Uwe Schallenberg. The memory of concrete historical events that we have all experienced is always shaped by the images and campaigns that mass media have propagated. Reflections on 25 years of reunification, however, can be very personal; I would like to share with you my personal experiences and own personal assessment of these 25 years. I am now head of laser optics production at Laser Components and have lived in Olching, where Laser Components has its headquarters, since 2014. I originally come from Jena in Thuringia (the “heart of Germany,” as people liked to call Jena in Germany after the fall of the Wall). Geographically speaking, this title may even have been justified, but it also signified the catching up that the former East German regions had to do to affirm their sense of belonging to Germany. At home in Jena in 1989, I did not have a problem with this. My mother, who has lived her entire life in Jena, would tell us about how she and her brother spent a lot of time in Munich and often went skiing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the 1930s. When it got to be somewhat chaotic in her life, she would comment simply that it was “just like Munich’s bustling Stachus” (which was once known for its seemingly never-ending and chaotic traffic circle). It was a common assertion based in her experience from a Germany that just happened to be divided for 40 years.
Reunification returned things to “how they used to be” – when cities like Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg, Potsdam, Schwerin, and Rostock were just as representative of German history and culture as Munich, Ulm, Wurzburg, Aachen, Hanover, and Hamburg. I personally enjoyed many business travels to Munich and other large cities “in the West” after starting work as a research scientist at the Fraunhofer Society in 1992. With its central administrative headquarters in Munich, this research society stretched its sphere of influence to the federal states of the former East Germany directly after the fall of the Wall and founded the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Optics and Fine Mechanics in Jena, which was pretty common back then as part of the vital campaign to “rebuild the East.” This development was driven in such a way in Jena by Lothar Späth – a former minister president of the “old” federal states – that it did indeed lead to the “blooming landscape” promised by the then German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1991.
After obtaining my physics degree at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (which, founded in 1558, is one of the German universities that are richest in tradition), I began working in the “Zeiss factory” in Jena as a scientist in the optics research department.
The name “Zeiss” has been renowned worldwide for almost one hundred years; thus, after the fall of the Wall it was easy for me as a research scientist traveling abroad. In response to the question of where I came from, everybody in the optics and photonics industry was familiar with “from Germany, Jena, Zeiss.”
Quite common for the period following the fall of the Wall and for the opportunities this period harbored, I spun off my own optics company from the Fraunhofer Society in 1998. I quickly had an exhibit at the leading photonics trade show worldwide “Photonics West” in California. I understood that modern business was connected to internationality and a cosmopolitan attitude. It made sense to take advantage of the opportunities opened up to “easterners” after the fall of the Wall: not only for private vacations in the West but to use the “West” and ultimately the entire world for the growth of my company and for the development of my own – after 40 years of GDR to some extent “walled-in” and consequently stagnant – personality.
In 2005, I had contact with Laser Components and in 2006 signed a contract to include my company’s products in Laser Components’ portfolio. I sat with Günther Paul, then managing director, and his son Patrick Paul, designated successor, at the LASER trade show in Munich and Photonics West in San Jose to close deals and discuss our vision for the future. We essentially practiced “reunification” in everyday life.
However, twenty-five years of reunification have had the largest impact on those who grew up as children during this time. My daughter studied European Cultural History in Augsburg and gained her first working experience in a job at the European Parliament in Brussels. My son studied theater science and communicates today with artists from all over Europe. In 2009, a company from the Principality of Liechtenstein expressed an interest in my company and bought it in 2010; thus, it went from being a Jena company to being a Liechtenstein company.
As an “experienced East German,” I developed a liking for change; I am not scared of “Europe” in its latest developmental phase, and I have a lot of fun in my current line of work.
I look back on a professional career and private life before and after the fall of the Wall and see an example of what twenty-five years of reunification mean in the best sense of the word: to be reunited and working together again according to one’s own desires and abilities and with the possibilities that successful and innovative companies offer.
LC comprises fellow citizens from Bavaria, Saxony, Thuringia, and other German federal states and regions, as well as colleagues with various immigration backgrounds from Europe and abroad. First and foremost, we are experts with competence in the field of laser components, such as for example: Dr. Lars Mechold from Pößneck in Thuringia, who studied in Greifswald and is now the technical director at LC; Sven Schreiber from Leipzig, who after the fall of the Wall went to the U.S.A. not just “on vacation” but to live and work and now heads up the sales team at LC; Felix Paul from Olching, who learned optics production “in the optics cradle” in Jena and now heads up fiber production at LC; and last but not least, myself. The twenty-five-year anniversary sparked a controversial topic of discussion on whether reunification is complete. In our industry, I would go so far as to say “yes.”
