ATLAS 06 english

ATLAS

THE WORLD IN MOTION: THE GEBRÜDER WEISS MAGAZINE

Drive RAINER GROOTHUIS

City in the sand EVA MENASSE

Everything people do HEIKE DIERBACH

Food comes first …

MALTE LEHMING

Short ode to envy HARALD MARTENSTEIN

‘I’m CEO, Bitch!’

Plus: Skateboards and racecars, jellyfish and rockets

ISSUE 06

‘Strength

does not come from physical capacity.

It comes from an indomitable will.’

Mahatma Gandhi

For many years ornithologists believed that the ­bar-headed goose lacked the strength to reach high altitudes during flight. They assumed that the birds were simply lifted to great heights by air currents sweeping up from the valleys. A team of researchers has refuted this theory: they observed the migratory birds soaring upwards during the windless night and morning hours, rather than riding the afternoon ­thermals. That is how the geese cross the Himalayas which separate their winter domiciles and breeding grounds. Beating wings are more efficient in the cold and denser morning air, allowing the species to reduce its energy needs to a minimum. Bar-headed geese also fly as low as possible over the mountains so that they can breathe the oxygen-rich air close to the ground, yet they can still reach an average height of 5,000 metres, completely under their own steam.

‘There

are no shortcuts to any place worth going.’

Beverly Sills

Aristotle, the spiritual father of scientific observation, believed that common redstarts turned into robins when they disappeared at the start of autumn. In ­reality this small flycatcher simply spends a long time in its winter quarters: the first common redstarts leave their breeding grounds in Europe by the end of July, with the majority following suit by the start of October. As ‘long-haul’ migrants, they cross the Alps, the Mediterranean and the north African desert – ­covering between 6,000 and 8,000 kilometres. ­Traditionally a ‘solo flyer’, the common redstart always travels at night. During the day it stops to rest and find food. It does not return to its breeding grounds until mid-April.

4 ATLAS

‘ The

moment you set your mind on something, many new things come your way.’

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many paths lead to Africa, but most storks choose between two: the route to western Africa via France, Spain and the Straits of Gibraltar, and the route to eastern or even southern Africa via Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. The course they take is determined by where they were born, with the dividing line running straight through Germany. Storks born on one side migrate westwards to their winter habitats, while the others head eastwards. But whether they go west or east, they fly far more slowly to their ­winter homes than on their return journeys in the spring – when they are spurred on by the instinct to breed.

Having started out in retail sales, Angelika J채ger has spent the past 18 years driving a truck for Gebr체der Weiss Wolfurt. Nowadays she can usually be found transporting steel strips to customers in the Vorarlberg region.

Having long overcome her initial shyness, Angelika now has no problems holding her own against male colleagues. Away from work she contents herself with lower hp output, riding proudly across the fields on her own horse.

E

very morning, there comes that point: you kick off the bedclothes, clean your teeth, ­ egin your day. Will it be like any other day? b Or will it be special? What is it, ultimately, that drives us? This sixth issue of ATLAS centres around drive and the things that drive us. Is drive more than a component that powers a machine?

We look at envy and resentment, engines, owls and rockets, meet James Bond, go skateboarding in Afghanistan and explore the universe of ­human needs.

We thank you all for your interest and feedback – they are what drive us to present a different view of the world of mobility in every issue of ATLAS .

Best wishes Gebrüder Weiss

the new tube

The Hyperloop * is coming to Europe. Slovakia is planning Europe’s first ultra-fast rail service based on the designs of the U. S . billionaire and visionary Elon Musk. Work is due to get underway in 2020.

Speed of scheduled services between Bratislava and Vienna, and Bratislava and Budapest:

1,200 km / h

* See the report in ATLAS 02 / 2014.

Source: Die Presse

planned

delivered

Georgia is planning a new deep water port in Anaklia.

Construction is expected to begin at the end of 2016.

60 truck journeys were needed to move two complete chair lift systems from the Doppelmayr Seilbahnen GmbH plants in Wolfurt, Austria, and the Russian industrial hub Samara to the Georgian skiing resort of Bakuriani.

1,000 t

2.5 billion USD

Chair lift system components

Project costs

= 200

African bull elephants

6,400

Jobs in the port when it is fully operational

400 ha Area

Source: Business Wire

Source: Gebrüder Weiss

dispatched

ALTERNATIVE DRIVE 1

Volume of consignments transported by GW in 2015

The technology company Linde, which has been campaigning for the expansion of hydrogen fuel technology for years, has presented a hydrogen fuel cell bicycle that will compete with modern pedelecs. Hydrogen technology is unbeatable when it comes to everyday benefits and the environment: refuelling is very quick, it has a very high range, and there are no batteries with short service lives to recycle.

Air freight

DPD system in Austria

50,600 tonnes

41.3 million parcels and packages

Gebrüder Weiss Parcel Service

25.6 million parcels and packages

Sea freight

138,000 standard TEU containers

Source: Gebrüder Weiss

BREAKDOWN OF TRANSPORTATION T YPES USED FOR GOODS IN AUSTRIA

Rail

27.2 %

Road (foreign vehicles)

26,1 %

Road (Austrian vehicles)

22 %

Pipeline

21.8 %

Sea 5

2.9 %

ALTERNATIVE DRIVE 2

Source: Handelsblatt, Data for 2014

EXCAVATED

Tonnes of rock removed during the construction of the Gotthard Tunnel in the Alps since 1999, in millions:

28

Number of people expected to pass through the tunnel daily from December onwards:

15,000 Source: Rheinische Post

Satellites need fuel to maneoeuvre, and this fuel has to be transported into space. To save costs, European and American companies are therefore developing fully-elec­ trical sat­ellites. Boeing, which is currently leading the way, has already produced two. By contrast the new generation of satellites built by SES , the European satellite operator, is not due to be ready before 2017.

The world in motion:

Rainer Groothuis

susanne schick

City in the sand

49

10

anne harenberg

Sheikh, rattle and roll!

24

Ace agent in free fall

eva menasse

Everything people do well naturally

52

Update

27

perspectives

heike dierbach

Food comes first …

How we deal with inhibitions and reluctance

55

28

Rockets and owls, evolution and bionics

30

An interview with Roland Gander

‘The final mile counts more than most.’

32

38

malte lehming

Short ode to envy

57

family fun 60 Balloon-powered pirate ship susanne Schick

Skateistan

Well put

62

miriam Holzapfel

68

Micha’s old lady

40

imke borchers

In distinguished company

46

Orange network

harald martenstein

‘I’m CEO, Bitch!’

70

‘Dubai: poverty and pageantry, gold-diggers

city in t

and money-mongers, ideas, innovations, illusions’

he sand

12 city in the sand

reportage: Rainer Groothuis

T

he abras chug across Dubai Creek: simple boats built of rough-hewn wood that ferry some 160,000 people across the river daily, connecting Bur Dubai and Deira. Their passengers are a multi-ethnic mix of all ages. The seagulls who have migrated from northern Europe to escape the inclement weather wrangle over every morsel. Bur Dubai and Deira, the two old districts on the lower banks, sound and smell like the Arabia of our European dreams. Street peddlers line the back streets of the souqs and cajole customers, ­extolling the virtues of watches, handbags, pashminas, cashmere and more, plus the items after which the individual souqs are named. It goes without saying that everything is ‘original’, ‘wonderful’ and ‘handmade’.

The air is redolent with the scents of coriander, cinnamon, cumin and curry in sundry combinations; of dried wildflowers and herbs, of the best saffron from Persia and the heavenly fragrance of incense and myrrh – the spice souq tantalises and tickles the senses. You get accosted from all sides, but never harassed. ‘You want the best curry in town, boss? I make you the best price.’ The gold souq is all aglitter. Dreams are hawked here, bartered – an ornate, 24-carat breast ornament is the classic family gift to the bride-to-be. These neckpieces stay in the possession of the women: dowry, life insurance and ­pension contribution rolled into one.

The souqs are home to the Arabic-Levantine bazaar culture that amasses and showcases wares from around the world.

The sellers are reputed to be foxes who drive a hard bargain.

Haggling over a price is both a sport and a pleasure, accom­ panied by much merriment. The dealer is invariably on the breadline, has at least 24 children and a bad heart; it’s his very existence at stake here, woe is me … but if you take the first price named, you lose face.

city in the sand 13

Perched out on the banks of the creek are dhows, some an­cient-looking. Cargo consignments are being loaded and unloaded. The dhows have been sailing around the Arabian peninsula, eastern Africa, India and distant China for cen­ turies; Sinbad the Sailor was their most storied captain. Arab warriors conquered the island of Rhodes aboard their decks as early as 654 A. D., and in 711 they sailed all the way to ­Gibraltar. In the Middle Ages, traders used these vessels to crisscross the entire Indian Ocean, harnessing the monsoon winds that change direction every six months. From November to May they exploited the southwesterly wind known as kaskasi, and from May to November the northwesterly kusi.

In their wake, the dhows brought goods and traditions, ideas and new ways of life. Sailors and maritime traders settled on the coast of eastern Africa, building trading centres and establishing the new Afro-Arabic Swahili culture that was shaped by

‘ These traders, dockworkers, sailors and captains are links in a long cultural chain spanning generations.’ the wind and the sea, by trade and Islam. The word ‘swahili’ means ‘coast’ in Arabic. Beginning in southern Somalia, the Swahili coast stretches 2,800 kilometres along the Kenyan and ­Tanzanian seaboards, all the way to northern Mozambique, where the monsoon ends. ‘Waswahili’ are the people who inhabit these coastal regions and ‘Kiswahili’ is their language, which ultimately became the lingua franca throughout east­ ern Africa: an exciting chapter in a marvellous book of world history written by civilization, trade and logistics.

These traders, dockworkers, sailors and captains are links in a long cultural chain spanning generations. Although the longshoremen who load and unload on land – like the lowly sailors on board – are barely able to scrape out a living for their families, they still regard themselves as part of a revered tradition. Their demeanour is relaxed, friendly and confident; they are proud of their work. Nowadays the long-stemmed vessels are propelled by rumbling diesel engines and not the wind.

Yet they ply the same routes, and dhows are still built in Dubai, Umm al-Qaiwain and Abu Dhabi.

If you gaze east from here, you will see a modern-day ­facade glittering in the sun: the twin towers of Dubai. Rolex has arrived, and with it the 12 million tourists who visit this place every year, this dream-become-city of anything-goes, where there is so much to marvel at in its architecture and

top: Crossing the Creek in an abra, one of Dubai’s water taxis below: An entrance to the spice souq on Al Abra Street

15

View along Dubai Creek – a clash of the ages

16 city in the sand

offerings; a city which has sprung up out of nowhere in the past 20, 25 years. And should you become surfeited by the omnipresent optimism, drunk from the dizzying display of progress and the quest to earn money, you can simply take time out on one of the beautiful beaches – or drive into the desert.

Camels and convertibles

The coast of the Gulf was settled more than 4,000 years ago.

Dubai itself was not established until 1833, when it was declared an independent emirate by Sheikh Maktoum bin Bouti.

Back then it was a settlement consisting of palm-leaf huts. The people engaged in fishing, trading and pearl-diving. Japan’s introduction of cultured pearls on the world’s markets in 1930 marked the end of this lucrative business. Black gold was ­discovered in 1966 and its extraction commenced in 1969.

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven states in the south-east of the Arabian peninsula. With 2.2 million residents in just 3,885 km, Dubai has now overtaken Abu Dhabi as the most densely populated of the emirates.

With the seventh-largest oil reserves on the planet and the most advanced economy in the Middle East, the UAE is one of the richest countries in the world – the perfect launchpad for Ohoud Khalfan Al Roumi. Since February she has been a member of the newly-appointed cabinet of Prime Minister ­Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum – as the Minister of State for Happiness.

persian gulf

united arab emirates

Qatar

1 2 3

Abu Dhabi

4 5

Sharjah

6 7

Ras al-Khaimah

6

Ajman

2

Fujairah Dubai

Dubai

5

3

7 4

Umm al-Quwain Abu Dhabi

1 oman saudi arabia

Capital

Official language

Abu Dhabi

Arabic

Inhabitants

Population density

9.3 million

106.4 per km 2

(of which 85 % are non-UAE citizens)

Average annual per capita income

46,791 USD

city in the sand 17

In 1971 the seven emirates Abu Dhabi (‘Father of the gazelle’), Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Quwain (‘Mother of two ­powers’), Ras al-Khaimah (‘Headland of the small huts’) and ­Fujairah joined to form the United Arab Emirates. The fledgling UAE boasted a population of just 180,000 and its very own currency, the dirham, which succeeded the Indian rupee.

Encompassing some 80,000 square kilometres, the United Arab Emirates is roughly the size of Austria. Abu Dhabi, which sits on the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves, comprises some 80 % of its land mass. This, the richest emirate, has traditionally played the role of financier within the federation; Dubai is its most important commercial centre.

Whoever is sheikh of Abu Dhabi is simultaneously the ­president of the UAE ; the prime minister and defence minister hail from Dubai. The Maktoum family has been ruling Dubai for decades, supplying an unbroken stream of sheikhs.

Notwithstanding their political union, each of the emirates maintains its own administration and its own Islamic court that rules according to Sharia law in family and inheritance matters.

Their constant competition spawns phenomena that are utterly overblown by European standards: two global ports can be

left: View of the marina from a ‘leaf’ of the Palm Jumeirah below: Buildings lining Sheikh Zayed Road

18 city in the sand

found within 80 kilometres of each other; soon there will be four international airports within a 150-kilometre radius.

Dubai’s evolution as a global hot spot did not pick up steam until the 1970s, when the city’s signature trend began to emerge. Bigger, better, further, higher, faster, more expensive.

Buildings, roads and institutions from that era are now branded ‘old’.

The Emiratis – those who were born in the country and / or have its citizenship – are now better off. The Europeans (including some 32,000 Germans and Austrians) and Americans

‘Dubai’s

evolution as a global hot spot did not pick up steam until the 1970s, when the city’s signature trend began to emerge.’ are well off. Still: four-fifths of all foreigners hail from countries in which the quest for employment is a matter of survival.

They come from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Thailand, the ­Phil­ippines and elsewhere. They are fleeing the inescapable impoverishment of their fatherlands. And they earn enough to send uncounted millions and millions of dollars back home each year, financing educational opportunities for their children, supporting parents and grandparents. They pay the price of that livelihood with their own living conditions: housing at the outskirts of the city in tiny two-room flats filled floor-toceiling with six, seven, eight bunk beds, commuting between ‘home’ and work on dilapidated buses. These are the people who serve and clean, who toil to maintain the restaurant, tourism and construction industries. These are the people who do the back-breaking work; blood, sweat and tears is their lot.

They are ‘client-minded’ in the truest sense of the phrase.

‘Do buy’ Very little grows green and the weather is sizzling hot many months of the year, but there is one dependable source of solace: the shopping mall. An air-conditioned, gargantuan souq, a paradise for consumers, an adventure and historical park, a popular ersatz for a life that is virtually impossible outdoors.

Eight months of the year, the average temperatures top 30 °C; in July and August they can hit 50 °C. The ‘Dubai Shopping Festival’ is currently underway.

Every­where signs beckon Sale! – time to shop until you drop.

By early afternoon, crowds are already milling languidly around in the malls, where soothing muzak provides a backdrop to promotion campaigns. Every mall offers its own brand of ex­­peri­ence. Like every other Mall, Ibn Battaua Mall includes a ‘Fun City’, a large play area with an amusement arcade for children that boasts the entire gamut of electronic

city in the sand 19

games. Everything is chirping, blinking, honking, buzzing: fun for young and old alike. Dubai Mall, at the foot of Burj Khalifa, covers 350,000 square me­tres and has 1,200 shops and 30 million visitors per year, making it currently the largest of the malls. Here you ­can find the world’s largest aquarium – located at a shopping venue. Other malls offer waterfalls, slides or – you guessed it – the largest indoor ski arena on the planet.

During this year’s festival, Disneyland is hosting an ice and snow extravaganza, much to the squealing delight of countless children: outdoors, mind you, where the air temperature is 25 °C. Incidentally: Dubai made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with its New Year’s firework spectacle.

People hailing from 160 nations work in and for Dubai: 160 differently accented versions of English are spoken, no two the same. There is the Esperanto-English of our age, mixed with the singsong of many corners of the world. Speech is pitched higher than usual; many end syllables are swallowed in a smile.

Every consonant sounds like it’s exploding against the speaker’s teeth. All men are ‘Boss’ or ‘Sir’.

At the prescribed times, the music is interrupted in the malls and the sprechgesang call of the muezzin to prayer adds a religious dusting to the retail mecca. But the bustle and hustle soon resumes.

When the shopping spree is finally over, the tour is rounded out in the bistros, restaurants and international eateries. In terms of cuisine as well, there is nothing that can’t be found here. Starting at 6 pm and repeated every thirty minutes, a light show is staged at the foot of Burj Khalifa: water fountains, multi-coloured projections and 6,500 lights dance to the sounds of Arabian and international pop music. It is an ‘event’ that truly lives up to its name.

Apropos ‘tour’: No one walks in Dubai. You drive your own car, taxis are cheap, the new metro is up and running. Bicycles are practically non-existent, even motorcycles are rare – the traffic is much too dangerous. People’s driving licenses are from so many different countries that there is no unifying code to govern the rules of the road. Many are unnerved and dis­ oriented by the traffic, causing them to make mistakes – and not just on the five to seven-lane motorways. Not to mention that coolness demands you drive with your smartphone glued to your ear, which is naturally prohibited and carries a fine.

The Ocean Beach Club | A typically colourful dhow Traditional gowns, modern cars | After shopping until you drop at the mall, most people take a taxi home | One generation, two attitudes | Dreams of riches in the gold souq Evening amusements at Dubai Marina | Aldi? In a souq!

20 city in the sand

‘The Centre of Now’ Dubai is a pledge, the promise of a future in a world that is perhaps not perfect. But it is modern, it works and it seeks to amaze with a never-ending pageant of grand new projects. Its height of 500 metres makes Residence Tower the world’s ­tallest residential building. Dubai boasts the most gigantic shopping malls; built in just five years, Burj Khalifa (830 metres)

‘Dubai

also holds the promise of ­unlimited technological horizons.’ is the highest structure in the world; Burj Al Arab is the only sev­en-star hotel on earth. An enormous Legoland theme park is currently in the making, along with a ‘Culture Village’ ­complete with an opera house. The cinemas are among the big­gest in the world. Staggering prices are paid for the comeliest camel and the most graceful falcon. Dubai strives to be syn­ onymous with superlatives. Corporation tax is unheard of; health insurance does not exist, nor do unions. Freedom of the press is a matter of debate. You can get many foreign TV stations, and the Internet is free with the exception of rigorously censored pornographic sites.

Ideas and innovations are in high demand. There is a need for engineers, and for money. Decisions are taken by Sheikh Maktoum and his advisors: civic involvement and time-consuming consensus-reaching would be anathema to the envisaged developments. The future has to be unusual, different, hitherto unseen. Old habits cannot be a factor in this equation.

What is more, these projects are trumps in a global player’s hand and the stakes in this game are high: international attention and recognition.

Dubai also holds the promise of unlimited technological horizons. Nature becomes a variable that can basically be moved and modified at will. What was once the desert ­becomes a series of canals; where the earth was barren, it is made fertile. Where there are no islands – but islands would be good – they are created by land-fill. Every blade of grass, every tiny bush, every palm tree is a triumph won against the sun: the perforated black irrigation hoses are ubiquitous. The desert has metamorphosed into an oasis-in-progress and its evolution is being driven by an immense effort. Per-capita water usage is 450 litres per day, compared to 130 in Germany.

And to defy the heat, there are now some 1,000 air-conditioned bus stops (!) in the burgeoning city.

The open-ended equation summing up the future does not foresee every variable. When the global financial crisis of 2008 / 2009 reached Dubai, bankruptcy threatened the state holding company. Only a billion-dollar bailout loan from big brother Abu Dhabi saved the emirate and its key plans. Many construction projects from those years are mere skeletons today, replete with rusting cranes, while new roads and whole

city in the sand 21

districts are mushrooming in the desert. In the meantime, UAE has become the ninth-most-expensive country in the world. Pundits ponder a possible blow out of the construction and property sectors; even the six-star tourism has lagged behind forecasts now that the Russians aren’t coming. But international capital does not like surprises and demands protection; it would rather flow incognito. The government is all too ready to comply and restore order. At the end of the day, fresh funds were and are flowing into the city, currently fuelled by billions drawn from Nigerian oil. And the rents are rising.

Tempo, fashion, luxury Life here is always about taking the next step. If you can do that, you can stay in the game: if you’re able to do more, or hail from Europe or the US , you can work the system and pocket a good profit. Dubai is not the place for people who seek peace but really mean quiet. If one construction site is silent, another rises clamorously in its stead. The pace is fast and exhausting.

You need to keep plodding and prodding things up to speed.

‘Dubai

is not the place for people who seek peace but really mean quiet.’

Crime is virtually nonexistent, alcohol is theoretically prohibited and prostitution utterly unknown. And if something is prohibited, it simply doesn’t exist. Accidents that take place under the influence of alcohol lead to deportation – but due to the damage, not its cause. Every Friday the international ­hotels fill up with a multinational clientele for brunch, i. e. the chance to partake of beer, wine and other beverages. For many, this is the weekly holiday, celebrated with songs and games, women and wine: the weekend, day one. And if you’ve lived in Dubai for any length of time, you know the clubs in which ‘very nice women’ invite guests for a bite to eat and a dance.

Of the circa 2.1 million inhabitants, only some 300,000 are Emirati and of these about 70,000 dollar millionaires. Freedom means a free economy, unfettered luxury and unlimited fashion: the freedom of birthright.

The Emiratis are also the ones who drive the most appropriate cars along the Croisette of Dubai, Jumeirah Beach Boulevard. Even at 11 pm the Bentleys, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Corvettes and supersize SUV ’s parade along on show, bumper to bumper. A Porsche would be too ordinary in this line-up, an E-Class Mercedes basically just your boring compact.

Although the cult of personality here is far removed from the North Korean or former Chinese practice, the three lead-

top: Outside the Sheikh Saeed Maktoum House below: Above the rooftops of Deira

22 city in the sand

ing sheikhs are still omnipresent in photographs and artwork: they greet guests in the hotel lobbies, they smile down from little flag garlands at the souqs and big banners on the motorways. Yet Sheikh Muhammad bin Raschid Al Maktoum, who has been in power since 2006, generally dispenses with bodyguards. The enlightened modern-day monarch checks for

‘Unlike

in other Muslim countries, head veiling are not compulsory.’ compliance with the state-mandated prices for basic foodstuffs – on surprise solo visits to supermarkets.

Unlike in other Muslim countries, head veiling is not compulsory. In Dubai, in contrast to Saudi Arabia, women drive cars as a matter of course. And, in other respects, they don’t resemble Adam’s rib either. Educational and training opportunities for women have expanded significantly, changing relations between the sexes. The minimum age of marriage has risen from 15 to 20 and is still increasing. For young women, having the latest smartphone is just as natural as wearing trendy bracelets and gold jewellery, while pumps, high-heels and brand-name trainers peek out from under their black abayas. And contrary to Western expectations, it’s not always a given that the man wears the trousers in the new Arab relationships. Stray glances from deep, near-black eyes bespeak self-confidence, and for a long time now, women are not the only ones pushing the strollers. She who voluntarily dons a scarf or an abaya is professing her Islamic faith – and sending the self-assured signal that she is married and ‘off the market’ – and she sits in the cafés with her girlfriends exuding the same ease as the men with their mates.

As was once the case in Europe, many men are initially at a loss. They continue to play with their outsized cameras, their outsized wristwatches, their outsized cars … Dubai is the world’s playground for lads on the lookout for fresh drive, ­motivation and self-image.

Dawning of a new day There is no true yesterday, for every today is already tomorrow, even the day after; the next horizon is already announcing its arrival. Dubai will never be finished, will never finish.

This is perhaps why the Emiratis so highly treasure what little they salvaged in terms of culture, history and custom in this hyper fairy tale from Arabian Nights. The camel races are society events of a magnitude that makes Ascot look like a

Construction continues as the Burj Khalifa pierces the night sky like a needle

city in the sand 23

small-town theatre performance. The most photogenic camel is worth hundreds of thousands, a multi-day festival is devoted to the humble date. Falconry, traditionally a prerogative of important men serving even more important men, is ranked up there with the Dubai World Cup, the world’s most expensive horse race which celebrates a tradition while cultivating a status symbol.

The Maktoums have made Dubai independent from oil; only a mere 5 % of state proceeds stem from the black gold.

Plastic production is being subsidised, and other focuses ­include maintaining manufacturing and expanding air and ocean freight with a new port and an additional airport, ­reinforcing Dubai’s role as a dynamic hub for trade, finance and services between Europe, Asia and Africa. New free-trade

‘Tomorrow

will sparkle even more brightly than today.’ zones are in planning. Dependence on foreign energy is redu­ ced by solar parks. Until 2020, Abu Dhabi will also be building four atomic power plants on its border with Saudi Arabia.

Sheikh Muhammad bin Raschid Al Maktoum continues to promote the construction and property sector: Dubai is slated to become the top venue for the jet-set life and mega sports events – a meeting point for the wealthy and beautiful, a ­centre of luxury-segment tourism and the ultimate shopping desti­ nation. Not least as Dubai will be hosting the 2020 EXPO and is investing billions to present itself as the Arab city of unlimited opportunities: Tomorrow will sparkle even more brightly than today.

Rainer Groothuis, born in 1959 in Emden / East ­Friesland, is managing partner at the communications agency ‘Groothuis’. www.groothuis.de With sincere thanks to Anne Mittag, Jürgen Hammerer, Marcel Meyer and Vojislav Jevtic for their insights, ­information and conversations.

24 et cetera: Dubai

Sheikh, rattle and roll! text: Anne Harenberg Anne Harenberg lived in Dubai for eight years – and spent many weekends out in the dunes.

S

Jürgen Hammerer, Vojislav Jevtic and Marcel Meyer in the new Weiss-Röhlig reception area

Specials

for specials New horizons in Dubai After siting in Dubai eleven years back, Weiss Röhlig ushered in a new era in the spring of 2016. Following five years of ­intense and successful work, and previous jobs in Los Angeles and Chicago, Jürgen Hammerer left the emirate for the company’s headquarters in Lauterach.

He was succeeded by Marcel Meyer, who took up his post with a huge fanfare: in a ceremony attended by 150 clients, guests and friends, the new 5,300 m 2 plant was opened in March. Requiring an investment of over 5 million euros, the facility can store 8,000 pallets and features airconditioning, a state-of-the-art highrack warehouse, and the most advanced IT systems for logistics. Set on 10,000 m2 of land in Freezone 3, the construction project was completed at ‘Dubai speed’ – in just eight months. The 46 employees from 10 countries have settled in well and are looking forward to their modern, brightly-lit workplace.

‘Our expertise is in ‘specials for specials’, unusual services for exceptional customers’, says Meyer, pointing to the competence, experience, service orien-

tation and specific knowledge that his team can call upon in the unique marketplace that is the UAE . ‘We are waiting to see whether business in Iran evolves as everyone is hoping following the end of the sanctions. But we are cer­ tain we will both profit and grow either way – thanks to our philosophy of serving major, high-quality segments’, adds Vojislav Jevtic, GW Regional Director for Air & Sea. Whatever lies ahead, the investment in the location within Dubai’s Jebel Ali Freezone – where 7,300 companies have premises in just 120 km 2 – is sure to pave the way for further success and expansion.

Weiss-Rohlig U. A. E. LLC Dubai | Jebel Ali Freezone T +971.4.8118.3888 | F +971.4.8864.053 info.dubai@weiss-rohlig.net www.weiss-rohlig.com

and, sand everywhere – as far as the eye can see – this too is Dubai.

The virtually virgin desert forms a stark contrast to the skyscrapers, luxury hotels and super-malls for which Dubai is famous – and which attract millions of tourists every year.

Yet the Arabian Desert surrounding the city has much more to offer than just sand – it is bustling with life. This is perhaps hard to imagine if you don’t live in Dubai. During my eight years there, friends from Germany often asked me if I didn’t miss ‘nature’. Surely it must be awful to spend every day surrounded by shopping centres and tower blocks, they would say. My standard response was that I did occasionally long for Europe’s verdant forests and trees. But I didn’t miss nature. We have enough of that in Dubai. It might be different to Europe, but it is no less rich and diverse.

et cetera: Dubai 25

‘Early-risers

might be lucky enough to see local falconers training their birds to hunt at the break of dawn.’

One example: during the week, dog owners enjoy taking their four-legged friends on walks through the never-ending dunes. You can walk for hours without meeting a soul. With a bit of luck, you might see a herd of antelopes passing through, a lizard poking its head up out of the sand – or even a desert hare using the shadow of a bush for cover.

And it’s basically a given that, on a stroll through the sand, you will bump into a herd of camels. No need to be scared, as most of them are used to people. Generally, their owners let small groups run free.

Weekends put an abrupt end to the peace and quiet in many parts of the ­desert. Leisure- and pleasure-seekers, campers and cyclists arrive in droves.

Yes, cyclists! They ride a purpose-built fifty-kilometre bike path that runs along the edge of the desert. Hundreds of ­cyclists are also attracted by the sandy scenery.

Early-risers might be lucky enough to see local falconers training their birds to

hunt at the break of dawn. Or witness a camel race on one of the race courses deep inside the desert.

‘Dune bashing’ – driving off-road ­vehicles on sand dunes – is a popular sport, enjoyed by locals and expats alike on weekends. Big Red, a ninety-metrehigh sand dune beside the road to Oman, and probably the tallest in Dubai, is a particular magnet. On Friday afternoons, countless vehicles of all shapes and sizes line up at the foot of this giant sandcastle that rises up red and majestic. Anyone tempted to scale the mound should be a practiced driver behind the wheel of a 4 × 4 all-terrain vehicle. If not, you run the risk of getting bogged down in the sand in front of a large audience.

The schadenfreude is generally shortlived, though, and there are always plenty of volunteers willing to help liberate cars from their sand traps.

Venture further into the desert and you will encounter genuine ‘desert foxes’ pursuing their hobby in the dunes.

Here, vehicles that only remotely resem-

ble cars as we know them race – seemingly without effort – up and down the dunes and through the deep sands. Their drivers are often happy to stop and ­explain how their amazing contraptions work to anyone willing to lend an ear.

Most car safety inspectors would be ­appalled.

Dune bashing is not really an option if you have the kids in the back. The bumpy ground below the surface will make any vehicle rattle: hard landings are the order of the day. A friend once summed up the dynamics of driving in the desert like this: ‘When we head out for the day, I always wear a sports bra’. Driving through the desert defin­ itely has its risks; even the most manoeuvrable off-roaders can capitulate to the walls of sand and tip over.

Those preferring a more sedate ­approach often head into the desert on weekends with their family and friends – following one of the hard-packed sand trails. They set up camp in the dunes, ­relax and drink coffee of an afternoon,

Sport for the insensitive: dune-bashing

26 et cetera: Dubai

‘Dune

bashing is not really an option if you have the kids in the back.’

and round off the day with a campfire BBQ . In the cooler winter months, overnight camping in tents also has a fan base. The locals, who tend to have large, extended families, set up entire villages of tents and stay put for several weeks (which requires an official permit). ­Expats are usually content with just one night – the sanitary facilities in the middle of the desert are neither luxurious nor private. Especially on weekends, finding a quiet spot for one’s business can pose a challenge, as a quad bike or an SUV might suddenly pop up out of nowhere.

On the other hand, you might also ­en­counter a royal visitor on any given week­end. Should he pass by a camp, UAE prime minister and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed – himself a big fan of the desert rough-and-tumble – has often been known to drop in and exchange a few words.

Yet there is a downside to the desert’s diversity and appeal. At the end of a weekend, many visitors simply leave their litter behind, and this has serious repercussions for the fragile ecosystem.

There have been numerous campaigns

Swashbuckling vehicles that seem to cruise effortlessly across the sand.

to highlight the problem, and the state has started imposing severe fines. Never­ theless, each year large numbers of ­camels die from swallowing discarded plastic bags.

Although there is no single compendium covering the various attractions of the desert, several off-road guides are available which detail the top tracks and rate their level of difficulty. At the end of the day, though, it’s all part and parcel of the adventure: choosing a place to pitch camp, camel spotting, observing other desert wildlife – or even meeting the Sheikh himself.

Anne Harenberg worked as a journalist for TV and print media for many years.

In the summer of 2015 she returned to Berlin from ­Dubai, having spent over a decade abroad. Anne ­Harenberg has published several humorous novels which are available as ebooks on Amazon. www.anneharenberg.com

27 Nachgelesen

ATLAS 27

Update

Awards ­for ATLAS Being considered for the German Design Award is an ­honour in itself. After all, products and communication media are only invited to compete if their designs are demon­strably outstanding. So we were really proud to receive a special mention in the category ‘Excellent ­Communications Design – Corporate Identity’ this year.

The German Design Award ranks among the world’s most esteemed design accolades. Its reputation has long spread far beyond industry insiders. Every year it receives and distinguishes top-quality submissions, each of which make trailblazing contributions to the international design scene.

The English edition of ATLAS proved a hit at the ­‘Inspire Awards’ which distinguish outstanding corpo­rate publications from around the world. Scoring 99 out of a maximum of 100 points, GW ’s customer magazine received the Gold Award.

Panama Canal expansion project nears completion In our 02 / 2015 issue, we reported on the arduous excavation work needed to widen the Panama Canal. Soon this mammoth project spanning the central American isthmus will be celebrating its second premiere: the newly-enlarged canal is due to welcome its first ships in June 2016, two years later than planned. Cracks discovered in the original locks have now been repaired, so water can flow in the near future.

‘ Enjoying something makes it easier’, at least according to a Hungarian proverb. And that’s why we’d like to present a book by the illustrator Dieter Braun who contributed to this issue of ATLAS . You may find something worth learning in it, but above all we think you will find it a good read and great fun.

dieter braun wild animals of the north wild animals of the south (published next year) Flying Eye Books

The illustrator Dieter Braun (please see page 30 / 3 1) spent four years touring the world. During his expedition he observed the fauna in both the northern and southern hemispheres – from the cockatoo and red fox to the sloth.

He describes the species in great detail and captures their colours and markings in his spectacular illustrations.

Dieter Braun lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

Although his beautiful books are only available in German at present, his photographs tell their own story. The En­glish version of one book is being published this year under the title ‘Wild Animals of the North’.

28

Food comes first … … then comes morality – or is it the other way round after all?

The psychologist Abraham Maslow has investigated the motives that drive human behaviour. His pyramid of needs can also enrich our everyday lives.

text: Heike Dierbach

T

he door to his cellar had clearly been broken open. When the tenant cautiously opened it, he could not believe his eyes. Between his boxes were a young man and a woman.

The two were not at all busy hauling off their loot – they were sleeping like ­babies. The police arrived and first had to wake them before telling them they were under arrest.

Most likely, this Nuremberg news item from June 2015 would not have puzzled Abraham Maslow. As early as the 1940s, he had discovered that bodily needs can be literally overwhelming.

The American psychologist was the first to systematically investigate the im­ pulses that drive human behaviour. More precisely, which impulses; after all, we don’t just want to eat, drink and sleep our entire lives. From the abundance of our needs and motivations, Maslow and his colleagues formed eight categories and arranged them in a kind of pyramid.

The basic urges make up the foundation, the higher needs the superstructure.

And as in the erection of a real pyramid, human beings work from the bottom to the top when making decisions – usually without being aware of the process.

Since his death, Maslow’s hierarchy has been criticised for being too rigid. Other psychologists have presented models by which human needs tend to change with time.

Proceeding from the bottom up, we begin with the physical needs mentio­ned above. ‘Without doubt, those are the most powerful of all,’ Maslow declares.

We hardly notice them anymore in our everyday lives because, for the most part, they are consistently satisfied. But after a mere two days of not eating, Maslow says, ‘HUNGER ’ would dominate all our thoughts and actions. ‘In this state, one really can assert that ­human beings live off bread alone.’ By the same token, the burglars in Nuremberg also behaved quite logically: if you are dead tired, you not only want to sleep, you have to.

Immediately after these most primitive urges comes the need for security.

We could not live in constant fear of an attack; we need law and order.

Frequent­ly, the need for security is no longer a conscious one in our daily lives.

It only affects us in diminished forms – for example in that most people hope to receive a steady salary. How powerful it

can be, however, becomes evident in times of war. The German refugees fleeing from the Baltic Region in 1945 forsook everything just to save their lives. It is similar today with the Syrian families that opt for lives of poverty and alienation because they are, at least, out of harm’s way.

But being surfeited and secure alone cannot keep us content for long: ‘Through­out life, it is characteristic of human beings that there is almost ­always something they desire,’ Maslow posits. That is to say, once one need is broadly satisfied – it doesn’t have to be 100 percent – the next higher ones in the pyramid will quickly announce themselves. That, too, could be observed in 1945. Shortly after the war ended, people were once again thronging the theatres and concert halls. The first concert performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra on May 26, 1945, was sold out to an audience of a thousand-plus. ­Hundreds of others lingered outside all evening so as to catch a little of the beauty inside – at least from a distance.

This report illustrates that the pyr­ amid of needs is not universally valid.

It applies to most people, but there are

Hierarchy of Needs 29

exceptions. The desire for art and aesthetics, according to Maslow, only constitutes the sixth layer of the pyramid.

But at that moment it was of almost overriding importance to the concertgoers. Presumably the music also conveyed a feeling of security: if the Philharmonic is playing again, the horror of the war must finally be over! As theneyewitness Ursula Ziebarth put it in a TV documentary: ‘For me, that was the real liberation party.’

In times of peace, the third step of the pyramid comprises the desire to belong, the need for contact with beloved individuals. All you need is love: pop music has made this its golden rule for decades. In everyday life one can observe its power in couples who have just fallen in love, and profess to one another: ‘I can’t live without you!’ The loss of a loved one can actually cause illness. Cardiologists are familiar the ‘broken heart syndrome’, whereby patients appear to suffer a heart attack although they are physically completely healthy.

Its cause is presumably an extreme ­secretion of stress hormones caused by mourning.

Of course we also know people who have no private lives; they exist for their work only and thus for the fourth level of need. Why don’t you marry your office!

Small wonder: a need for personal achievement is widely acknowledged in many western societies and sometimes even viewed as compulsory. We need respect and esteem – not only from ­others, Maslow says, but also from ourselves: ‘The feeling of being useful and necessary for the world.’ Prolonged unemployment is therefore damaging to the individual, and not only because of the diminished income.

Closely linked to this is the secondhighest need, that for self-realisation.

We can observe its power whenever someone leaves a secure job in order to do his or her ‘own thing’ – the executive who makes a success of selling cupcakes, the physician who becomes a surfing instructor, the social scientist who takes to breeding goats. Nowadays, self-realisation is often thought to be tainted by egoism, but for Maslow it was a fundamental right: ‘If human beings can be something, they have to be it.’ During the 1960s he Transcendence

Self-actua lisation Aesthetic needs

Cognitive needs

indi vidu a l need s

socia l needs

safety needs Physiologica l needs was one of the first to appreciate why women were rejecting the role of homemaker.

The upper section of the pyramid also includes the desire for knowledge and understanding, aesthetic needs (‘That picture is hanging crooked!’), and at the very pinnacle transcendent needs, i. e. the quest for something supra-human, for a god. Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door … The fact that this level is so en vogue in society today means that all the lower needs are already satisfied. ‘We are having too good a time of it’, the sceptics think – and they may not be entirely wrong. The satisfaction of all needs, according to Maslow, quickly results in boredom and lethargy.

So how can the pyramid of needs help us in our everyday lives? For one thing, it can be interesting to work out which of its levels are fully satisfied in one’s own life and which only mod­ erately so. Does my job still seem meaningful enough to me? Do I have enough time for friends? And why is my cello still down in the basement?

For another, we can learn from ­people who succeed in fulfilling all their needs reasonably well. Maslow called them self-realisers. He studied this group very closely and concluded that its members have certain things in common. For example, they value the lower levels of his pyramid as well; they are grateful that they live in a safe country and don’t have to go hungry. They are also more open towards things hitherto unknown. They gravitate up the ­different steps as a result of their curiosity. But: these types of people are not perfect, either.

‘Our test subjects suffer from many of the minor human flaws,’ Maslow stresses.

‘They are not remote­ly immune to vanity, pride or partisanship for their own works.’

Those weary burglars will have had to postpone their self-realisation for a while. On the other hand, they were able to bed down again in their cells. The police, by the way, quickly discovered why they needed to sleep: drugs.

Heike Dierbach, who was born in 1970 and studied Psychology, Medicine and Politics in Hamburg, works as a freelance economics journalist in Berlin. Her main focus is on information and innovations that simultaneously benefit ­individuals and society alike.

30

Rockets and owls, ­evolution and bionics What have owls got to do with aircraft construction? Why would car manufacturers like to have cats’ paws? And what do rocket propulsion systems share with jellyfish?

The science of bionics supplies the answers. Over many millions of years, flora and fauna have evolved skills that can be applied to technology today. And many of their techniques are surprisingly smart.

Cats Cats’ paws are known for their velvety feel, something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by tyre manufacturers. If a cat runs in one direction in pursuit of a mouse, only a small part of its narrow paws touches the ground, reducing resistance. If they stop or run around a corner, their paws spread out, become wider and grip the ground better. In short, contact increases and the resistance slows them down.

When vehicles apply this principle during braking, the pressure from their front axles increases on the tyres. Their treads expand and their braking effect improves.

Prairie dogs and termites Black-tailed prairie dogs have developed a custom ventilation system for their underground burrows. They build at least two entrances, with a cone-shaped mound surrounding one of them. When the wind blows, the discrepancy in the elevations of the entrances creates increased pressure at one end. This generates an air current that always flows in one direction and keeps the burrow supplied with fresh air. Some species of termites use similar ventilation systems in their nests. In their case, the differences in temperature – the nests are very hot on the outside but cold inside – generate the air flow in what is essentially a subterranean network of tunnels. These techniques have also been adopted by designers of heat insulation and ventilation systems in low-energy buildings.

rockets and owls, evolution and bionics 31

Owls These nocturnal predators fly slowly and almost silently to avoid detection by small prey with sensitive hearing.

Relative to their bodies, they have very large wings. And these have an elaborate structure: small fringes on the back edges diffuse the air into numerous tiny currents. This smoothes the flow of air so effectively that the wings cause very little of the turbulence that would otherwise be audible. A soft, fluffy top layer on the wing feathers serves as an additional sound suppressor.

These findings can be effectively applied in the construction of aircraft, wind turbines and fans, i. e. in those areas where wings or blades need to function efficiently but as quietly as possible.

Jellyfish They may seem to glide majestically through the waves, but jellyfish are actually very strong swimmers – although only 1 % of their body mass consists of muscle. They use a unique recoil action to achieve this, ­sucking in water and then pushing it out again. Like a catapult, they therefore propel themselves backwards through the water. Rocket propulsion technology is based on the same principle: unlike a plane, a rocket cannot use air currents to move because there is insufficient or no air available at higher altitudes. To reach outer space, it therefore needs to move like jellyfish – only in a forward direction: the fuel creates very high pressure at its base, and as it is directed towards the earth below, it thrusts the rocket upwards beyond the stratosphere.

Sharks A shark’s skin is covered by countless tiny teeth. This surface texture reduces water resistance and boosts the shark’s mobility. Acting like a layer of spines, it also stops alien organisms from attaching themselves to its skin and increasing surface resistance. Vegetation growing on the hulls of ships has become a key ecological and economic concern for shipping lines, and they can leverage these characteristics to combat the problem. The chemicals currently being used to protect the hulls are often highly toxic. A newly-developed sharkskin finish works like a real shark’s skin: it uses the physical attributes alone, releasing no biocides into the water and even reducing fuel consumption.

That’s good news for shipping companies and sharks alike.

32

‘The

final mile counts more than most.’

Roland Gander is director of the GW West region and the managing director of GW Germany.

We talked to him about management, motivation and the fastest way to your goal.

interview: Frank Haas Roland, you are the head of 1,400 em-

seems pretty relaxed. Is being ap-

ployees, and you’re thought of as a

proachable important to you?

That’s just my management style. I treat

strong manager and outstanding motivator. What’s your secret for success?

I think it has something to do with my

attitude towards others. I keep a watchful eye out when I’m walking through the company, I listen to things from my employees’ everyday lives and can sense how they are doing. When it’s really cold and I look around in the plants, I appreciate that these people have to perform to their maximum – no matter how unpleasant the conditions are – and that moving goods from truck to truck, or inside the freight forwarding facility, is no fun. If snow is falling and the road conditions are terrible, I feel really bad for the drivers. I see lots of employees who work incredibly hard to make things happen, and I address the problem issues. And I believe I convince the people that I really am one of them.

They know that I understand the business and always help as best as I can.

You’re never short of friendly banter in the handling hall – and sometimes people talk back. The atmosphere

people as equals and I don’t mind at all if I get some of my own medicine. We simply communicate openly. But I’m very aware that people will support me if something is on the line. I can remember times when employees seemed to gain almost superhuman powers when I needed help. Above all once, when we hit a technology problem. People left their offices and got their hands dirty with some really heavy lifting! On the works outing last summer, a truck driver I have known over 30 years came up to me, and we chatted about old times.

And he said: ‘I think it’s great that I get to talk with the director now and then.

In other companies drivers don’t even speak with their head of department.

But you’re always in the heart of the ­action, you speak to us, you remember things, you’re one of us.’ And that, of course, makes me feel very good. I’m happy to keep people involved. You don’t need huge project groups or team meetings. You simply go up to them, say

34 ‘the final mile counts more than most.’

your piece, they get your drift, and I can head off again. In short, no fuss or formalities.

Yes, you really do communicate directly, there’s no doubting that. Even to me …

To everybody.

I give it to them straight and then see how they react. Is that a tactic or just the ‘Gander style’? Do you overstep the mark occasionally?

I’m a person who likes plain talking and I have no objection to constructive debate. In my view, tension and friction

‘ I enjoy showing my emotions, that’s what life is about!’ generate energy. And I enjoy showing my emotions, that’s what life is about!

When people spend all their time choosing fancy words and preparing every single thing they say – that’s both boring and bombastic. And if you query something, and they don’t have an answer off pat, they’re suddenly out of their depth.

I think we make progress faster if people don’t mince their words. Call a spade a spade, and tell people what does and doesn’t work for you straight out. I hate beating about the bush.

Do you ever have to apologise?

I think I choose my words carefully enough and don’t come out with anything below the belt. I avoid personal attacks. I focus on issues, not personal­ ities. Every storm blows over and then you can take a deep breath and work well together again. For me, the matter is then done and dusted. If I don’t like something, I say so, vent my feelings, and then everything falls back into place.

Can you forget about being a manager when you’re at home? And do you even want to?

Yes, absolutely. Home gives me the down time I need. Of course I like to take decisions at home too, quick as ever. But I have a wife who is very selfassured and assertive, and who doesn’t

even bother to ask me some things.

There are others things we discuss really well, and usually we can reach agreement. I’m happy to shed all responsibility sometimes. On holiday, I can sit on the beach and gaze out at the sea for half an hour at a time. My wife always asks me what I’m thinking about. And I tell her, ‘Nothing’. She never believes a word.

At ice hockey games your daughter ­automatically brings you a beer ­between the periods. She seems to be well trained!

Cool, isn’t it? I never asked her for it, she simply started doing it of her own accord. There’s no chance of that at home. I usually have to serve the children. When they visit us, they think they’re at a hotel and put their feet up.

But we think, ‘OK , they won’t be staying forever.’ That way we can deal with it.

What about friends? Has your circle of friends changed as you’ve become more successful?

Very much so. When I was at school, I had lots of close friends and casual acquaintances. Then the ladies started appearing on the scene and I soon had a few less, and even fewer still when the first children were born. And as the years passed, and my job took up more and more of my time, the friendships faded further. I always try to maintain a magic triangle: I am one side, the company another, and my family and our friends the third. Within this triangle, I often didn’t get my due because I put so much into the family and company.

As a result, I have lots of colleagues that I spend time with outside work as well, whereas my other friendships have become secondary. Some of them are just starting to pick up momentum again because my oldest friends are pensioners. And as I too am nearing retirement, we are sure to meet up more and more frequently. After all, we will have more time at our disposal.

Do you regret investing so much energy in your work?

No I don’t regret anything and can’t turn

‘I can relate to the people here’ – Gander with the Dornbirner Bulldogs ice-hockey team which is sponsored by GW .

the clocks back anyway. It was the price I paid for my job, and I was more than willing to accept it.

I get the impression that you always try to be down-to-earth, that all things grand and pretentious are alien to you.

Is that your personality or are you speaking on behalf of the company?

Both. I enjoy the simple life. There are so many people who make everything complicated and lose sight of the wood for the trees. They sound so self-important and make mountains out of molehills all the time. If I have to read a 27-page project paper and get bored by the third page, I’m not a happy man. If I have an objective, I like to stay on the straight and narrow so that we don’t end up missing our target. We shouldn’t forget what is off to the right and left,

but our focus must remain on the finishing line. If I do have a goal, I like to have something concrete I can work towards.

What are the next steps? When do I have to finish? Then I can make good progress. Of course, you still need strategy teams – small groups that chart the way forward. But ideally it’s like on a building site. You know perfectly well – this part takes 18 months, these are the vari­ous stages, this is how we have to prepare, and that’s what we need to do.

I need to be able to visualise everything in advance.

Is pragmatism the hallmark of a top forwarder?

Yes, but interest and appreciation are more important. You need to know what customers want and sense what they need. You need to understand things

36 ‘the final mile counts more than most.’

Roland Gander was born in Dornbirn, Austria, on 10 March, 1957. Married and with two grown-up daughters, and he has been a part of GW since his youth, and he has helped to erect and extend constructions at numerous ­locations. Away from work he most enjoys skiing, travelling and ­being with his family.

1972

starts freight forwarding at GW 1985

appointed area manager for Scandinavia and the Benelux countries 1996

spends six months in Vienna 1997

takes over company organisation in Lauterach, becomes deputy branch manager, responsible for numerous major logistics projects for customers (Hilti TSP , Tridonic, Head, Grass) 1999

becomes branch manager in Lauterach and joins the Management Board at Fehr Transporte 2003

extends his duties to GW Switzerland 2004

named Regional Director West (Vorarlberg, Switzerland and southern ­Germany) 2007

adds GW Tirol to his remit 2010

Advisory Board at Diehl Esslingen 2012

GW acquires 100 % interest in Diehl – integration into the company’s western region under the management of GW Germany

intuitively and respond promptly. You need to connect with your customers, find solutions for them and, indeed, serve them. The exciting thing about our work is that our customers are so varied.

They all have different mindsets. I grew up in Vorarlberg, in the middle of Austria’s textile industry. Large amounts of high-quality fabrics were exported all around the world from the region. And I saw what textile workers were like and what they expected. Then the textile industry moved away, and metal and technology moved in. And they brought very different issues and problems with them. Nowadays I find it fascinating – the way technology companies like Tridonic operate and conduct their R & D . But the questions never really change: how can you build outstanding transport systems for customers so that their goods arrive on time, indeed quicker than expected, at their desti­ nations? Some fifteen years ago, a small team of ours had an idea for bypassing Switzerland’s night-time driving ban so that we could deliver cargo on time in Milan. That’s a unique system. And it’s still functioning today.

Do forwarders need to be creative too?

Yes, to be successful they need to be adaptable, they need to fix problems, avoid harming the environment, and deliver solutions. And, as I often say to my customers, ‘the final mile counts more than most. And the forwarder handles that for you. Treat him properly, he’s doing a good job.’ That’s all well and good coming from a man in my position. But it’s necessary too. Our drivers are often at our customers’ premises and it’s important to make people understand what we do. That it isn’t run-of-the-mill stuff. It involves a lot of hard work. This is what I tell my people: ‘The products we transport aren’t just cargo. They are something really, really important to our customers. So please treat them with great care,

as if they were our own.’ We need to use the money we work with as if we were doing it for ourselves, too. The aim is to make it grow.

If you hadn’t enjoyed success in life in freight forwarding, would you have ­become a different person?

The question doesn’t apply in my case because I don’t concern myself with things that have never happened. If I hadn’t been enjoying my job, I would

‘ When do I have to finish?

Then I can make good progress.’ have done something different. But I’m very proud and happy to say that I am part of a company that has given me an incredible amount of freedom and responsibility. I was largely left to work on my own initiative; I was given support and assistance, I received guidance and was allowed to make mistakes, and people were always happy when everything panned out nicely. I would never allow myself to be kept on a leash. But I didn’t imagine I would stay with one company the whole time either.

Have you never lost your motivation during all the years?

There have certainly been a few days and weeks when things didn’t go as planned, and that affected my mood. But crises usually bring out the best in me: something is broken, and you fix it.

More­over, in my eyes highly-motivated employees are a key to success, employees who are well-informed, who know what’s what and stand by you. That really is important. So I’ve never had a real downer, no. That said, I sometimes feel like a magnet that is always attracting new work. I always have my hands full.

Does that mean failing isn’t even an ­op­tion? Did you ever have your own personal Waterloo?

Yes, in Esslingen. After we acquired the

die letzte meile ist eine der wichtigsten 37

forwarders Diehl in Esslingen, we had to initiate a tough package of reforms at the new site. We had already made good progress and turned the tide. Our results had improved significantly but my site manager couldn’t cope with the pressure. He decided to leave Gebrüder Weiss. That hurt me, because I had really counted on this person. I’d invest­ed a huge amount of effort into sup­porting him and finding a way forward. I’m accustomed to working closely with our site managers. There had been a lot of trust and we had been completely open in our dealings.

Would you want to invent work if it didn’t already exist?

Yes, I’d invent it. There are so many important things that need doing. There are lots of things asylum seekers could be doing, even if they aren’t allowed to work. Planting trees and the like. I think that would be far better for them than sitting around doing nothing. They could integrate better and wouldn’t feel so left out. Instead they’d have the feeling: ‘Today was a meaningful day.

I achieved something.’ For me, there’s nothing worse than enforced inactivity.

And if you stop working for the ­company some day, how will that be?

Can you even imagine it?

I’m not the kind of person who does things by halves. It’s all or nothing for me. I have my own ways of tackling things. I know when enough’s enough and I’ve done my bit. My feeling is that I’ve achieved a great deal in the company. And when the day comes that I bid farewell, I want people to say that I’ve done a good job, not to utter a sigh of re­lief because I’m gone. Then I can leave with my head held up high. I’d like to leave healthy too. That way I can make the most of life. I don’t expect to feel bored when I leave. I’ll find a way of filling up my time.

With what specifically?

I don’t know yet. But I’ll find something.

Gander hardly ever misses his favourite team’s matches

I’ve already said that I’m starting to meet up with friends I grew up with. And that’s happening more and more. I’ve also purchased a flat in Spain and will spend some time there. And maybe the grandchildren will come and visit. That would be ideal because I didn’t spend quite as much time with my kids back then as I would have wanted. I don’t want to raise my grandchildren. I’d just like to spend time with them and have some fun. And when everyone has had enough, you can let them go back to their parents and relax – it isn’t the same as having your own children. In my view, that could work out quite well. You have to make your contribution, but you need to leave room for others as well. I will be

perfectly content when that time comes.

I’d like to be part of the transition, to assist with the planning and help shape things. And, when the time comes, to pass the baton to my successor.

Frank Haas was born in 1977. He studied History and Ph­i­losophy and, as head of corporate communications at­­Gebrüder Weiss, is editor-­ in-chief of ATLAS .

‘ 38 well put

Higher, further, faster – our lives compel us to change and move. To that end we need something that drives us. And these ‘inner motors’ take on almost countless shapes and forms. We have looked around at well-known and less well-known people of all shades and stripes. Check out page 55 to find out how GW employees overcome their weaknesses and inhibitions.

‘I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.’

Marilyn Monroe, actress

‘We are born anew for ourselves every day or, if you prefer, we are like the phoenix: you have to reduce yourself to ashes every day, to be really reborn the following morning. If you don’t question yourself every day, life – it seems to me – has no point or meaning.’

Pierre Boulez, composer, conductor and music theorist

‘We love the things we work for, and work for the things we love.’

Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst

well put 39

‘Every

sailor learns one thing: nothing is impossible. If a ship breaks down somewhere between South Africa and Australia, you simply patch it up.

You can’t simply stop. Hence our motto: we’ll cope somehow.’

Ben Lodemann, river pilot

‘Obsessions

are what drive us – intransigence what holds us back.’

Rudolf Nureyev, ballet dancer and choreographer

‘I’m somebody who thinks more than he speaks.

I want to develop players and be successful with my teams. That’s what drives me. It’s my goal, and it’s one I have always reached.’

Felix Magath, football coach

Mic ha’s old lady

Giving everything for a quarter-mile – a day with the ‘Race Antz’ Street & Stripracing Team

42 Micha’s old lady

text: Miriam Holzapfel photos: Martin Langer

T

he old girl is grey, dulled now with age.

She’s had an eventful life. As far as appearances go, no one would suspect the force that lurks beneath her bonnet. But a glance inside reveals all: this is a rocket on wheels. From 0 to 225 kilometres per hour in just 9.6 seconds – powered by just under 1,000 hp. Micha ‘Fullspeed’ Vogt takes his sweetheart, Drag races date back to the years a 1941 Ford Willys coupé, on quarterafter World War I, when young men mile races designed for street-legal hot with tuned-up cars mounted illegal rods – custom-rebuilt American cars. road races. Long since legalized, these That requires both dexterity and incredcompetitions are also staged in Europe – ible concentration; the old girl is quite either on airport runways or specially finicky and objects to every error made prepared circuits with rubberized coatwhen transferring her engine power ings known as drag strips. The races onto the racetrack. at the Santa Pod Raceway in the UK and the annual NitrolympX held every ­August on the Hockenheim Ring in Germany are the largest European ­contests of their kind. The contenders make up a small circle: people know one another, the mood at the tracks is informal, even if the drivers ‘are brandishing knives between their teeth’, to use Vogt’s words. It’s every car for ­itself, and may the fastest win.

Micha Vogt’s relationship with his brawny American banger goes way back. Even before he got his driving license, he was the proud owner of a bottom: interior of a 1971 Plymouth; top right: Dodge Ramcharger, albeit one damprecision adjustments – Micha Vogt (far right) aged from a previous accident. He with his team at the 100 % aluminium engine ­repaired it, brought it up to speed, and block; bottom right: no holding back – the old lady’s powerpack has been entering drag races for 15 years now. But the old grey mare is not the only horsepower in his stable.

Take his grey-brown ’55 Chevy Bel Air with its rust paint job: its soul is housed within a grid-like skeleton, and the lightweight body sits on top like a skin.

The ‘fat girl’, as she has been fondly dubbed by Vogt and his team, is powered by a 2,500 hp engine. It speeds from 0 to 100 km / h in just 1.2 seconds and from 0 to 300 km / h in 7.4, making it the fastest streetworthy car in Ger-

ATLAS 43

Micha’s old lady 45

many. The sensation caused by this kind of acceleration is akin to being pummelled in the gut for 400 meters, Vogt says. When he brakes, he needs to close his eyes – it feels like he’s smashing into a brick wall. With the aid of its inte­grat­ed parachute, the car can indeed be brought to a halt – but the brake path is just as long as the racetrack itself.

Micha Vogt manages his racing ­stable with great care and meticulous attention to detail. He is constantly performing repairs, optimising this and that. Each car is built completely of individual components that need to be found and fitted together in the best possible configuration. Every six weeks or so he places an order with a dealer in the US ; he has good contacts and receives his parts by air freight within two to four days. The hand-built engines are rare gems. Work is currently underway at Vogt’s ‘Raceantz’ garage to build a 10 litre engine block that is made exclusively of aluminium, generates 780 hp – and carries a price tag of 50,000 euros.

It is destined for a ’70 Dodge Challenger that is already parked at the gate. Also dull grey, the Challenger is familiar from the road movie Vanishing Point. It’s a good-looking car, at first glance.

But Micha’s models are more than a pretty face – these girls are fast, and they pack a phenomenal punch.

Miriam Holzapfel, born in 1975, is a cultural ­scientist and a journalist for ATLAS .

46

In distinguished company – the Logistics Hall of Fame We may not realise it, but groundbreaking logistics innovations affect our lives every single day. Globalisation would never have evolved to its present form without them. The Logistics Hall of Fame on the Internet honours some of the faces behind the discoveries and inventions. Last year our own Heidi Senger-Weiss became the first woman to be inducted. We are presenting a few of her illustrious colleagues below.

Heidi Senger-Weiss: determined internationalisation

S

ince 1968 Heidi Senger-Weiss has been representing the interests of the transport logistics industry in a range of different capacities. For 36 years she managed Gebrüder Weiss together with her husband Paul Senger-Weiss. Numerous innovations can be traced to her initiatives, including the 1988 establishment – along with two partner companies – of APS Austria ­Paket System (later DPD Austria ), a parcel service that soon became the B2B market lead­er in Austria. She was also behind the expansion of IT in the realm of freight forwarding, became an indefatigable advocate of internationalisation, and has been building and expanding Europe’s first mixed cargo network since the 1980s.

William H. Tunner: The Berlin Airlift

B

orn in 1906, William H. Tunner began his career at the United States Military Academy at West Point and soon became expert in air transportation. During World War II he organised the US air bridge operation over the Himalayas, developing an innovative system for transporting urgently needed materials.

On the morning of June 24, 1948 the Soviet occupation forces blocked all the transit routes to West Berlin – on road, rail and water – leaving over two million people cut off from vital supplies. One air corridor alone remained open and

Tunner used this to fly in provisions for the city’s residents. The Berlin Airlift will go down in history as the birth of modern airborne logistics; for the first time, planes gained recognition as means of freight transport. To feed the people of West Berlin, Tunner created three air corridors and mapped out ­departure times, speeds, altitudes and take-off trajectories with great precision.

This meticulous planning, which allowed aircraft to take off every three minutes, also involved the coordi­nation of aircraft types, various runways, maintenance operations and unloading procedures.

Tunner ultimately shortened the turnaround of aircraft in Berlin from 75 to just 30 minutes. By the time the blockade ended on May 12, 1949, some 280,000 cargo flights had taken off for West Berlin.

in distinguished company 47

Eugene Bradley Clark: The forklift

B

orn in 1873, Eugene Clark worked as a mechanical engineer in a steel mill. When the company was facing bankruptcy at the start of the 20th century, the creative young man spontaneously offered to become a partner in the company, take over its management and rescue it.

Soon the company was back in the black. To help his employees transport construction materials between the factory buildings, Clark came up with the idea for the first front-loading truck – a basic, petrol-powered three-wheeled vehicle with a ‘bucket’ capable of carrying two-tonne loads at the front. It had a few unusual features. To go left you turned the steering wheel right. It didn’t have any brakes either. A little later, during World War I, the US military started using these vehicles in its ammunition dumps. Clark improved the steering system, developed brakes, and christened his invention the Tructractor. In 1919 he sold as many as 75, and three years later launched a truck with a lifting platform that was powered by a combustion engine. In 1924 he finally built the first ever forklift truck, and it became a huge success after World War II . His company – Clark – still numbers among the world’s leading forklift manufacturers today.

Gottlieb Daimler: The truck

G

ottlieb Daimler, originally born Gottlieb Däumler in 1834, was a trained gunsmith who studied engineering. In 1869 he became director of the engineering workshops at Karls­ruher Maschinenbaugesellschaft, laying the cornerstone for today’s ­company, Daimler AG .

Together with Wilhelm Maybach, he developed and patented a single-cylinder four-stroke engine – the first petrolfuelled combustion engine. In 1886 the two men fitted an engine inside a horse carriage, and the first motorised, four-wheeled vehicle was born. (The vehicle produced by his compatriot Carl Benz only had three wheels.) In 1896 Daimler’s company built the Phoenix, the first-­ever motorised truck. From today’s perspective, its specifications may not seem overly impressive: it had a 4 hp four-stroke engine with two cylin­ ders, a top speed of 10 kilometres an hour and a maximum payload of 1.5 ton­ nes. The appearance of these vehicles on the roads nevertheless proved a key milestone in the evolution of freight transport. In 2014 the global road transport industry posted sales of 125 billion euros.

Malcom McLean: container transport

M

alcom Mclean was born in 1913 and initially ran a petrol station. In partnership with his siblings, he used his earnings to buy his first truck in 1935. Together they set up a small freight forwarding company. In the following years, McLean built an empire that eventually became the ­second-largest transportation company in the US . At a very early stage he realised that goods transhipment could be ­ac­celerated by using large, standardised receptacles. At this time all cargo was being unloaded piece by piece – before being repackaged and loaded onto ­another means of transport. Dozens of workers were often need­­ed for this ­process, which sometimes took days or even weeks. Yet industry initially showed little interest in his idea.

As a logistics services provider, he was prohibited from operating a shipping line. So he sold McLean Trucking and used the proceeds to purchase the Pan Atlantic Steamship fleet. On April 26, 1956, the converted oil tanker Ideal X left the US port of Newark with 58 containers on board – marking the birth of container shipping. Many people, particularly in Europe, feared it would mean the closure of harbour services. In reality, the opposite happened: the world’s ports boomed. Today some 90 % of global trade travels on ships.

48 in distinguished company

Taiichi Ohno: ‘Just-in-time’

B

orn in Manchuria in 1912, Taiichi Ohno began working for Toyota during the 1930s. After the young engineer Eiji Toyoda, later the Japanese carmaker’s CEO , had been to the US and studied Ford’s assembly plants, he asked Ohno – then his director of production – to develop a dedicated system for Toyota. This ultimately owed little to Ford’s meth­ods, being closer to the supply system practiced by American supermarkets which was tailored to covering actual customer requirements.

This principle, whereby the correct ­volume is stocked in the right order and quantity at the right time and place, is now known as the Toyota production system. Even today it serves as the ­guiding principle for car manufacturers across the planet. Additionally, Ohno developed the ‘just-in-time’ principle whereby components only become avail­able at the moment they are required. In this way, a direct supply line is created between assembly plants and their suppliers, minimising overproduction, excess inventories and high interim warehousing costs.

Gottfried Schenker: rail groupage transport

G

ottfried Schenker, who was born near the Swiss town of Olten in 1842, began his career as an official at Switzerland’s Central Railway Company. A year later he moved into the private sector, where he worked for a number of transportation companies. In 1872 he established his own freight forwarder – Schenker & Co. – together with two partners.

And in the following years he operated the first rail groupage service between Paris and Vienna, delivering luxury items like champagne and haute couture from the French capital to Vienna’s high society. He pooled individual items to make larger lots which he transported by rail and then – at that time at least – by horse and carriage. In the following years he expanded his mixed cargo ­network, adding waterbound and road transport to his services. In this way he became the first entrepreneur to offer a brand new freight forwarding service that was cheap and fast and charged fixed cargo rates. His innovation revolutionised transportation services: ‘one provider from door to door’. By the time he died in 1901, his company already had 32 subsidiaries in 13 European countries with over 1,000 employees.

the Logistics Hall of Fame

was established in 2003 to honour leading figures who have made outstanding contributions to the development of logistics and supply chain management. The aim is to document the achievements and innovations of the industry, and to share these with a wider public audience. Industry federations and public organisations, politicians and business leaders, scientists and academics, and the media, companies and logistics professionals around the world are therefore encouraged to nominate candidates for induction into the Logistics Hall of Fame. To be considered, nominees must have made a sustained and positive impact on the logis­ tics capabilities of a large number of companies or institutions. With its international panel, the Historic Milestones Committee will assess the candidates’ qualifications.

Imke Borchers, born in 1982, is a literary scholar and a jour­nalist at ATLAS .

49

ace agent in free fall Why James Bond needs to know at least as much about physics as about high-speed pursuits

text: Susanne Schick

J

ames Bond – secret agent, daredevil, ladies’ man – and above all ­action hero. No matter how dire the straits, he is sure to unleash an ingenious idea that staves off disaster and saves him or others from attacks.

He leaps out of aircrafts and, not least thanks to spectacular tricks, always escapes pursuers or catches fleeing ­baddies – whether on foot, in the air or even in a car careening on two wheels.

In GoldenEye Bond climbs on a motorcycle and pursues a pilotless plane that is heading straight for the brink of a ravine. What follows is the epitome of a good action scene: the aircraft plummets over the edge, the intrepid agent follows on his bike, scrambles into the cockpit in ­mid-air and yanks back the joystick just in time to escape cer­tain death. What a save! He’s often aided by

the latest gadgets from the eccentric scien­tist Q: a ball­point pen metamorphoses into a personal rocket launcher; Bond escapes from a deep pit with the help of a wristwatch that fires a wire with a hook ­attached; X-ray sunglasses allow him to see through clothes and spot concealed weapons. Unbelievable?

Or physically possible? What would scientists make of these scenes? Together with 41 students, Metin Tolan and Joachim Stolze spent a semester analysing whether selected movie scenes might actually be fea­sible. The two physics professors came to the ­conclusion that 007 must not only be expert in the laws of physics. If he wants to stay alive, he often needs to make complex calculations within seconds and implement them with absolute precision. The two were not seeking to

prove that individual action scenes sur­ vive scrutiny, but rather to identify the conditions under which Bond could have survived them unscathed. In each case they sought answers to a single question: How could he have pulled off the seemingly impossible?

James Bond may be a fictional character with almost supernatural powers, but his crusade against evil could only serve as an example for real secret agents – if they understood enough about physics, were master mathema­ ticians and possessed virtually infinite courage. Only then could they too become cinema icons.

See for yourself. Read about the bungee jump in GoldenEye. Can Bond really have been in free fall for so long, and would he have lived to see another day?

50 SuperAgent

Fantasy or reality – the ace agent’s secrets?

Excerpt from Metin Tolan, Joachim Stolze: Geschüttelt, nicht gerührt.

James Bond und die Physik.

GoldenEye begins with James Bond taking a bungee jump from the top of a tow­ ering dam. Britain’s most famous agent has been assigned the mission of destroying a poison gas factory. He is try­ing to escape Russian soldiers, and races through a gate on the top of the dam to its middle. From there he can secure his bungee cord and jump into the valley below. The crest of the Verzasca Dam is 380 metres long, and if we compare the pictures from the film to the actual dam, we can gauge that he runs some 130 me­ tres. A stopwatch shows that he takes about 13 seconds to cover the distance.

He must therefore be running at ten me­ tres a second or 36 kilometres per hour.

At that speed 007 would be a contender for the 100-metres gold medal at the Olympic Games. The 1995 world record for this discipline was 9.85 seconds, the equivalent of 36.5 kilometres an hour – about the same speed as Bond’s as he dashes across the dam. However, 007 is carrying heavy equipment with him and

wearing normal footwear – not professional athletes’ shoes. So James Bond isn’t just a top agent. He’s a top sprinter too!

In the movie the dam is placed in the Soviet Union. The scene was actually shot in Valle Verzasca in the southern Swiss canton of Ticino.

Having reached mid-point on the dam, James Bond* attaches his bungee cord to the railings and immediately dives off. Thirteen seconds elapse as the cord extends and then breaks his fall.

But did 007 really fall for so long?

There is indeed a bungee jumping plat­form at the Verzasca dam where the fearless can emulate the jump in the movie, and the physical data is available.

The dam is some 200 metres high. However, if Bond were to free fall for 13 seconds, he would drop a good 830 metres.

In short, he would have fallen far beyond his designated landing area and hit the ground.

The explanation for the discrepancy is simple: if we observe the film closely, we can see that his movements, ges­tures and other aspects of him don’t appear natural. In fact, they look unusually slow.

If we show the film at double the speed, his movements look more natural, as ­fluid as in real bungee jumps. The answer: to make the scene more dramatic, the film’s producers have shown the fall in slow-motion, allowing audiences to enjoy the sequence for longer. By halving the time for the fall to just 6.5 seconds, the distance covered is more realistic too. As he wouldn’t have reached maximum acceleration, 007 would only have fallen a quarter of the original distance of 830 metres, i. e. approximately 200 metres.

However, this distance would still be too far, as there would have been no space left for the bungee cord to break his fall. So it appears that something else must have been distorted in the scene.

In fact the jump was filmed from multiple perspectives to create the maximum effect. These were then spliced together.

We therefore see sections of the jump twice from different angles – extending the length of the jump. If these over­ laps are eliminated, we arrive at an ac­ tual time of 4.5 seconds. During this the agent would fall some 100 metres, at which point the cord would start to

* Tolan and Stolze base their calculations on the size and weight of Sean Connery, the most popular ‘James Bond’ ever. At 1.83 metres tall and weighing 76 kilogrammes, he has the almost perfect body-mass index of 22.7. Other actors playing the part have nearly identical physical measurements.

SuperAgent 51 ATLAS 51

‘catch’ and stop him. At about half the total distance to the ground, this is absolute­ly realistic. During the rest, the ­elastic kicks in so that, after another 4.5 sec­onds and 100 metres of falling, he reaches the bottom of his descent and dangles almost motionless for an instant, just a few metres above the ground.

His deceleration in the second half of the jump tells us a lot about the material used in the bungee cord. Based on the data from the scene, we can calculate that a force of 30 newtons is needed to stretch the bungee cord by a metre. A newton is a unit of measurement equiva­ lent to the weight of 100 grammes on earth. This means that Bond’s bungee cord will extend by one metre for every additional three kilogrammes it is ­supporting. This extension by weight ­re­flects a material-specific constant: the more weight needed to stretch it by a ­metre, the less elastic the cord is.

To cover the final metres to the ground, Bond uses a handgun that launches a hook on the end of a wire.

The hook embeds itself in the concrete exterior of the dam and the wire is then pulled back into the gun. This causes

the bungee cord to stretch still further until Bond reaches terra firma. Using this technique, Bond covers almost 10 metres.

This in turn prompts the following question: is it possible to design a pistol that contains a battery strong enough to stretch the bungee cord to the ground?

Given the cord’s physical characteristics, the battery would need to store 23,500 joules of energy in total. A conventional lithium-ion battery weighing a kilo­gramme can store about 140,000 joules of electrical energy. So the total energy required could, in principle, be provided very comfortably. However, the full 23,500 joules needs to be de­ livered in the 11 seconds that Bond takes to pull himself down. That requires an electric motor with an output of approximately 2,000 watts – a very sizable amount in itself. Given this, and the fact that the 2,000 watts need to be extracted from a small battery over 11 seconds, one thing is clear: a solution is only likely to be found in Q’s visionary laboratory.

Reprinted with permission (Piper Verlag).

52

E verything people do well naturally E va Menasse on power and mass, sleepy-heads and siesta fans, rice wine and the desire to forge ahead

E

very era has its golden calves. In our current day and age, we worship transparency, direct democracy and online authenticity. Discretion and secrecy are scorned, as are people who actually know what they’re doing, people we could gratefully entrust with occasional difficult decisions.

Drive is a perennial among the most popular topics of our time. Glossies offer cover stories on how to increase drive: the drive to lose weight, for instance, validated by people preaching something we – mystifyingly – survived without a mere century ago, namely motivational science. The whole world seems to be afraid of not having enough drive – or of hoping to somehow top up with some more. But that is a fatal error. Drive in and of itself makes no sense – and doesn’t even exist. A person who hoards drive would be the equivalent of a property bubble. At some point it (or he, or she) will burst, dispatching worthless shreds of rubber in all directions. What is more, not every type of drive is good (criminal energy too is a flavour of drive, as are greed and vanity), and not all of these take us in the desired direction, i. e. forwards. As everyone who has ever used an anti-tank rocket launcher knows: before you unleash it, you do well to turn around and look behind you. Something with as much forward power as this small rocket will produce a fireball capable of torching an entire rearguard.

The laws of physics concur: there is no up without down, no thrust without counterthrust. The energy that is created will be consumed in the same machine – as a rule, instantaneously. You push the pedals, the bicycle moves forward. Fuel is ignited, a truck starts to roll, an airplane accelerates. And so on and so forth. It’s an ongoing to-and-fro: creating and consuming, a never-ending cycle. The sum of all energ y remains constant – as our physics teacher, bored to tears, pounded into our heads. She was a humongously large individual with a shaggy, henna-dyed mane. In retrospect, I suspect she also played the long-necked lute and burned incense sticks at home. Even back then – perhaps this was ‘physically incorrect’ of me – I asked myself where the missing pounds had been, i. e. the ones she kept gaining.

It makes sense to differentiate between inner and outer drive. After all, it takes a certain amount of motivation for a sleepy-headed grouch to drag himself punctually to an open-plan office he detests, day in and day out. And if he succeeds, it is probably to escape his wife and her budgie. He likely also needs the money and might otherwise face bank-

everything people do 53

Eva Menasse was born in Vienna in 1970. Having studied German and History, she began working as an editor for publications like the Viennese news magazine Profil and, subsequently, the features section of the Frankfurter ­Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. She has been working as a freelance author in Berlin since 2003. Last year she was awarded a bursary by the Villa Massimo in Rome. Her most recent works have been the novel Quasikristalle and the anthology of essays Lieber aufgeregt als abgeklärt, both published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

ruptcy. Or a yawning, empty day waiting to be sensibly filled. Or does he just lack the courage to look for a better job and a happier relationship? Is courage the same thing as drive? Or ambition? I don’t think so. This type of drive is not as valuable. It is equivalent to the minimum amount of energy needed for human survival. Let every person decide for him or herself whether that is positive or negative. That applies to Oblomov too. The ultimate incarnation of lethargy in world literature is a man so rich that he can painstakingly plan his day around its ful­ crum and climax, his mid-day nap. He perishes abysmally in the end because so much irresponsibility cannot go unpunished. Someone else took over his possessions and his wife, quite likely someone who was doing him a favour. Oblomov was too lazy to survive, pure and simple.

External drive, therefore, would be all the things we do because we have to or because it prevents something unpleasant from happening. After all, drive is not limit­ed to the things or activities we desire; sometimes it just pushes us away from worse alternatives.

It follows that the drive that is coveted at every turn must be a different one, the other one, the inner one. But that too is complicated: at long last you bring yourself to do what’s good for you? Finally find the time for things you’ve always wanted to do? And why should that be so difficult? On the other hand, the fact that you didn’t do them, that you didn’t manage to go jogging, brush up your foreign language skills or practice piano for so long – could that mean, ultimately, that they aren’t that important? That this is just another way we put pressure on ourselves?

It’s no problem to drive yourself to do things you do well naturally, I would assert.

Drive is not a neutral force that you can no longer switch on or off. Having drive simply means having found your place in life, the right place, and the right occupation. Then everything will run like clockwork.

This very same inner drive can – in a wonderfully existential paradox – come from outside. Every child knows the story: Newton was dozing under a tree when an apple conked him on the head. ‘Why does an apple fall down, but the moon doesn’t?’ mused the rudely awakened natural scientist. And in the process discovering gravity – not

‘Having

drive simply means having found your place in life.’

54 everything people do

exactly in his sleep, but through the external trigger of the apple. In any case, not through any drive of his own. This is perhaps drive in its most wonderful manifestation: something happens without us seeking it, posing a question that nests in our minds.

Something that rivets us, something we want to devote our time to absolutely, that whets our appetites for thinking and working. Something that has found us – not the ­other way around.

The drive that motivational scientists talk about seems, to me, to be something standardized: a cog in the capitalist stress machine. At the end of the day, though, it’s all about taking pleasure in life: taking pleasure in doing our job as well as possible. Taking pleasure in having children or maybe not having children. Taking pleasure in learning languages, travelling or trying to make sense of the world from home. It’s about taking pleasure in the things that we enjoy and accepting the everyday grind as a necessary evil. And these two components should be in equilibrium.

In his book ‘What is worth living for’, the Viennese philosopher Robert Pfaller describes the strenuous daily routine of a primitive tribe in some remote corner of the world – let’s say Papua New Guinea. The men spend months carving arrowheads using sharpened stone blades; they crawl for weeks through the jungle to hunt down a large animal. When they find one, they launch showers of their crude arrows into the beast until it finally bleeds to death. Often they then have to follow the trail of blood for many kilometres; once it dies, however, in a nearly superhuman act they need to carry it all those kilometres back home. The entire village takes to the task of skinning the animal, gutting it, grilling it and eating it. A gigantic feast follows, fuelled by rice wine that is made just as primitively as the arrowheads. The whole village drinks itself into a stupor.

Then the inhabitants lie sprawled around the fading fire, babbling and paralysed, the beast’s gnawed ribs presumably strewn around – looking much like Obelix after he has devoured a wild boar. They are now well and truly sick, our villagers: they have all but succeeded in wiping themselves out with their partying and rice wine. But only then, after this drunken orgy and daze, after the hellish hangover and ultimately only because of all this, are they in a position to start over again with their wretched routine: carving arrowheads, crawling through the jungle, always on the lookout for the biggest, fattest prey.

And this is why, in light of these brave primitive peoples, that I believe we should surrender the whole issue of drive to the technicians and automotive engineers. That’s where it belongs; they work to improve it, and that’s where it benefits us most.

‘It’s about taking pleasure in the things that we enjoy and accepting the everyday grind as a necessary evil.’

perspectives 55

Mihaela Boboc, Warehouse Manager, GW Singapore

From my early childhood my father taught me that there is no such thing as ‘I can’t’ – just ‘I won’t’. These words always helped me overcome my instinct to be lazy and strengthen my willpower. And they motivated me to face down all the challenges in my professional and personal life. New experiences, new people and new places have been my reward.

How we deal with inhibitions and reluctance: GW employees write about ­motivation and perseverance Sure, there are times when everything runs like a well-oiled machine and all you need to do is jog along beside it. But there are also moments when the going gets really tough. Lucky the man or woman who has the perfect fix ready. We asked around.

Kurt Pichler, Key Account, International Sales, GW Wels

What still drives me after more than 25 years on the job is the prospect of ­succeeding, above all in seemingly hopeless situations. Like in those movie scenes where a soldier says ‘Sir, we’re surrounded!’ and his commander ­replies ‘Excellent, now we can attack in any direction!’ If you’re surrounded by fog and can’t see a way out, you have to climb up a mountain and gaze out ­­towards the horizon. When it comes to resolve, my cat leads the way. He will sit watching a hole for hours until something finally appears. And if all else fails, I drag out the photos from our last seaside vacation, or pictures of a tour on a motorbike – they clear my head and help me focus again. No matter how good or bad a situation might seem, it is sure to change one way or the other.

56 perspectives

Volker Meyer, Sales Manager, Marketing & Sales air & sea, WOAC Hamburg

I’ve hardly ever experienced problems with motivation. For many years I ran the marathon and can recall experiences from my past that have helped me persevere. When I was an apprentice, my boss – a grumpy old merchant from North Germany – exhorted: ‘Mr. Meyer, if you are short of motivation, pay a visit to an intensive care unit.’ When I think about what he said, it reminds me of just how lucky I am. I have no right to be demoralised. And that attitude is my way of showing gratitude.

Viriana Columbia , Procurement Manager, WR Chicago

First I set out my goals and dream about them. But the closer I get to reaching them, the more I start to fear failure. I get on top of this by rethinking what fail­ure means. You try things, some of which work and some don’t. So you do more of what works. It’s a matter of trial and error.

Redefining failure as a learning experience helps. Utilise what you’ve learned to refine your plan, then try, try again. Overcoming fears and doubts is one of the best experiences you can have. ­Making self-empowering decisions under stress genuinely helps you grow as a person. And it reinforces the changes you make to your outlook on life.

Karina Möllenhoff, Logistics Consultant, x|vise Maria Lanzendorf

On an impulse I agreed to take part in the ‘Wings for Life World Run’!

What that actually involved didn’t dawn on me until later. Physical exercise, big-time! So here we are, just me and my inner demons! Time and again, I pray for rain, snow, in fact any justification for not leaving the sofa.

But we’ve drawn up a fixed training schedule, and it has already started.

The fresh air, the unadulterated pride I felt in getting my act together, and my goal of not being the first member of the x|vise team to collapse in a heap come May – those are the things that drive me on!

Tomáš Čarný, Controlling, GW Senec

It has been known to happen: my sense of drive is so murky that I can’t see my goal even if it’s staring me in the face. But even then, even if you have to take a step into the unknown, it’s important to believe that it’s out there somewhere. And then after days of wandering around in the gloom, everything suddenly brightens up again and I can see my dreamland glittering in the light of a new day.

57

text: Malte Lehming

N

obody likes to admit envying another person for something – material goods, love, birth, fortune. But unable to value what we have, we covet things that we don’t. Envy of others’ possessions quickly spawns bitterness and hostility. Yet all change is fuelled by envy too, and no social movement would be conceivable without its drive.

It’s up to you. Your boss offers to increase your salary by 1,000 euros a month, but your colleagues would all get 2,000 eu­ros more. Alternatively, the entire work­force gets a raise of 500 euros. The ­deci­sion is not an easy one. In the for­mer case you would have 500 euros more than in the second – but then again, there’s the ­inequity. You would be appreciably better off, but everyone else would benefit even more. No wonder most people

would vote for the second option. Individuals are prepared to a ­ ccept sacrifices in the name of fairness and justice.

Anyone completely unencumbered by envy will, of course, cheerfully take the 1,000 euros and run. They will be grateful for the additional income and won’t care how much the others get.

They derive their happiness not from comparisons with others but from their own welfare. Cain slew Abel because

58 a (short) ode to envy

he believed that God had favoured his brother. Should he be our model?

Envy definitely has an image problem. It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

It tastes bitter, corrodes the soul, and makes us suspicious and small-minded.

We reflexively deny being envious, and yet almost every social movement has been partly powered by it. Indi­ viduals striving for sympathy and justice are driven by a sense of isolation and discrimination. This feeling is always accompanied by a desire to be as well off as more privileged members of society – the affluent, males, whites, heteros – and it has infused social crusades ranging from the labour and women’s emancipation movements through to civil rights and gay rights activists.

By contrast, the champions of owner­ ship have a vital interest in disparaging envy – or social envy – as a motive. In

Germany, some people call it the ‘envy society’. Higher property and inheritance taxes? Surely we shouldn’t be punishing hard work! What gets forgotten is

sive result of the sweat they have shed.

Luck, chance, and absurd market rules also play a part. And when executives at banks that have been rescued using

‘ Envy is the brother of democracy.’ that inheritance runs contrary to merito­ cracy, or at least to the idea of being ‘self-made’. For inherited wealth isn’t the product of personal achievement.

It’s a benefit gained from families, clans and dynasties. It consists of creaming off wealth rather than creating it. That is why inheritance taxes are so high in the US , a country in which unearned wealth is frowned upon. Higher than in Germany. And in Austria they were completely abolished by 2008.

Modern society also represses the fact that, as all multibillionaires know deep down, their wealth is not the exclu-

taxpayers’ money pocket huge bonuses, nobody should be surprised by the outrage. Preaching just rewards for achievement while expecting others to compensate failure is playing both sides of the fence. Here the guiding principle is ‘Me first.’

Envy is a comrade-in-arms of democracy. In an ideal society where every­body enjoys parity, every kind of inequality is deemed the violation of a principle. Thus the French evolutionary biologist François Lelord writes: ‘In the class societies of old, peasants were not envious of kings and nobles. Chal-

a ( short) ode to envy 59

lenging them, or rising to their level, was simply unthinkable. But for many people in democracies, where everyone nominally has the same opportunities, envy is a key factor in perceptions of social standing.’

One drawback of envy is the limited perspective it induces. When the Berlin Wall fell and the deutsche mark was adopted as a currency, most residents of eastern Germany were better off than before. Yet because they no longer compared themselves with their brothers and sisters in socialist nations, but instead with their counterparts in west­ern Germany, they felt like second-class citizens. And it is no consolation that the global gap between the poor and rich is narrowing rather than expanding; highly populous and formerly impoverished nations like China and India are growing rapidly and catching up with their

wealthy industrial cousins. We measure ourselves by comparing our status with neighbours, colleagues, and friends.

Their big, new house does not outweigh the fact that only a fraction of the world’s population even owns a car.

A second problem with envy, its inherent paradox, is that the ideal championed by the envious – absolute equality – must never come to pass. If achieve­ ment does not lead to advantage, it is rendered superfluous. Sociologists ­differentiate between four kinds of envy, extending from ‘ambitious stimulation’ through ‘indignant argumentation’ and ‘depressive paralysis’ to ‘hostile injury’.

Yet ambition needs stimulants; without them, the human being lapses into sloth.

And that is another of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Who is happier – somebody who has everything or someone who lacks noth-

ing? This traditional riddle alludes to the third and perhaps last weakness of envy: the consistent comparisons with material things. My house, my car, my boat.

Yet unhappy people always lack something, no matter how rich they are. As long as we never forget that, we can afford occasional green-eyed lapses.

Source: Der Tagesspiegel

Malte Lehming studied philo­ sophy, literature and European history at the University of Hamburg. Since 2005, he has been responsible for the op-ed page of the Tagesspiegel newspaper in Berlin. From late 2000 to 2005 he was head of the paper’s Washington bureau. He first joined the Tagesspiegel as a foreign policy journalist; his areas of expertise were security policy, transatlantic relations and the Middle East. From 1989 to 1991 he served as a ­personal advisor and speech writer for former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

60 family fun

Hi kids! Running, jumping, hopping, rolling, sliding – there are lots of ways to move forward. But have you ever tried using a jet engine? We’re going to show you how to build a boat that moves the same way as a jellyfish swims and a rocket reaches outer space. Jet propulsion is almost too much fun for a bathtub, so why not head for the nearest pond? And don’t forget to check out our article on page 30! It’s full of cool stuff!

Suitable for children under parental supervision.

You will need the following materials: a knife or small saw

scissors some string

a piece of Styrofoam (approx. 20 x 10 x 2 cm) or another piece of material suitable for the barrel of a ballthe boat’s hull point pen (you can use a straw too)

a balloon

Take the knife or saw and cut out the shape of your hull in the Styrofoam.

Long and narrow, square, or broad and short – the choice is yours.

a drill

family fun 61

Remove the cap and ink chamber from the pen. Then pull the neck of the balloon up over the pen’s barrel, covering about half of it.

Here’s a tip: if the opening is smaller, the boat will move further but more slowly.

Wind the string around the neck of the balloon and tie it in a knot. That's the jet for your boat finished.

Next, attach your jet to the top of the hull. To make it easier to blow up the balloon, make sure it pokes out a little from the back. The best way is to make two holes in the boat's hull, pass the string through them and tie the jet down.

Now inflate the balloon and then hold your finger over the end to keep the air in. Put your boat in the water, let go of it, and watch it sail away.

Now try putting less air in the balloon or blowing it up as much as you can. And if you turn the jet to one side slightly, your boat will go around in circles.

It's imp or that no tant to make sure air can bet wee e n the ba scape from lloon an pen. If d n sive tap eed be, stick a the dhee o ver t he e balloon to crea nd of the te a sea l.

62 ATLAS

ATLAS 63

64 skateistan

text: Susanne Schick

C

lad in brightly hued dresses, some donning helmets and kneepads, they ride their old skate­boards – girls and boys from all types of ethnic and social back­ grounds, street urchins, kids from ‘the hood’. Afghanistan’s first skatepark is located in the heart of Kabul, in a country whose language has no word for these iconic, four-wheeled friends. And until a few years back, virtually nobody knew any­ thing about the countless things these modern chariots can do.

‘ Afghan girls aren’t allowed to ride bikes but they can skate.’

The Afghan population is young. Over half is less than 17 years old. In the UN ’s Gender Inequality Index, which evaluates equal opportunities around the world, the country currently languishes in place 169 out of 187. For many children and teenagers, engaging in physical activities is by no means a given.

The majority of schools have no playgrounds and, for many years, girls were completely excluded from playing sport in public. Even after the Taliban withdrew, physical exercise oppor­tu­nities were rare for girls. And women engaging in sports ­remain the exception today. Many even refrain from using a bicycle for fear of facing insults and intimidation.

For the girls, skateboarding represents liberation. Because the sport is so new, there are few rules – and that allows them to exploit the license that it offers.

The team at Skateistan spend many hours persuading parents to allow their children to join in. Skateboarding is not so much a ­rebellion in Afghanistan; rather it offers an opportunity for young people to connect with the rest of the world.

66 skateistan

The first step is always the hardest. At first the skategirls have to hold onto something: letting go is an act of faith. Many of the girls practice regularly at the ­Kabul skatepark and the older ones assume responsibility for the newcomers. To venture onto a skateboard, you need confidence and trust in your own abilities. The result: the girls have fun together, skate in groups, and make friends.

When Oliver Percovich travelled to Afghanistan in 2007, his girlfriend and their skateboards in tow, he was often ­surrounded by groups of youths. All of them were driven by curiosity. Some wanted to try out the techniques the Australian was demonstrating. And that marked the start of the Skate­ istan Club, the organisation that brought skateboarding to Afghanistan. In 2009 the country’s first skatepark opened in Kabul – funded by Afghanistan’s National Olympic Committee.

Today, skateboarding is still the only sport that boys and girls are allowed to do together. And, remarkably, almost half of its adherents are girls, something that many of their parents found hard to accept. For the children, by contrast, skating is usually a matter of love at first sight. Young people venturing onto the boards get to hone their self-confidence – and faith in their own abilities. Experimentation creates a sense of togetherness: without communicating among themselves, navigating carefully and showing each other due respect, they could not share the same skatepark. For many of them, the main hall has become a second home, a place where they can relax and make friends.

All the children come to ride their skateboards – and some stay behind to study. In addition to hosting sports activities, the club also runs educational programmes and workshops, and encourages children – many of whom work to help support their families – to return to school. The girls above all are empowered, as they can hold courses for younger children and ­establish themselves as role models.

On that note: Keep Skateistan rolling! Go, girls!

To support the club, go to: www.skateistan.org /d onate

Susanne Schick, born in 1980, is a cultural scientist and editor of ATLAS .

skateistan 67

68 orange network

jumped

flown

Despite measuring a mere 6 – 9 centimetres, the agile frog (Rana dalmatina) can hop up to two metres thanks to its unusually long back legs.

That’s equivalent to 33 times its own length. By contrast, the human world-record holder in the long jump can only jump five times his own height.

The airline Emirates is now operating the longest non-stop flight in the world, surpassing the almost 17 hours needed by its Australian counterpart Qantas to reach Dallas from Sydney. Emirates takes 17 hours and 35 minutes to cover the distance of 13,821 kilometres between Dubai and Panama City.

Lithuania Thanks to a partnership with Lithua­ nia’s state railway system, freight between the Bosporus and the Baltic is now being transported by train as well. As a result, customers can now be offered a fast, multimodal, low-emission alternative to the maritime route between Istanbul, Ukraine and the Baltic States via the Mediterranean and Atlantic.

Austria A new terminal has been opened in Hall with 1,000 m2 of storage and handling space and room for 5,000 pallets – bringing the total available area at the location to 130,000 m2.

Fitted with modern camera con­figu­ rations, energy-efficient lighting and groundwater heating, it offers security-related, technological and ecological features that meet the highest standards.

K azakhstan At the start of March, Gebrüder Weiss expanded its own network in Central Asia by acquiring the two branches run by Spedition Brockmüller in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The 12 employees in the country can boast years of experience in both domestic and international project operations and in regional break bulk cargo, particularly for the automotive industries.

Serbia Following 12 months of conversion work, a new logistics hub has been opened in Dobanovci outside Belgrade. Some 8 million euros were invested in the modernisation and extension of the existing terminal.

The facility can now boast a total of 15,000 m2 of storage space, an increase of 9,000 m2. Over the next few years 100 new employees are to be added to the existing workforce.

orange network 69

built

leaped

Towering 828 metres into the sky, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest structure ever erected by man. Moreover, it’s also the building with the most storeys, the fastest lifts, the highest restaurant and the highest nightclub in the world.

The US long jumper Mike Powell has held the men’s world long jump record for a quarter of a century. At the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo he leaped 8.95 metres, beating the previous record of 8.90 metres which his compatriot Bob Beamon had held for 23 years.

UAE In the presence of 150 guests, a new 5,300 m2 warehouse was inaugurated in Dubai. With space for 8,000 pallets, air-conditioning, state-of-the-art high-rise storage facilities and advanced IT systems for logistics, it cost over 5 million euros. It was built in a mere eight months on a 10,000 m2 premises. Forty employees from 10 countries will be taking up posts here. (please see page 24)

Kuwait The GW project section, which specialises in moving oversized freight, organised the delivery of a galvanising system plus all its ancillary components to Kuwait.

The 45-tonne galvanising tank – which was 14.1 metres long and 3.2 metres high – was hauled by road from the factory in Wies to the port of Bremerhaven before being shipped in two lots to its destination.

China Starting out at the Port of Tianjin, GW handled the transport of a complete drilling rig to the Hun­ gar­ian city of Nagykanizsa. At an average length of 17 to 21 metres, the largest items weighed between 21 and 35 tonnes each.

After a two-month journey at sea, the freight arrived at the Slovenian coastal town of Koper, from where it was transferred onto a dozen or so lorries.

Singapore By opening a new location in Singa­pore, Gebrüder Weiss has bridged a gap in its logistics solutions in Asia. Located in the direct vicinity of the port, the new terminal extends 10,000 m2, opening up convenient links to south-east Asian countries and, further afield, to Australia and New Zealand.

It’s all about making an impression.

Modesty is not a must.

71

‘I’m CEO, Bitch!’

HARALD MARTENSTEIN on being at the top, bottom and

in between – and on the art of making a good impression

H

ow can you make a good impression at work, what does it take? An entire discipline of social psy­ chology is devoted to self-presentation. Known as ­‘impression management’, it was established by (the Cana­ dian-American) Erving Goffman in 1955. The first step toward influencing perceptions is to decide what your goal is and where you currently stand. There are four possibilities. Firstly you want to make it big and reach the top of your profession.

Secondly, you want to cement your existing status. Thirdly, there’s a crisis and you need a way out fast. And fourthly – the least appealing situation – there's no hope of salvation whats­ oever and everyone already considers you an abject failure.

According to Goffman, you need to follow specific rules if you want to reach for the stars: flatter the top dogs, express mainstream opinions, appear competent and virtuous, iden­ tify with the dominant grouping in your company, and con­ demn anyone considered unpopular or a nuisance. None of that surprised me. But there are two more ingredients. You need to appear pleasant, i. e. not slimy or arrogant, and occa­ sionally you ought to appear confused and in need of support.

That way your colleagues won’t feel overly afraid of you. ­However, you still need the ability to intimidate others if the occasion warrants it; after all, it wouldn’t be good if they had no fear of you at all. If you have mastered all these principles, you are guaranteed to succeed in your career – in any job and irrespective of how well qualified you are. That much is all scientifically proven. By impression management researchers, as I said.

If you’ve scaled the peak and have no wish to return to base, you no longer have to balance as many plates. But in this situation too you need to reconcile apparent opposites. On the one hand you still need to appear competent and likeable – you already have those skills in your locker. But you also need to exude an air of dependability; you don’t want people regarding you as a liar or a snake. You will want to be open and honest – but everything in moderation, please! Everyone has problems, don’t they? Just admitting as much will make people’s hearts melt. Despite this, you shouldn’t scorn status symbols, or your colleagues may get cocky. In the end everybody will love and respect you. That’s what you want from them, and that’s what you’re getting.

Now the crisis comes. There’s been a terrible screw-up. It’s important to inform at least a few people relatively quickly and honestly. On no account do you want to be left carrying the can.

Is there any way of talking your way out of the whole affair and blaming others? You will need to move quickly, before they stop loving and respecting you. Excuses and retrospective justifications are all well and good, but only up to a certain point. Milk every drop of sympathy by apologising for your blunder and take every opportunity to improve your image.

And now the game’s up. There’s been a train wreck and there’s no fix in sight. No matter how big your severance package, you need to appear helpless and despairing. All you can do is confess to a drug dependency or disclose a psychological condition that has sent you temporarily haywire. That way you can preserve some of your standing, and hope for a second chance. The case for impression management seemed abso­ lutely compelling to me – until I saw one of Mark Zuckerberg’s old business cards on the Internet. It bore the words: ‘Mark ­Zuckerberg. Facebook. I’m CEO, Bitch.’ Clearly, there are other successful strategies for making an impression.

Harald Martenstein authors the column ‘Martenstein’ in Germany’s ZEIT Magazin and is an editor at the ­Berlin-based newspaper Der ­Tagesspiegel. His most recent book is Nettsein ist auch keine Lösung: Einfache Geschichten aus einem schwierigen Land.

The next ATLAS : Orientation

The next issue of ATLAS will be released in autumn 2016. Thank you for taking an interest in our magazine and company. We are always looking to make this publication even better and would therefore be delighted to hear any thoughts or comments you might have. ­Please send your feedback to redaktion@gw-atlas.com. Thank you.

ATLAS is the customer magazine of Gebrüder Weiss

The information contained herein has been compiled with

p. 62/63: Rhianon Bader; p. 64 (below), p. 67: Chad Foreman;

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All rights reserved. redaktion@gw-atlas.com Press deadline: 15 March 2016

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human driving a car can travel from vienna to kiel a motorbike does the trick too drive keeps people mobile, they feel – no matter what they do drive lurks deep in the gut of motors and machines but whence does it come? but what are its ways and means? behind every type of machine are man-made fuels that feed it drive is the result that is seen but desire and knowledge lead it technology – ‘i think, therefore i build’ is driven by humans mere their drive is fuelled, indeed, it’s filled by things that they hold dear

INGO NEUMAYER pens poetry and a German language blog entitled Twelve Lines on Time (www.zwoelfzeilen.com). He lives in Cologne.

ATLAS No. 6: With news, views, interviews and pictures galore powered by a fascination with a world on the move.