Offboarding – final step. Abschied und Farewell. The circle closes.
The industrial parc at Höchst IPH is my professional home. I spent fourteen of my 32 years in the chemical industry here. The first six years and later another eight years as site director of the Celanese companies.
I got acquainted with IPH. It is close to my heart.
Yesterday I celebrated my final farewell to Celanese and my corporate professional life here, with a few months delay due to the pandemic.
Already at the end of last year 2021, I had several opportunities to say goodbye and thank all those who have always trusted me.
- Thanks to Ibn Sina team, especially to Jamal Al Obireed for the esteeming farewell set-up in Al-Jubail at that time.
- Thanks to the Amsterdam Office for the spontaneous farewell lunch late last year.
- Thank you Jim Conner for your wonderful words of friendship and all those who were present at the “class reunion” of my long-time companions, allies and friends at Freigut Frankfurt.
The little celebration yesterday took place in an expressionist building from the 1920s by architect Peter Behrens. I love this place. Under the sign of tower and bridge. Not because I’m a nostalgic of the old Hoechst AG times, but because modern architecture inspires me.
For me, Peter Behrens stands for the transition to modernity. Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, among others, worked in his architectural office almost simultaneously. And now I stood here in the Peter-Behrens-Bau, amazed at my own celebration in a play of light and colors and with different perspectives from so many angles.
And it is precisely these possibilities of perspective, the variations of points of view, that now give me courage for what is to come. I call it my sabbatical with purpose for orientation, to try out new things and – very important – with a lot of room in the calendar for spontaneity. New and exciting topics are already emerging.
A special thank you to everyone who was there yesterday and to Rita Bürger for the invitation to this celebration at this special place.
You have to know your past well in order to shape your future. Right?
