"He stood before me. He had a sparkling white uniform. Then he smiled, opened the door and was gone. "
This image has been carved into the memory of Reiner Calmund. It is a picture from 1953, when adopted by his biological father Charles in the pit house in Bruehl-Gruhl work of his family. Old from his wife and little Reiner, five years.
Karl said: "Zack, there it goes, we need to make money, here is now nothing to take, I do das" Then the young man went to war. And should never to return. 54 years later, Reiner Calmund wants to visit the grave of his father.
"I'll fly with my wife Sylvia, to my dead father," said Fortune's board on Tuesday, EXPRESS, "he is on a military cemetery in northern Vietnam. I know the series. I will find him. "
Charles was a young man, after the 2nd World War I had a family to feed. He joined the Foreign Legion. "Him drove the adventure," said Calmund in Beckmann, "he also had to see that we can somehow get by."
Karl was one of 12,000 foreign legionnaires who fought in North Vietnam for the colonial power France. At Dien Bien Phu, his unit was surrounded, he died under the heavy barrage of artillery.
"Four weeks later we received a letter," recalls Calmund and then he no longer wants to continue to talk. Because the pictures back then suddenly are there. Moments of the eternal sadness of a son who has his father never really met.
Calmund grew up in poverty. "We drove in a carriage through the village." He and his mother received a little orphan's pension. He moved to Frechen-Bachem in a working-class home of Rheinbraun. His grandfather, John lost his sight. His stepfather Sebastian Schaefer moved on Calmund and "loved me like you could love only a son."
The "beautiful but tough youth accounted for one Calmund workaholic. He worked on the assembly line, wore the same time from newspapers, to keep his family afloat. He became a coach, youth leader at Bayer and then built up from a small plant a football club empire, which caused a furore in Europe. It juggled millions, he was constantly in the spotlight of the show stage football - a career in the fast lane.
Suddenly, his life stands still. The past has caught up with the man with the immense power. He will only get rid of when he stands at the grave of his father.
Also of interest
This is the Foreign Legion
