In his own words
It was in 1972. I had booked a trip to Chad. It had to be cancelled; the political situation in the region was too uncertain. There I stood with my wish for an adventurous holiday, not knowing what to do with the days of leave I had booked. By chance I read an advertisement from Okavango-Reisen: a mineral-collecting trip to Namibia was on offer. I had no idea what minerals were. But I was interested in the country of Namibia, and the dates suited me. So I signed up.
Two days before departure I learned that the travel group consisted of just one collector and me. At Frankfurt airport I noticed a man in hobnailed boots, a windcheater, old-fashioned knickerbockers and otherwise very “Alpine” in appearance. I knew nothing about minerals, but that was how I imagined a mineral collector. I spoke to him, and I was right. For him, Namibia evidently consisted only of minerals. He talked without pause of jeremejevites, descloizites, fluorites, mottramites and many other things that were “all Greek” to me.
In Windhoek we spent only one day. Then real life began. In a jeep we left the town in a north-westerly direction and drove into the Erongo Mountains. Somewhere in the steppe stood a hut, where we stopped – the Neu-Schwaben mine. My travelling companion disappeared into the terrain with his rucksack. Soon afterwards I heard hammer blows. I strolled towards the sound and found him standing in a kind of bomb crater, hitting stones. I watched him for a while before asking what he was doing. He answered without letting himself be interrupted: “I’m looking for tourmalines.”
I began to think. Either I would carry on not being interested in minerals – in which case I had three probably rather unproductive weeks ahead of me. Or I would use the presence of our guide to have him initiate me into the secrets of mineral collecting. I decided on the second solution and experienced three highly interesting weeks. With his help I was able to find a lot and learn even more. I brought many stones home from this trip, and many parcels of stones were sent. Some of these parcels were not opened until 25 years later.
After this promising start, the newly awakened interest petered out again. I did go collecting a few more times, for instance in the Upper Palatinate or in the Austrian Alps. But I quickly found that collecting minerals cannot be reconciled with other interests, such as mountaineering or walking with the family. Above all, though, the demands of work were incompatible with the time that collecting requires. For over 20 years I visited a mineral show now and then, bought a piece here and there and enjoyed my little private museum of specimens I had collected and bought.
At the end of 1994 I left active working life. I had to be clear about which priorities I wanted to set in the stage of life that lay ahead. Of the many theoretical possibilities, a few remained that could be combined well: travelling, photography, keeping up contacts with interesting people, not letting my language skills wither – and collecting minerals.
In the Münchener Mineralienfreunde I found my mineralogical home, especially in the micromounter working group. Trips with a more or less pronounced collecting focus took me, mostly together with my wife, to Australia, New Zealand, the south-west and Midwest of the USA, to Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, to Italy, Spain, England, Iceland, Poland, Austria, France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Switzerland. Of course I also visited collecting areas in Germany: in the Eifel, in the Black Forest, in Bavaria or in the Siegerland.
Collecting minerals became a new centre of my life. As leader of the Munich Micromounters working group I tried to give our work new impetus: we organised excursions, ran a very successful stand at the Munich Mineralientage and built up the Lithothek. I gave lectures again and again and now and then published articles in the specialist press. Via the internet I kept up worldwide swapping contacts. In the mineralogy working group, founded in 2003, my aim was to offer society members a forum in which they can simply ask questions about their hobby, which we try to answer in joint discussion.
In June 2016 I gave up the leadership of the micromounter group as well as that of the mineralogy working group. Since then I have concentrated entirely on work for the Lithothek.