I came by terra: English Version

"Take people for what they are;

there are no others."

(Konrad Adenauer)

"You cannot undo the errors of the past;

Pangs of conscience bring no reward. Forget them!

Shape your future having learnt from experience."

(Bodo Tietz)

My thanks go to my wife Hilke for her loving support in looking after the family and assisting me during my work at terra over the past 46 years, and to my two sons Andreas and Michael, who have been running the company on their own with great success for many years.

(Bodo Tietz)

My thanks go to Lars Röper for helping me to write this book in prose form, for reading the documents of both a personal and business nature that I submitted to him, and for incorporating my own accounts of events, my own ideas and reports into its making.

www.biografie-meines-lebens.de

Table of contents

Prologue

How terra all began in 1978

Part I -

The (Pre-) war years 1938 – 1945

My parents

Germany in the year of my birth

My father´s illness

Gloomy days in Freyenstein

Berlin´s big department stores

A teddy: a lifelong companion

My grandparents

Our trips to Sauen during the war

The post-war period

The market stall – trading to survive

Two currencies / demarcation lines, 1948

By suburban train to the east of the city

Early commercial activities

Starting school in year 2

Herr Stange´s shirts

First Love of Music

Our Piano

Private tuition with Professor Einfeldt

Berlin´s culture scene after 1945 and my love of opera

Berlin´s opera houses after 1945

The „Berlin Blockade", 1948

The „Berlin Airlift", 1948

Sport in my Youth

The „Lichterfelde Sports and Gymnastics Club", 1951

„Victory in the 100 metres" - my time as an athlete

Tennis

Stringing machine for my sons

On skis

„Dad is on the phone again!"

My School Days

My mother´s new job (1951)

Opting for an apprenticeship

My apprenticeship at „Schenker" (1955 – 1957)

„From sack barrow to dinner jacket"

Waiter for a day

Dr. Grundke from the department for interzone traffic

My glossary for „Schenker Welt"

Great stir at training college

Our economic miracle

The German economy after 1945

Prosperity for all!

A booming economy!

My 20 years as an employee with ten different firms (1957 – 1978) and my first three years in self-employment

Accountant at Schenker (1959)

Insurance company von Mylke-Versicherungen (1959 -1960)

Of course I can dictate letters!

Deutsche Shell AG (= plc) (1960 – 1965)

The giant tank storage depot in Berlin – Spandau

The Berlin Wall

The great tidal storm flood in Hamburg

Shell House

Job hierarchy

How do you know?

Pet food factory Tierfeinkostwerke Verden (1965 – 1968) & Mr. Mars

Pet food for everyone!

Chappi for Algeria

My job as traffic manager

Birdseed or drugs?

First thoughts of going self-employed

The 1968 movement

Forwarders Spedition Koch (1968)

Head of dispatch at Ferrero (1968)

Bursped in Hamburg (1968 – 1969)

Willy-Bruhn and Sons (1969 – 1972)

My family

Hilke, Andreas and Michael

Going it alone for the second time?

Our lucky charm

Part II -

"I came by terra"

A slogan is here to stay!

Arabian Nights & The early years at terra

Triple-task Hilke

Registration numbers in a muddle

Herr Tietz

Growing up with terra

Work and time off

Our piano teacher

5 p.m., no drivers, no capital.

Be brief!

My parents are thieves!

21 years of dog

terra can do it

Happy birthday, 1981 - Baghdad in six days

The all-important teleprinter

The Red Telephone

The folding rule

The customs in Baghdad

Time for do-it-yourself

A tunnel in Romania

Roadworks

No diesel

Marketing the terra way

A full barrel of beer

Christmas trees for Teheran

The fair in Baghdad

My stand by the fair´s cloakroom

Niepolomice and the Mayor

The Islamic Revolution

German firms in Iran

25 refrigerator vehicles at the border to Iran

The Shah leaves the country, 1979

Khomeini in Teheran, 1979

The First Gulf War

Gridlock! 83 vehicles stuck at the Iraqi border

The orders stop coming in!

From the Orient to the Tropics

The first crane

Roll-on, roll-off! ships

Extra long, extra wide and extra high

Nasty business practices

Trainer and examiner

Going international is what counts!

Siberian trains

terra in Turkey

terra around the globe

On the Hoggar route across the desert

The boys have to be good! - My league table of drivers

Ninety cars bound for Prague

2,700 tanks

My sons at terra

Bush is a criminal!

Andreas´s first day of work at terra

-Michael´s first day of work at terra

Bonjour, Renault!

"terra´s silver jubilee"

My departure from terra (2003)

Two brothers & one company, „terra Handels- und Speditions GmbH"

"terra Holding GmbH"

The other firms

Tietz Immobilien GbR (2003)

"terra Real Estate GmbH" (2014)

"terra Holding GmbH"

39 years of terra – Bodo Tietz in his 78th year

Family and firm, how do you reconcile the two?

Amazing Grace and True Love

Our five grandchildren

A case of mistaken identity at the Moulin Rouge

A very special journey

Appendix

Our "terra crane exhibition"

A colourful picture gallery of the weekly work done at terra

Legal organizational set-up of terra Holding GmbH

A talk on terra given by Hilke Tietz

The prize-winning logbook of a terra driver with pictures

Annotations and sources

Prologue

How terra all began in 1978

Latin was hardly a subject I relished at school. And yet the Latin word for Earth was one that appealed to my wife and myself almost instantaneously. "terra: it had an international ring to it, sounded cosmopolitan and solidly respectable, somehow, for a word of only four letters. Would our company stand on solid ground? We had no way of knowing? But that was the name it was to have: terra Handels- und Speditions GmbH".

On 28th February, 1978, we had terra incorporated in the commercial register. Later that very same day I took a black exercise book, the kind used for schoolwork, out of the drawer and looked at its cover. The little white square on the front intended to bear a description of its contents was as empty as all the pages inside. With an air of nervous expectancy I took the ball-point pen and wrote the words "Current business transactions terra Handels- und Speditions GmbH" on the front of the black exercise book.

I paused for a moment and added another word underneath:

- items book -

Our orders, if indeed there were any, were to be recorded in that black exercise book. For the time being, however, I simply laid it down on the desk in the terra office which we had set up in our detached family home in Heidekamp in Buchholz. Hilke was sure to notice the little book at once when she entered the office.

Leaving the office, I threw a quick glance at the calendar: the year 1978 loomed large in solitary splendour above the many days still to come. Gloomy times in Germany. Conspirative dwellings had become the buzzword of the year; this was the term given to residential property that served todisguise its function as a base for terrorist or secret service activity.following.attacks carried out by the RAF terrorists and the kidnapping and murder of the President of the Employers´ Association in the autumn of 1977.

Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor at the time, always felt partly responsible for Schleyer´s death, having not given in to the RAF´s demands for the release of imprisoned terrorists.

1978 was also a most disapppointing year for German football. Only one win in six games and a 3-2 defeat by Austria to crown it all turned the World Cup in Argentina into the disgrace of Cordoba.

In February 1978 Hilke and I had just as little inkling of what was to happen that year as what the future held in store for terra. A few small orders came along, the first entries in our little items book. But I had not yet given up my employee status. Hilke and I both felt that the time was not yet ripe for that. The first company I had established a few years earlier had, after all, failed. Moreover, the presence ofour two wonderful boys, Andreas and Michael, was being felt more and more in our daily lives. And there was another baby on its way. We could not do without a certain degree of financial security.

After our customary family breakfast together one morning I grabbed the two boys, drove Michael to kindergarten and Andreas to school and set off for work to Hamburg. Hilke took care of all the chores that needed to be done in a family household before proceeding to the office. After all, "terra Handels- und Speditions GmbH" was now open for business.

Things were quiet, not a peep from the telephone on the desk in front of her. The only sound to be heard was the barely audible humming of the brand new teleprinter installed in the cellar. It wasn´t the hum that was troubling Hilke, but the fact that all our savings had gone into the procurement of the teleprinter. With that money we could almost have done a round-the-world trip. And what was wrong with simply carrying on as an employee? Everything was running smoothly.

Hilke looked once more at the silent telephone, got up and cast a sceptical glance at the teleprinter and then at the clock. Barely half an hour had passed since terra had opened its doors, summoning business from all corners of the earth. If things stayed this quiet, it was going to be a tormentingly long day and one that would earn the teleprinter looks of increasing reprehension. It wasn´t the teleprinter´s fault, of course, that we had plunged ourselves into this entrepreneurial adventure.

Hilke was just deciding whether to wash another machine-load of kids´ clothes when the ringing of the telephone immediately blotted out all thoughts of such. A smile spread across her face. That will be Bodo, she thought,calling to wish me a pleasant morning and to enquire about how is doing. She wouldn´t have much to report.

Professionally she waited for the second ring before lifting the receiver off its hook and placing it to her mouth and ear, thinking it would be me. "Good morning, terra Handels- und Speditions GmbH, Hilke Tietz speaking", she said, registering at once that she was not yet quite used to saying the word terra.

Good morning came the reply from a voice she didn´t recognize, giving Hilke a bit of a start. It wasn´t Bodo.

We are looking for someone, the man on the other end continued, to transfer trucks to Teheran. Can you do that?. Without even a second´s hesitation Hilke replied confidently, Of course we can, without actually knowing how terra would execute such an order. Feeling rather pleased with herself and somewhat surprised by the confident manner of her assurance, Hilke inquired , How many trucks are we talkng about?

15 trucks, the man replied.

Yes, said Hilke, emphasizing our competemce. "terra shall be glad to do that for you. When is it scheduled for? The caller was happy to give my wife further details and in no time at all the splendid teleprinter was humming away.merrily:

Order placed. 15 trucks for Iran. Wasn´t that something! It was on 21st April, 1978, that I proudly entered our first big order, item No.13, in the black exercise book.

Sometimes it is no more than a split second that determines whether you will get the order or not. Hilke had done a magnificent job! We had pulled it off. We hugged each other joyfully. What I didn´t tell my wife until later, however, was that I had already been in touch with the new client and had arranged the date and time of the call. Besides, I hadn´t been sure myself whether the order would in fact be placed at all. Things were now beginning in earnest. We were suddenly in urgent need of a convoy leader, fourteen more drivers and some big money to pay for the cost of the journey. A trip from Germany to Teheran was not exactly something a mere mortal did, driving such a distance in one and the same vehicle.

Herr Walter is the man we need, I said resolutely to Hilke. He´s the man to lead the convoy. I had got to know Herr Walter a few months earlier at the Bulgarian-Turkish border near Kapikule; a first-rate convoy leader and absolutely trustworthy. The last thing anyone wanted was for the trucks to disappear without trace en route from Germany to Iran. Even things such as that had been known to happen before in our line of business. It would deal the death-blow to terra before we had even had a chance to get off the ground.

And so I called Walter in Graz. He agreed. We met there. Walter had already assembled a first-class team of drivers. I happily shook his hand and gave him some banknotes for diesel and for the customs. Walter grinned. No worries, boss, he said, We´ll manage somehow, whereupon he climbed up into the cab and fifteen truck drivers started their engines. But I´m sure he could hear my heart pounding. The convoy set off from the spacious carpark by the cemetery in Graz. We had used this carpark on a number of occasions. There was enough room there for a lot of trucks to be parked impressively side by side. Such was the case one year on All Souls´Day when Catholic churchgoers drove up in their cars to remember the dead only to find the carpark by the cemetery occupied by dozens of trucks. Cursing this outrage in disbelief, they proceeded to comb the nearby streets in search of available parking space and were then obliged to carry the wreaths they had brought with them several hundred yards back to the cemetery. We were very sorry about this, of course, but the fact of the matter was that this carpark was the ideal meeting place for our convoys. In the years that followed we were more accommodating, of course.

During the days that followed the teleprinter buzzed into action from time to time when Walter reported on our convoy´s current position. But there were long spells of silence.

Will everything go to plan? Hilke and I looked at each other inquiringly, smiled and then nodded. Yes, it will! On the eighth day there was more humming in our office in the cellar: Walter, an excited Hilke exclaimed down the phone, They´ve arrived in Teheran! If the drivers in their enthusiasm for the Orient had driven a further 4,600 km east, they might have hit upon Reinhold Messmer and Peter Habeler who, in our company´s founding year, succeeded in being the first climbers to get to the top of Everest without the aid of breathing apparatus. And terra also managed the ascent on what air they had. For quite a while the journey to Teheran was to be our largest order. From then on, however, every few days I was making entries in our little, black exercise book: 1 truck/Lebanon, 2 trucks/Baghdad, 1 crane/Brest, 6 buses, 55 trucks.

Timeline

1938-2016/78 years

This book spans a period of nearly 80 years. Think of all that has happened during that time and what has influenced our lives. This TIMELINE will remind you. I have lived through it all.

1st April 1938: The Greater Hamburg Act §2 comes into force. Several boroughs and towns merge with the free imperial city of Hamburg to form the municipality to be known henceforth as Hansestadt Hamburg / 19th June 1938: Italy wins the 1938 football World Cup in France. / 1st October 1938: The Wehrmacht invasion of Sudetenland. / 27th October 1938: The German Empire orders the entire deportation of all jews of Polish nationality. The very same evening the Gestapo in Germany starts arresting people in public. This Poland campaign results in 17,000 jewish men women and children being deported to Poland. / 31st December 1938: The first ever civilian aircraft equipped with a pressure cabin, the Boeing 307 Stratoliner, makes a successful maiden flight. 20th March 1939: The USA protest in Berlin against the annexation of Bohemia and Moravia. / 1st September 1939: beginning of World War 2. / 17th September 1939: Taisto Mäki breaks the world record for the 10,000 metres, becoming the first man to run the distance in under 30 minutes (29:52.6 min). / 8th February 1940: establishment of the ghetto in Lodz (later Litzmannstadt), one of the biggest jewish ghettos of the NS period. / March 1940: Alfred Hitchcock´s first film, Rebecca, celebrates its premiere. / 1940: The Summer and Winter Olympics are not held on account of the war. / 28th July 1941:the Italian conductor, Riccardo Muti, is born in Naples. / 9th to 12th August 1941: following Germany´s invasion of the Soviet Union the heads of government of the USA, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and of Britain, Winston S. Churchill, meet for top secret talks on board the British battleship, HMS Prince of Wales. / 1st January 1942: further extension of the Reich´s motorway network is suspended. Almost 4,000 km have been completed. / 23rd August 1942: beginning of the German offensive on Stalingrad. / 21st September 1942: the Boeing B-29 Super Fortress makes its maiden flight. It was to become the largest and most effective bomber of the Second World War. / 2nd December 1942: first-ever generation of energy as a result of splitting the atom. / 2nd February 1943: Germany´s 6th army division also surrenders in the northern basin near Stalingrad. Around 90,000 soldiers are taken prisoner by the Soviets./ 31st August 1943: the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper ceases publication following a decree issued by Adolf Hitler, who had been angered by an article which had appeared in the spring of that year. / 20th Novenber 1943: from 20th to 23rd November 1943 the Tarawa atoll is scene of some of the heaviest fighting between Japan and the USA in the war in the Pacific. / 1st January 1944: final independence for Lebanon and Syria. / 28th January 1944: The Red Army liberates the city of Leningrad which had been surrounded by the Wehrmacht. / 18th December 1944: first editioo of the French daily newspaper, Le Monde. / 1944: Oswald Theodore Avery proves that DNA, not proteins, is the carrier of genetic information. / 30th January 1945: the cruise liner Wilhelm Gustloff is sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13 on 30th January 1945 off the Pomeranian coast, killing an estimated 9,000 people and making it one of the worst disasters in maritime history in terms of the cost to human life. / 12th April 1945: the end of President Franklin D. Roosevelt´s term in office (begun on 4th March 1933). His successor is Harry S. Truman (until 20th January 1953) / 8th May 1945: end of World War Two. / 6th August 1945: US atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima. More to follow on 9th August on Nagasaki. / 17th January 1946: The UN Security Council convenes for the first time. / 9th April 1946: the Berlin Institute of Technology acquires a new Humanities Faculty and is re-establisehd under the name Berlin University of Technology. / January/Febrary 1947: one of the coldest winters in living memory in central Europe (permanent sub-zero temperatures of around -20° Celsius) / 1st March 1947: The IMF begins its work. / 5th August 1947: The Mountbatten plan comes into effect. / India gains independence. First head of state is Jawaharlal Nehru. / 18th August 1947: the first post-war export fair in Hanover is opened. / 30th October 1947: The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is concluded; it comes into effect on 1st January 1948. / 30th January 1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu nationalist. / 14th February 1948: in Germany´s western zones the ban on the production of aluminium is lifted. / 3rd April 1948: US President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, 5.3 billion dollars are made available, around 550 million of this sum is allocated to Germany´s western zones. / 7th April 1948: The World Health Organization WHO is founded. / 8th August 1948: start of the 1st post-war football league season. Champions: 1. FC Nuremberg. / 18th September 1948: Stirling Moss wins the first race at Britain´s Goodwood Circuit on a 500 cc motorcycle. / 7th October 1948: the Citroen 2-CV, the duck, makes its first public appearance in Paris. / 23rd May 1949: the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany is enacted. / 15th September 1949: Konrad Adenauer becomes first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (to remain in office until 16th October 1963). / 7th October 1949: The German Democratic Republic is founded by appointment of the 2nd German People´s Council of the Soviet occupied zone as the Provisional People´s Chamber. Otto Grotewohl is elected first prime minister. / 1949: the death penalty is enforced for the last time in Germany. /