Let’s start with the genes.

I learned from my mother: honesty, diligence, discipline and … Shyness. Everything else was given to me by my father.

I was born on March 6, 1958 in Cologne-Mülheim. I was nine months old when my parents moved with me to Cologne-Kalk. At the age of four, my mother began to practice arithmetic, reading and writing with me. Today she claims that I had demanded it. The result was that I was the top of my class in elementary school. There was homework-free for 10 arithmetic papers without mistakes, but I did my homework despite 40 papers without mistakes, because it was just fun. In 1967 I went to the Hölderlin Gymnasium in Cologne-Mülheim, where that changed quickly, I was just one among many. But I got through it well without having to make any special effort. My favorite subjects were mathematics and sports, and I was also pretty good at Latin.

Due to the change of school, I had new friends and usually went straight back to Mülheim after lunch at home. Either we met at friends’ houses, or I went to play football in the city park. But you could also play football at the Kalker Markt (which is really just a playground), and slowly I made new friends here as well.My parents hadn’t allowed me to join a football club until then on the grounds that I could get dirty and hurt myself. At the age of 13, I finally made my way and signed up for Borussia Kalk. My first coach in the C-youth was called Jochen Hielscher and he was great, very popular with all the boys. After a few months at the club, my friend Bernd Stellmach gave me the shock news that our coach Jochen had had an accident. He had fallen from a scaffolding and died instantly. It was no coincidence that it was Berni who brought me the news, because I admired him in my teenage years. He was one who could speak his mind and show emotions, even tears, and he always went with the prettiest girls, although he could hardly be called handsome himself. But he was just a cool guy!

I myself was shy, which everyone noticed and put a lot of strain on me. When I was 15, I once sat on a bench with a girl for an hour and a half, put my arm around her, but no one said a word. We didn’t go together then. I was in my clique the one from high school, so I had a unique selling point. Since things continued to go well at school, my self-confidence gradually grew. I thought it was pretty cool to hang out with the boys in Kalk who had at most attended elementary school or were already in apprenticeship. I didn’t let the smartass hang out either, they gave me a lot of credit for that and accepted me as one of them.

The first time I had “real” sex was when I was 17. It wasn’t particularly nice, as probably with most of the boys. That’s why we’d rather forget it right away. In 1976 I graduated from high school, final grade 2.9. The Abitur exams lowered my grade, especially the oral geography exam on “Interplanetary Wind Systems” swept me away, smooth grade 5. Shortly after graduating from high school, I met Rosi, who cheated me with her age. She was just under 15, but has made herself a year older. I didn’t really take the relationship seriously at first, I had to join the Bundeswehr on October 1, 1976 and was only at home on weekends. I was with Rosi for seven months, longer than with any girl before.I only realized how much she meant to me later, when we were no longer together.

At the end of 1977 I was discharged from the Bundeswehr and my studies began.

To be continued.