Germany 1993

In 1993, I was working for EMS and needed to go to Germany to meet with the law firm to establish a German subsidiary, install a general manager and interview a dozen applicants for the Sales Manager job. My business-class airfare was too high at $2000 and I wanted a better deal. My wife wanted to go with me and found tourist tickets for $450, so off we went.

My wife and I flew to Frankfurt and got a rental car. We had scheduled the trip to begin in Frankfurt. We drove on the autobahn to Stuttgart the next day to see the law firm. We stopped to see Heidelberg on the way. We had scheduled 6 interviews at our hotel in Frankfurt for the next few days for the applicants who were near Frankfurt. In our free time, we toured Frankfurt and talked to the people. I had studied German in college and was beginning to speak German again.

The next weekend we checked out of our hotel and drove to Dusseldorf and saw the German countryside and toured the castles. We arrived in Dusseldorf and checked in to the Steigenberger Parkhotel on the “Ko”. We settled in for the last 6 interviews and meet with the subsidiary team in Aachen. We used our free time to see Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bonn and Charlemagne’s tomb in Aachen Cathedral and toured several castles, churches and museums. We also continued our conversations with the Germans.

Having concluded all of our business in Dusseldorf, we drove back to Frankfurt and checked in to our hotel to get ready to fly back to the US. I had asked the Germans many questions and they had lots of questions for me.

My wife grew up in what had been a German farming community in South St. Louis County. Her maiden name was Johannes and her mother’s name was Buss. Their ancestors traced back to Frankfurt and Dusseldorf.  We toured the Johannes castle, Johannes church, drank some Johannes beer, saw some pricey Buss men’s suits and bought a cuckoo clock. She had found her roots.

I was impressed by what the Germans had accomplished. Their news reports included a lot of real-time detail on the sales and production activities in their private sector companies. Consequently, Germans were cheerleaders for their industries. It was the kind of loyalty small towns in the US had for their high school football teams. They wanted to be “the best” and they wanted to “win”. They did have the best beer and bakery goods and they were leaders in manufacturing cars and production equipment. Their media was focused on their economics.

The Germans had been drinking the Kool Aid on socialized medicine and were not shy to tell me they wouldn’t give it up. They showed some distain for the East Germans, because they “didn’t know how to work”. I was disturbed by their allowing their Turkish immigrants to use the Square in Frankfurt to protest ancient grievances against their former Turkish government.  The Germans were too tolerant and I was concerned.

As we landed at the Atlanta airport, I was impressed with the size of it compared to the Frankfurt airport. I was struck by how vast our country really is compared to Germany.

Germany has 137,847 square miles of land area and they used every bit of it. The US has 3.8 million square miles and we only use 70% of it. Germany has a population of 82.3 million and the US has a population of 326.8 million. Germany has a GDP of $3.5 trillion and the US has a GDP of $20 trillion.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader