00a0official was a very influential man and pampered by the special care and attention of\u00a0Buck\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>top management and commercial people. I met this person for the first time at the launch test of the concept phase. I was naively not aware that the technical success was only a necessary condition to convince and overwhelmed by the flawless test results I did not devote the appropriate time to him, which he could expect as the single customer. During future project progress I always had a hard time to establish a good working relation with him. It was a first lesson for me that technical expertise is not enough to succeed in the professional career.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n We had rented an apartment in Bayerisch Gmain , a small community\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>close to Bad Reichenhall. Driving through the Saalach valley it took me about 20 minutes to get to the lab by car. I think, that Bayerisch Gmain was the most picturesque region we ever lived. Embedded in the massifs of the Alps it was situated directly at the Austrian border. So we made regularly weekend trips to Salzburg, which was about\u00a0 30 min by car. The city center below the castle Hohensalzburg is a historical jewel, a protected UNESCO monument. The Getreidegasse, where the house of Mozart\u2019s birth in 1756 is situated, is probably the most famous part. The medieval house fronts and their windows are marvelously decorated\u00a0 \u00a0and characterized by wrought iron craft symbols over the old shops. The houses in the narrow streets show no crow stepped gables as in Landshut and the roofs are not visible. Another famous site is the Cathedral built in the baroque style. On the place in front of the cathedral every year during the Salzburg Festival the play\u00a0Jedermann<\/i>\u00a0von Hugo von Hoffmannsthal is performed. As Buck invited customers to the festival spectacles we had access to the rare tickets and were able to watch Curd J\u00fcrgens performing as\u00a0Jedermann<\/i>.<\/p>\n Another Austrian attraction was the way of living, which is more relaxed than in Germany. It was characterized by the excellent cuisine and its wine culture. The Friesacher Heurige near Salzburg was a cozy wine tavern typical for this country and a preferred destination for local people and tourists. Even if there is a certain rivalry between Bavarians and Austrians we remember very friendly and warmhearted discussions\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>in the Friesacher\u00a0 Heurigen tavern.<\/p>\n So basically we had a wonderful private life, we continued to play tennis, not in a club this time and I played some soccer matches for the Buck company team, where the meeting after the match enjoying some glasses of beer was as important as the match itself. But this period was also clouded by our sorrow to have children. B\u00e4rbel had a difficult surgical intervention and also I had to pass some exams, but later years showed that we were not lucky to have children. \u00a0<\/span>Probably in vitro fertilization would have helped us, but it was only at the beginning of its development at that time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Our development efforts to increase the burning time of the flares were successful by covering the big part of the phosphorus flare surface with a less combustible passivation layer, leaving a smaller part of the phosphorus flare free for ignition. Another problem to solve for prototype testing was manufacturing of the flares on an industrial scale. The concept tests were still done with handmade flares, a very tedious work. The industrial process which we finally \u00a0<\/span>developed was the coating of extended foils by a squeegee coating machine and subsequent punching out of the flares.<\/p>\n In autumn we tested the prototypes in Eckernf\u00f6rde bay at the Baltic Sea. There was a large Bundeswehr testing ground. We were in competition with a defense technology company much bigger than\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0and I remember the first night when the\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0crew of development and sales people gathered behind the window of one of our hotel rooms observing the test shooting\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>of our competitor. The solution proposed by our competitor was a point-like infrared source which had the problem that it had to be very intense in order to be equivalent with light intensity of the heated flare cloud. The next day there was the test shooting of our prototypes and it was a full success. The following day the test results measured by the army experts were communicated to\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0and all the major specifications regarding IR intensity and combustion time were fulfilled. In comparison to our competitor we had the advantage that our flare solution simulated an extended target.<\/p>\n Despite of this success I left\u00a0Buck\u00a0<\/i>at the end of the year. The main reason was the uncertain future of the company. On one hand the defense technology seemed to be a market,\u00a0<\/span>even in the long term, with a steady demand by the state military organizations. On the other hand this demand was strongly dependent from the political situation from national, EU wide and global events. Buck was only a small company on a very competitive market, its future seemed not very clear and secure. So at the end of 1976 we decided to leave this lovely place at the German Austrian border and move to Munich, the Bavarian capital. In the 1990s after the end of the cold war, when worldwide and particularly in Germany the military spending was strongly reduced,\u00a0Buck<\/i>\u00a0was taken over by Rheinmetall, a listed German defense supplier.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As for any young generation politics had no priority for us. Doubtless subject number one was\u00a0 sports. All\u00a0 my friends were active sportsmen, some played tennis or handball but most of them played soccer. When we met our talks dealt mainly with the results of the soccer Bundesliga or other sports events. Nevertheless when we went to college we developed a stronger interest in politics and political parties and added the national press to the regional press (primarily appreciated for its sports pages), for example the\u00a0S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/i>,\u00a0 and weekly magazines like the\u00a0Spiegel<\/i>. Our political orientation was split between conservative standpoints represented in Bavaria by the CSU and moderate socialist opinions, which meant SPD. The third party were the liberals FDP, the radical communist party KPD\u00a0 had been prohibited (reestablished as DKP in 1960).<\/p>\n The German postwar political parties were distinguished by strong personalities. Germany\u2019s first chancellor was\u00a0 Konrad Adenauer, former Mayor of Cologne, taking his responsibility when he was already 73 years old, having passed the last ten years of the third Reich as retiree. In the roaring twenties he had lost his fortune speculating with shares of\u00a0Glanzstoff<\/i>. After Erhard and Kiesinger followed another remarkable chancellor, Willy Brandt, which had passed the years of the Nazi regime in Norwegian exile supporting the left socialists in Germany. As chancellor he opened the German foreign policy to the states of the Soviet Republic and concluded the treaties with the Warsaw Pact states, whose main goal\u00a0 was the mutual renunciation of force. His successor was Helmut Schmidt, a very smart guy, who was the leader of Germany in its battle against the terror organization RAF culminating in the high-jacking of the Lufthansa plane Landshut\u00a0 and its spectacular liberation\u00a0 by the special forces unit GSG 9. But there were other strong personalities as Erhard\u00a0 and Kiesinger from the CDU , who both became also chancellor of Germany, Bahr and Wehner prominent supporters\u00a0 of Willy Brandt.\u00a0 And there was Franz Josef Strauss, the most sparkling personality of the German post war policy.<\/p>\n In the debates in the German Bundestag these people were fighting for their opposite viewpoints with regard to the foreign policy during the period of cold war, the right social policy in a flourishing German economy, the question of Germany\u2019s rearmament in order to take international responsibility\u2026.\u00a0 There was an exchange of arguments followed by crucial votes. These men (yes, there were only a few women) were ready to take responsibility for their country, they were proud of their nation, and did not follow any ideological directives. It was fascinating to follow a debate head to head between Wehner and Strauss.<\/p>\n This patriotism was also present in our young people, may be particularly in the group of my friends because we followed with great enthusiasm the success of the sports heroes of postwar Germany. We identified ourselves with Fritz Walter, Helmut Rahn and their teammates winning the first Soccer World Championship after World War II , with Hary, Germar und Kaufmann,\u00a0 the great generation of German world class sprinters , the German ice hockey team winning the olympic Bronze medal at Innsbruck with some top players from Landshut, \u2026\u2026\u00a0 .<\/p>\n The \u201cWirtschaftswunder\u201d during the 1950s and 1960s substantially increased Germany\u2019s reputation abroad. We appreciated our German identity, different from a part of the German people today at the beginning of the third millennium, when they deny the German history and tradition, and indoctrinated by school, politics and mass media\u00a0 seeing themselves as member of the \u201cpeople of perpetrators\u201d which has to atone for the \u201csins of the past\u201d.<\/p>\n We were well aware of the terrible crime of the Nazis, but for us\u00a0 this was not the total German history. Germany\u2019s roots date back to the east franc empire under Otto I in tenth century. Until the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century it exists as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which is the association of territory states, unified in 1871 by Preussen to a national state with the substantial involvement of Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian Prime Minister. Germany for us was the country of Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Heine,\u2026.Bach, H\u00e4ndel, Brahms, Liszt, Orff\u2026., Kepler, Leibniz , R\u00f6ntgen, Planck, Einstein, Hahn\u2026. For us, despite the horrible period of the Nazi Regime, it was also the country of the poets , scientists and philosophers .<\/p>\n Information concerning the Third Reich and the Holocaust\u00a0 in the press, as well in our school education\u00a0 were scarce and superficial. It was certainly a big problem for the adults to explain why a whole nation adhered to the insane ideology of National Socialism. Probably a big part of the atrocities in the concentration camps were not known, but the disappearance of Jewish families and events like the \u201cReichskristallnacht\u201d could not be ignored . Considering Germany and its evolution with the years I am afraid, that the German people are characterized by a certain search for consensus\u00a0 and a lack of individualism, which makes them vulnerable for ideologies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Today Germany is under the influence of another less horrible ideology which paralyzes the open and critical political discussion, the so called \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d. Having its origin in the student movements of the 1960\u2019s its left-liberalistic-ecological ideas have been developed\u00a0 by a generation of politically red-green oriented people today occupying\u00a0 many\u00a0 leading positions in the media and politics . Simplified \u201cpolitical correctness\u201d means a list of behavioral measures what you should think and say in public life, supervised by politics and media, the philistines of political correctness\u00a0 [3]. Some of these rules set high moral standards, some of them are doctrines , often of sociological nature. As for any ideology the political correctness is not a base for discussion, the rules are definite, critique and discussion are excluded. If you are violating this rules you risk to become socially isolated.\u00a0 A brochure of the German Umweltbundesamt names and shames scientists doubting the anthropogenic character of global warming . Eva Herman, popular German TV newsreader got fired because she had said that in the NS regime the family was respected in contrast of today\u2019s Germany, where, as a consequence of the 1968 movement, the traditional role of the mother is denied and so the birth rate is declining. Thilo Sarrazin, board member of the German Federal Bank, wrote a book \u00a0 \u201cGermany abolishes itself \u201c. One of his thesis is, that the immigration of muslim people combined with their\u00a0 high fertility lowers Germany\u2019s\u00a0 average intelligence and education level. The German president Wulf dismissed Sarrazin. The \u201cghostwriters\u201d of Wikipedia write that Sarrazin had resigned from his post, what is not true. The newspaper\u00a0 Westfalen-Blatt\u00a0 terminates the contract of a columnist because she responded to a father who was concerned about participating with his two daughters at a homosexual marriage.\u00a0 She advised not to take them with him. Sometimes the opinions may be border-line, some people may totally disagree, but western civilization has fought\u00a0 a long time for\u00a0 its\u00a0 right to express opinion freely. Particularly Germany should be sensitive having passed\u00a0 a period when it was dangerous to express one\u2019s opinion.<\/p>\n So in today\u2019s\u00a0 political life the\u00a0 debate with arguments is more and more replaced by public defamation of the opponent. In Germany the way\u00a0 to condemn a person violating the rules of political correctness is to call him a Nazi, i.e. a person who is still infected by the ideology of the German past. This works extraordinarily well : German politicians, journalists and state subsidized experts, the philistines of political correctness, are\u00a0 united in fighting against right wing extremists. So for example a public survey organized by the Allensbach Institute shows, that 45 % of the population say, that in Germany you have to be cautious\u00a0 to express your opinion concerning the current immigration problem [4].<\/p>\n All the bigger German political partys nowadays have left- ecological programs\u00a0 and the differences between them become smaller and smaller. The person, who has created\u00a0 this political uniformity and who is representing it, is Angela Merkel. Any party\u00a0 trying to preserve tradition and values , opposing\u00a0 the disappearance of Germany in an amorphous European administration, taking position against spoiling the people\u2019s income\u00a0 for big banking houses\u00a0 and large corporations is defamed as\u00a0 right-extreme party. Only recently after the unlimited flooding of Germany by people coming from Asia and Africa following the invitation of Angela Merkel, political resistance is awakening.\u00a0 A conservative party AFD has been founded\u00a0 and now rates about 15 %\u00a0 in the polls.<\/p>\n One of the roots of the development of the \u201cmainstream\u201d Germany is the student protest movement at the end of the 1960s . The reasons for the students\u2019 revolt were manifold. Generally it was not\u00a0 a German but more an international phenomenon. It was characterized, among others, by the protest against the Vietnam War, the support of Martin Luther King\u2019s fight against\u00a0 racial discrimination, the idolization of Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Minh and\u00a0 communist ideas. In Germany additional conflicts were the confrontation between the war generation and the post war generation, the uprising against authority in politics and education. One of the consequences of this movement was, that the perception of the family changed . The traditional family was now only one of several options. For example women discovered professional careers as a preferable alternative. The\u00a0 role image of women and men changed .The contraceptive pill was a welcome aid for easier realization of these alternative life plans. In the 1970\u2019s the birth rate in Germany fell to less than 1.5 and remained almost unchanged until today. Therefore Germany has the serious demographic problem of an ageing population. This fact was known for a long time, but no German government dared to put the historically critical topic of family planning on its agenda. So today Germany doubtless needs immigration. A reasonable solution to preserve Germany\u2019s economic strength, seems to be qualified immigration like in Canada or Australia.\u00a0 Besides that the German constitution grants asylum to all persons fleeing war and persecution. But unlimited uncontrolled flooding\u00a0 with refugees as provoked by Merkel and concealed by humanitarian considerations, will ruin German economy and particularly the German social system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>Enka Glanzstoff, a Giant of the Industrial Mass Production<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>A Different Way of Working<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>Living Near the Netherlands Border<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>The Decline of the Market Leader<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>First Years at Landshut: My Parents<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>Doing Sports, my First Passion<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a>University and Difficult Years<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>The DFVLR, a Major Experience for Orientation<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>B\u00e4rbl<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>The Customer is Always Right<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>Living between Berchtesgaden and Salzburg<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>Finishing the Project at Sea and Leaving Buck<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>Postwar Politics: From Konrad Adenauer to Helmut Schmidt, Strong Personalities with Rough Edges<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a>The Period of Political Correctness<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n