The Romantic

By Brian Cox

This is the love story Hamburg attorney Eckart Brödermann’s children retold as a theatrical skit at their parents’ 25th wedding anniversary:

Toward the end of Brödermann’s legal studies, he was clerking at the Hamburg Appellate Court when he received an invitation from his father to accompany him on a sailing trip aboard the “Statsraad Lehmkuhl,” a Norwegian three-masted steel barque built in 1914 as a training ship for the German merchant navy. The ship has a well-established sail training program and trainees are encouraged to take part in all aspects of running the ship, including manning all watch posts, climbing the rigging, sail handling, and ship maintenance.

At the same time, Brödermann’s future wife, Silke, decided to take a rejuvenating break between finishing her engineering exams and completing her thesis by signing up for a cruise aboard the “Statsraad Lehmkuhl.”

Brödermann remembers first seeing Silke at 7:20 on the first morning when the boat was loading. As it happened, Brödermann was chosen to be the assistant sergeant in charge of putting watches together. He saw his opportunity and seized it.

“So everybody had to pass by me and I put them in the watches and I put my wife in my watch,” says Brödermann, noting that the pair were required to stand together at the front of the ship to watch for debris and other potential hazards.

“We did a lot of ‘watching,’” says Brödermann with an impish grin. “My father didn’t get much time to spend with me.”

Eckart Brödermann and his wife, Silke, sail at least four or five weeks every year to Sweden or Denmark or the former East Germany.

At the end of the 10 days, three people asked the young pair when they were going to get married. Brödermann proposed after six months, and they were married within the year.

“That’s how I met my wife,” says Brödermann. “With my wife, I met a real sailing woman, who had started from childhood to sail on cruises with her father. And ever since we’ve been sailing together.”

Sailing has been a part of Brödermann’s life for as long as he can remember.

“Ever since I have memories, water is there and sailing is there,” he says.

He remembers sailing along with fishermen in then-Yugoslavia, which is Croatia today. He started sailing at age 10 in an Optimist, which is a small, singlehanded sailing dinghy intended for use by young people. It is one of the two most popular sailing dinghies in the world.

At 14, Brödermann started racing 45-foot sailboats, but his racing years were interrupted by studies and traveling abroad as he pursued degrees from the University of Paris, Harvard Law School, and the University of Hamburg, where he is now a professor of law for his lifetime.

He and Silke continued to sail when they had the opportunity, most often on her father’s sailboat on trips to Sweden. They introduced their four children to sailing, and in time they bought their own sailboat —a 39-foot vessel with a 62-foot mast named “Gefion” after a female Danish goddess. The Brödermann family began taking sailing trips across Europe.

When Silke was pregnant with their first child, she enrolled at a university for seaman and passed exams to qualify to sail worldwide.

“She is by now the better seaman,” says Brödermann. “So, she is the captain. In the end, on a sailing boat, one has to be the boss.”

Every weekend since their children were grown, Brödermann and his wife have sailed starting at around Easter through early October. Every year they sail at least four or five weeks – to Sweden or to Denmark or to former East Germany.

Brödermann, the founding partner of Brödermann Jahn, draws clear comparisons between operating a sailboat and managing a law firm: both require trust and teamwork.

“Sailing is a very nice parable for working as a team,” he says. “And I think clients are better served and, in the end, more happy if they get full-team service like on a sailboat.”

Brödermann, who is currently Senior Vice President, International, of Primerus™, has spent his career concentrating both on international transactions and on international litigation and arbitration. In his teaching at Hamburg University and in his publications, Brödermann concentrates on international contract law (including risk management) and on international arbitration.

He recently completed the second edition of his book “UNIDROIT Principals of International Commercial Contracts.” The book provides article-by-article comments on a balanced and neutral set of rules restating an international understanding of global contract law.

“If you have a sailor’s mind, thinking globally, internationally, it’s kind of obvious that we have to look for the common ground,” says Brödermann. “I mean, we all sail internationally and get along better with joint rules rather than with distinct rules.”

Brödermann’s children have continued the family tradition of sailing.

“They still sail with us,” he says. “We let them know when we travel, and they can join whenever they want.”

A couple of years ago, the family was sailing and received an invitation from friends to join them for dinner in Sweden. Initially Brödermann and Silke thought they should decline. It was too far to travel and would be too stressful to make it in time. But his children persuaded them otherwise and they decided to sail through the night.

“It’s nice when you can go to sleep at midnight and you know you’re safe because your children continue to sail the boat,” he says.