As Professor Wolfgang Neumann approaches his 65 th birthday and retirement looms, we should reflect on his long and successful career. His life and career have been influenced by three social systems, mostly constraining, but yielding enormous experiences, and as times change, the stages of his life looks like a causal loop.
Wolfgang Neumann was born on October 25 th , 1944 in GroΓwΓΆhlen (Sudeten). Neither the time nor the place of the circumstances was favorable: the Second World War turned against the aggressors, the front came closer, and expulsion became a mass phenomenon. The main impressions Wolfgang gives when he tells of his childhood -and Wolfgang is an excellent story teller! -the misery and misfortune of being a refugee in 1946 with his parents Alma (maiden name Rehnelt) and Adolf, and their difficulty of being responsible for five people. The first chance for safe haven was Neustrelitz (Mecklenburg), but there was no possibility for his father to find work as a building fitter. A more promising place was found in 1950 coming to the Berg-und Rosenstadt ("town of mining and roses") Sangerhausen. There his father could work as a blaster in pot-ash mining. Could this have sparked Wolfgang's interest in mineralogy and crystallography? Wolfgang was also influenced by two other events. Like most people in mining, his father received as partial wage payment a poor quality liquor called Deputatschnaps (also known as Kumpeltod) that was often traded for food, which was far better in reducing unhappiness and tragedy at the time. Not far from Sangerhausen, Martin Luther was born and died in Eisleben. Luther was the basis for new experiences of Wolfgang's catholic family tradition, and for Wolfgang's first career as an altar boy. Luther is also well-known for his 95 Theses in Wittenberg and thus the inventor of scientific poster sessions, which are fundamental for contemporary scientific presentation.