Peter Rembold R.I.P.

His full name is Peter Viktor Franz Rembold. He was born in Danzig on November 11, 1925, two years earlier than Günter Grass, his co-citizen. As a boy, Peter must have lived through the German shelling of the Westerplatte that started the Second World War.

Following his Abitur, he was drafted and came home from the Russian front wounded. He studied and graduated as an engineer.

In his funeral oration, Peter's son described what was so fascinating about this man, "My father was granted 95 years of life, and he made good use of the time. Peter Rembold's personality developed from one stage of his life to the next, for he was a man who remained curious throughout his life, ready to learn new things and to prove himself in areas previously unknown to him."

Peter was a cosmopolitan. He worked and lived in Spain and the States, where already in the 1950s, he became a computer nerd. Then he made Freiburg his family base. His following stations were Switzerland and England before he retired.

He did not call it a day (Feierabend) but became the co-founder of the Freiburg Feierabend group*. I first met Peter at one of the group's monthly coffee mornings, and it sparked between us immediately.
*Feierabend exists all over Germany, organized in regional groups intending to make older people familiar with the Internet. I will devote a future blog to it.

He was ten years older than me and was the computer specialist of the Freiburg regional group. I know a bit of software, but his profound knowledge of soft- and hardware made him equip a whole room where we met with PCs and peripherals.

He also helped the members of Feierabend and beyond in his "free" time to solve their personal computer problems. So, in the end, he had no free time left.

In addition, I admired Peter for his physical form. I still remember him six or seven years ago downtown, driving in the snow on his beloved bicycle. It was already dark, and he was heading for his home in Merzhausen, a Freiburg suburb.

Peter died on June 15, 2021. He was a remarkable man. We all miss him.

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