10:05 h With the “click” of the door, Hermann Staudinger started talking again, often directly
finishing the sentence he had to interrupt when she came in. I think I do not have to
describe the “reverse process” of Magda Staudinger’s soft attempt to “educate” her
husband: click, silence, looks, book back, click, and continuation of our cooperation.
These short, quiet periods of my working time with Hermann Staudinger had a
special flavour. They happened sometimes two to three times a morning. Somehow,
we both came to like these minutes of quietness, minutes of tension! He never made
any remarks about them. But, we slowly learned to enjoy these emotional calm
minutes of silence with a smile on our faces. What a time for me!
To avoid any misunderstanding: My relation with Magda Staudinger became
better and better over the years. It was a friendly, open-minded, respectful interaction,
but always with a certain distance. After Hermann Staudinger’s death (1965), we
visited her often in the spring time during the “Freiburg Meeting” with coworkers and
guests from our Mainzer group (Fig. 3).
During the following years, Magda Staudinger stayed several times in our house
in Gonsenheim. In those days she was on her way to the United Nations in New York,
working for Unesco: For several years she was the German Representative for the
Unesco Biosphere Programme. A perfect place for a multilingual, highly educated
Ph.D. in biology; a perfect function for a personality like Magda Staudinger. She was
very diplomatic, had research experience in biology and polymer science, and had a
lot of international contacts.
This was a successful self-determined time for Magda Staudinger. Her years at
Unesco were – in my opinion – a second important, substantial period of Magda
Staudinger’s life. She was successful, highly respected and unconstrained by her
old patriotic fights for her husband’s “German macromolecules”.
Fig. 3 Meeting with Magda Staudinger in Freiburg after a ski-hut seminar (1992) of guests and
coworkers of the Mainz research group
6
H. Ringsdorf
finishing the sentence he had to interrupt when she came in. I think I do not have to
describe the “reverse process” of Magda Staudinger’s soft attempt to “educate” her
husband: click, silence, looks, book back, click, and continuation of our cooperation.
These short, quiet periods of my working time with Hermann Staudinger had a
special flavour. They happened sometimes two to three times a morning. Somehow,
we both came to like these minutes of quietness, minutes of tension! He never made
any remarks about them. But, we slowly learned to enjoy these emotional calm
minutes of silence with a smile on our faces. What a time for me!
To avoid any misunderstanding: My relation with Magda Staudinger became
better and better over the years. It was a friendly, open-minded, respectful interaction,
but always with a certain distance. After Hermann Staudinger’s death (1965), we
visited her often in the spring time during the “Freiburg Meeting” with coworkers and
guests from our Mainzer group (Fig. 3).
During the following years, Magda Staudinger stayed several times in our house
in Gonsenheim. In those days she was on her way to the United Nations in New York,
working for Unesco: For several years she was the German Representative for the
Unesco Biosphere Programme. A perfect place for a multilingual, highly educated
Ph.D. in biology; a perfect function for a personality like Magda Staudinger. She was
very diplomatic, had research experience in biology and polymer science, and had a
lot of international contacts.
This was a successful self-determined time for Magda Staudinger. Her years at
Unesco were – in my opinion – a second important, substantial period of Magda
Staudinger’s life. She was successful, highly respected and unconstrained by her
old patriotic fights for her husband’s “German macromolecules”.
Fig. 3 Meeting with Magda Staudinger in Freiburg after a ski-hut seminar (1992) of guests and
coworkers of the Mainz research group
6
H. Ringsdorf