The funeral of an ancestor who, at the age of just 50, lost his life on one of the countless battlefields in the world. An avid biker from a young age, he became an engineer and was a happy husband and father of two daughters until shortly before his death.

A former biker died on April 10, 78 years ago

There is a photo book of a man who rode Alsace and Vosges on his motorbike and who survived the chaos of the First World War. But not the man who drove to and photographed almost all the important sites of the First World War. The exact motivation for his tour is no longer known, but the pictures are a contemporary document. Unfortunately no longer within reach for the author of this story, but he was often fascinated by the illustrated book and family pictures from the 1930s in his youth. He found a pointless death on April 10, 1943, at the age of 50 years, 3 months, and one day. As was absolutely common for people of his origin in the earlier years of the last century, he was an officer and was only called to the front shortly before his death. As it was narrated, he only survived this for a few days.

The city in which the man lived was badly damaged by bombing raids in the late years of the war. It is considered the oldest city in Germany and was founded by the Romans around 2000 years before it was almost completely destroyed.

The late officer’s family – only the youngest girl survived the war

The ancestor of the author of this report was 14 years old when she heard of her father’s death. Later she hardly told her own children anything about the war, in which she finally survived terrible experiences with “only” emotional damage. Unfortunately, her hometown Trier was the scene of acts of war towards the end of World War II. The circumstances in which she became an orphan were brutal and what she went through during this time and the years that followed can safely be described as hell. Later she studied in Karlsruhe at the Academy of Fine Arts, met a young engineer and the two started a family. As one can believe her words, her father was a good family man and, as an engineer, was very skeptical about political issues as to what was going on in his country. Had he not followed the order to march to the Eastern Front, he would have had to give up his life as a “conscientious objector”. Nowadays, many people are dying unnecessarily again, and again irrationality plays a major role.

Aerial photo of Freiburg im Breisgau from 1944, after the “Tigerfish” campaign, when around 85 percent of the city center was razed to the ground. As early as May 15, 1940, the city, not far from Switzerland and Alsace, was bombed, but by mistake by its own troops who actually had Dijon as their target.

Even nowadays countless people are dying senselessly – old and young

Many young men lost their lives on the world’s racetracks. We have already recognized some of them in our constantly growing history and many will follow. But currently you don’t even have to race on almost unsecured racetracks as in the early decades to be mentioned in an obituary. To do this, it is enough to be careless or to be unlucky, and you will be infected with the dangerous Covid-19 virus or one of its mutants. Not bullets or shrapnel, but a particle that cannot be seen by the human eye destroys countless livelihoods. Although mankind generally describes itself as extremely intelligent, countless people on this planet behave incredibly stupidly. Often not only they pay the bill, but unfortunately sometimes completely inexperienced, brave fellow citizens.

An enlargement of the coronavirus, as it cannot be seen by the human eye. That tiny crap thing seems to have been smarter than all of humanity for around a year and a half and is constantly reinventing itself, even in countless new variants. Originally played down in many places, it still largely determines our everyday life today.

There are many reasons for the general failure

Basically, we have evidence today that democracies seem to fail in pandemics. If you observe the behavior of the politicians, you can feel their fear of being voted out rather than their concern for the population. And as with normal citizens, too often there is a lack of common sense in their thoughts and actions. Hard to believe, actually, but lockdowns would be completely unnecessary with the common sense of our fellow human beings. This was the original approach of Sweden, much reviled by other countries, which unfortunately did not work. In western countries, “Corona opponents” demonstrate almost with impunity, who would sit in prison for 2 to 3 years for their behavior in countries like Qatar. The German federal government, on the other hand, does not even have the power to bring all federal states under one roof. It is desperate, but life goes on, at least for the survivors.

DKW works driver Ewald Kluge from Dresden in the paddock in the 1930s with a political leader in the background as an interested visitor. It is hard to bear that the man in the center of the picture, smiling comfortably, was a racing fan and partly responsible for the death of the biker who died on April 11, 1943. But facts cannot be denied.