My parents


Without my parents I would not have become the person that I am today. I owe them so much! They never gave up on me, they have always hoped and fought with me, that is the reason why my life could develop in such a positive way.

Here just some of the comments my parents made in trying to describe whatg they felt when I fell ill in 1958 and during my journey into my today’s self-determined life.

Father Ferdinand:

A healthy ‘chappy’ he was and very hot-tempered.

When polio struck him I was in – hm – what’s it called – well between Ulm and Constance. It doesn’t really matter. I received a phone call telling me the boy had fallen ill and that it was infantile paralysis.

I returned home immediately, my wife was having treatment in Berchtesgaden at the time. I arrived back home in the evening, the following day I rushed off to the hospital. I wasn’t allowed into his ward, through a small window pane in the door I saw him lying there. Yes, it was terrible to see him like that. It took me ages to grasp that he was totally paralysed .

We didn’t know what infantile paralysis was. We just couldn’t believe what was happening and we had the hope that everything would turn out well. Finally, it dawned on us what it meant and the realisation of the truth came to us as a huge shock.
When I remember back - no - I don’t want to think about it.

It was so awful to see him lie in that iron lung – so helpless ! Finally, we were told that he would not live longer than one or maximum two years. I couldn’t believe it and it took me years to come to terms with the situation and it was extremely difficult.

Mother Rita:
Yes, and Dr. Liehl gave us very little hope. She said she would not give him more than two years.

Well, we tried to avoid thinking about this as we felt we had to accept the terrible truth.

He was so courageous. It was his own initiative to try breathing outside the iron lung using frog-breathing for just minutes at a time, and we kept encouraging him to try to breathe so he can get out of this iron lung.

Years of living in a hospital rather spoilt him a little and when he returned home much had to change. He needed that change. I didn’t fool about much , I went into his room and said : “Good morning, time to get up!” opened the lung. In the hospital they took time preparing him for that by saying:” Are you awake? Do you want to get out? Shall we wash you?” and so on. I didn’t even start that sort of thing. He had to go to school and it wouldn’t have been possible to molly-coddle him like that.

I raised him like I would have done any ‘normal child’. Disabled or not – I thought- I need to treat him that way as he will have to stand his man in life later on. He simply had to become independent. After all – we don’t live forever, one never knows what’s in store for him and if one of us passes away or if we both do, he would stay behind and then he would have to know what to do.

Father Ferdinand:

One didn’t trust him to be able to do things because of his disability.

Mother Rita’s comment: Yes, YOU didn’t ! You must stick to the truth.

Father Ferdinand:

Me in particular, yes!
I worried so much about him, that something could happen in traffic and all that. But everything has turned out well. And today the wheelchair is part of his life.

For years he had been wanting to be independent. Today I understand that so much better than I did at the time. We always thought what is he without us? He cannot be without us. But he has jolly well proved to us that he can ! Credit to him!

Dr. Liel:

Ferdi came to us in 1958. He was amongst others with polio, but he needed to get into the iron lung as fast as possible. The paralysis proceeded extremely fast and one noticed that it was affecting his breathing. Speed to get him into the lung was vital, and it could be foreseen that he would have to stay in there for a long time. It was about one year and a half until we got him out for very small spells of time trying to work with his breathing, using little tricks to make him cooperate. As e.g. I always had with me a soft toy - a little monkey – to amuse him and to make him breathe a second. But out of the lung he got frightend and stopped breathing. Only a year and a half later we managed putting him on a special moving bed to keep him out of the lung for longer periods of time.
One can really say that we were some sort of a family in the hospital