I grew up in Cologne-Kalk, a working-class district where many people with a migrant background live today. Shortly after I was born in 1958, my parents moved from Mülheim to Kalk, my mother and brother still live there. My father died in 1996, he was only 66 years old. However, my parents had long since divorced at that time.

After four short years at elementary school, I entered the Hölderlin Gymnasium in the summer of 1967. My favorite subjects were mathematics, Latin and sports, in the other subjects I got by sometimes better, sometimes worse. In German, my good spelling and my understanding of grammar helped me at first, but later it didn’t work so well with interpretations or the like. But I passed my Abi in 1976 quite smoothly, despite a 5 in the oral geography exam on the subject of “Interplanetary Wind Systems”.

In my group of friends in Kalk, I was always “the one from high school”. This gave me a unique selling point, because everyone else “only” went to elementary school or was already in apprenticeship.

Since I couldn’t think of anything else, I started studying mathematics and computer science at the University of Bonn in the fall of 1978. I passed the intermediate exam after five semesters relatively smoothly, and I also had two seminar certificates from my main studies in my pocket. So “only” the diploma thesis including the final exams was missing.

One character trait has often made my life even more difficult. I was 19 when my first real girlfriend taught me how important it is to speak your mind. I did that more than enough during my professional life, also and especially towards superiors. I don’t need to explain that it usually didn’t work out well for me.

At the age of 52, I finally took the step into freelancing, which I have never regretted. There were also difficult phases in which my acquisition was unsuccessful for months. The last few years since April 2021 I have only worked for one client. The time was perhaps the most relaxed time ever during my working life. But at the end of 2024, it should finally be over.

My first marriage was divorced after 26 years, but we still have good contact today, after all, we have two together Kinder.Im October 2005 I met Raquel in Granada, who moved to Rösrath half a year later. We were together for seven years and are still friends today.

In 2014, I met Gaby again, who played football with my first wife as a teenager. In 2018 we got married in Siegburg and are very happy together.

Since 2003, I have been working as a volunteer for the peace and human rights organization Peace Brigades International. Since 2020, I have been jointly responsible for budget planning and everything that has to do with finances. The German group of states currently manages a budget of about 2 million euros per year.

The number of full-time employees in the office in Hamburg has risen from 3 (2003) to 13, unfortunately the number of volunteers is declining. When I started, there were about 100 people in the whole of Germany, today there are about 50 to 60 people.The way we discuss and come to decisions by consensus has shaped me and strengthened my character. Every year, I look forward to our national meeting, where full-time and volunteer workers meet regularly in Hamburg in November.

At the beginning of 1979 I met my first wife Aysen, a born Turk. We married in 1980, Fabian was born in August 1982, followed by Jennifer in November 1983. So I had to earn money while studying and could now comfortably cite that as a reason why I dropped out of my studies sometime in 1983.

But the reason was different. After various student jobs that I used to have, including as a taxi driver in Cologne, I started selling insurance in 1982. That went well at first, only my studies took a back seat. Unfortunately, I realized a little late that you can’t earn money in a clean way with insurance without a sound education. This realization plunged me into my first real life crisis, after all, I was now a family man with two small children. I made a lateral entry into IT through the employment office, and in May 1984 I got my first job as a programmer at a Cologne company.

The 80s were a very nice time despite my crisis at the beginning of 1984. Fabian was born in August 1982, Jenny in November 1983. In 1986 we moved into our condominium in Rösrath, in the same year I started playing football at Union Rösrath.

Of course, we often went on vacation to Turkey, where I learned to love the country and its people. The photos are from our vacation in 1990. At that time, we drove west from Antalya along the coast and got to know many beautiful places.

I pulled it off, stayed loyal to the industry until 2024, unbelievable when I look at it in retrospect. In addition to programming, I later learned database admistration, but it never became my dream job. I often suspected that in these years, but I didn’t have the courage to get out. There were good times and not so good times, and all in all, I was employed in six different companies.

Nevertheless, I had a nice life in the 40 years, earned well and can’t complain in any way. I was not a crack in the field of IT, but good mediocrity. My strengths include my calm nature and the ability to keep things tidy. I didn’t know everything, but most of the time I knew where it was or who to ask. 🙂

What I lacked in my job, I compensated for in my free time with my big hobby: football. First as a player and later as a coach, I met many great people and experienced very nice times.

und sehr schöne Zeiten erlebt.

The last three and a half years have been the best of my working life from a professional point of view. As a freelancer, I worked for the ITZ-Bund, which is part of the Ministry of Finance. Since I worked exclusively in the home office, I had contact with very few colleagues.
In all this time there has been no discord between us, an atmosphere that I have never experienced before.

After 40 years as an “IT specialist”, however, a new phase is now beginning. I am very much looking forward to it and am excited about what is to come!