Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYto it than just normal childhood curiosity. Neither fairy tales, folk sagas,pirate tales nor adventure stories could inspire me to read. At the beginningof the third school year my reading skills were still so bad that everyonebecame alarmed. At that time, however, my mother had an inspirationthat was my salvation. For my eighth birthday she gave me thebook Luft, Wasser, Wärme, Schall: Physik für Kinder (Air, Water, Heatand Sound: Physics for Children), and that caused the breakthrough!Finally I had a book that did not waste my time with make believe, butrather offered answers and explanations for questions that I had longbeen asking. Since that time, there has been no stopping or turning backfor me. Since then I have wanted to read whatever literature I could get,in the way of natural science and technology. My greatest treasure soonbecame my constantly growing collection of editions of the Tesloff SeriesWas ist Was (What’s What). The small town in which I grew uphad a tiny bookshop, and the town library had just one single shelf ofbooks on technology and the natural sciences. This put me on starvationrations.During my childhood paleontology, astronomy and meteorology becamemy favorite subjects. At age 13 I began my own continual weatherrecordings three times a day, because I had dreams of someday becominga meteorologist with my very own weather station. Thus after a yearof uninterrupted measurements, I was able to calibrate my barometer tothe average air pressure.By coincidence – I found a subscription coupon lying in the dirt – Ilearned about a new magazine around the time of my 14th birthday.That was PM – Peter Moosleitners interessantes Magazin (Peter Moosleitner’sinteresting magazine), a popular science magazine on a levelwhich was easy to digest. At an age when other teenagers were readingBravo 66 and devouring Rock’n Roll magazines, I was urging my motherwith feverish enthusiasm to let me have this popular scientific magazine.It remained my constant companion until the beginning of myuniversity studies; and in my whole life, I have never had a copy ofBravo in my hand.Shortly after I had turned 15, we moved to the city of Remscheid,whose city library had many shelves of books on the natural sciences.From the beginning I felt I was in paradise. I began borrowing specializedscientific works in my favorite fields, among them at one point66A leading German tabloid youth magazine, see www.bravo.de.53