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Reports<br />
18<br />
60 years ago Werner Hagenbucher was on<br />
a business trip in Germany and while he<br />
was there Buderus offered him the chance<br />
of representing them in the field of cast<br />
iron pipes. This could be good, he thought,<br />
and on his return to Switzerland he lost no<br />
time in carrying out a study of the market.<br />
Demand had built up during the war<br />
years and the study showed him that the<br />
suppliers in his home country were unable<br />
to meet demand. Werner Hagenbucher<br />
made a quick decision and went to the Zurich<br />
gasworks and got a trial order for 0<br />
meters of DN 00 socketed pipes. When<br />
he went back to Wetzlar for further negotiations<br />
he took this order with him. The<br />
management at Wetzlar clearly found this<br />
such a convincing argument that, despite<br />
his unfamiliarity with the industry and the<br />
modest personal funds that he had, they<br />
made him their representative. This laid<br />
the foundations for TMH and for the collaboration<br />
between the two companies.<br />
The agreement was signed by Buderus on<br />
1 October 1948 and was countersigned<br />
by Hagenbucher on 1 December.<br />
On the 60th anniversary, to celebrate the<br />
6 0 y e a r s o f H a g e n b u c h e r . . .<br />
means 60 years of working well together!<br />
occasion in style, there was a get-together<br />
in Wetzlar. Ulrich Päßler, Managing Director<br />
of BGW, gave a witty celebratory<br />
speech. This speech, delivered with a few<br />
winks and in tones of affection, showed<br />
the special relationship between the two<br />
companies better than any listing of facts<br />
and figures could:<br />
“An occasion like today has to be celebrated<br />
properly. And the speech has to do justice<br />
to the occasion. This is a challenge. The<br />
speech should be fairly serious but not too<br />
formal, and it should bring out the historical<br />
context of the occasion and its economic,<br />
scientific and cultural significance to an adequate<br />
degree.<br />
The question I have therefore devoted my<br />
speech to answering is this ‘What do Shirley<br />
Bassey and TMH have in common?’ That is<br />
the question I would like to get to bottom of<br />
over the next few minutes. To do this – and<br />
it is certainly something we can hardly avoid<br />
on a day like this – we need to look a long<br />
way back into the past: to, let us say, 1948.<br />
In 1948 Shirley Bassey was 11 years old and<br />
a schoolgirl living in Cardiff in Wales. I am<br />
afraid though, that knowing this will not get<br />
us very much further for the moment. In that<br />
same year of 1948, somewhere else in Europe,<br />
that is in Switzerland - and I will gladly<br />
admit that at the time neither Wales nor<br />
Switzerland were really part of Europe – a<br />
far-sighted businessman was founding his<br />
young company. His name was Hagenbucher<br />
and it was no accident that he would later<br />
be the father of Thomas Hagenbucher who is<br />
our guest of honour today. So, Hagenbucher<br />
senior was so far-sighted that at once, that<br />
very same year, he laid the foundations of a<br />
lasting collaboration with another company.<br />
And because he was so far-sighted and because<br />
he was aware of what would be his<br />
lasting legacy, it was not just his son that he<br />
would later name after himself but also his<br />
company, the Hagenbucher company.<br />
The other company was no longer quite so<br />
young by the way – it had already seen a<br />
good 200 years go by. It was called Buderus<br />
and had, for just as long, had its company<br />
headquarters in Wetzlar. There are times<br />
when I even have my doubts whether Wetzlar<br />
is in Europe. These days, Hesse and its<br />
already proverbial Hessian political condi-
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