I spent my childhood and youth in the county of Fulda (East Hesse). Here I was raised in a family with four siblings in modest but harmonious family circumstances.
My father died when I was just 14 years old. My mother lived until 2009, when she died on Christmas Eve at the age of 88 after a fulfilled life. I have the greatest respect for my mum's life's work, which enabled all her children to receive a first-class education despite always having a very restricted household budget. She was calm, modest, fair, lovable and always optimistic, even in difficult times.
Of the five children in our family, I was in the centre: my eldest sister Marga stayed in Fulda with her family. She is now retired. My older brother Dieter was a professor of astrophysics and lived with his family in Göttingen. Dieter passed away in 2013 after suffering from a tumour over a long illness. My younger brother Thomas is now retired and lives with his family in Esslingen. Claudia and her husband Uwe are running a high-quality goldsmith's studio near Kassel.
I have been very happily married to Sonja since 2003. Sonja is the best wife! We have remained childless by choice.
At the end of 2016, I volunteered to retire from the Bad Neustadt Heart and Vascular Centre as the head of Radiology to take up a part-time scientific position at the University Hospitals of Wuerzburg and Munich (LMU).
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