Publisher's Synopsis
This biography is based on my maternal grandfather's Lebensgeschichte (life story) which he started to write in February 1943 soon after he heard that his youngest son had been killed on the Russian Front. I have fleshed out this skeleton by adding information gathered from some of his surviving relatives and a large collection of family correspondence and photos.August Karl Petri grew up in Hohenhausen, a small relatively insignificant Westphalian village, where his workaholic father ran the slaughterhouse and butchers shop.Emma Auguste (Gusti) Horn's family came from Marktredwitz, a notable town near Bayreuth in Bavaria, where she spent some of her childhood. They moved to Munich when her father became the headmaster of the Luitpold-Kreisrealschule.August Petri was a country boy. Gusti Horn was a city girl. That they should meet, let alone get married, was the height of improbability, but that was just what happened in 1904.This book comes in 5 parts which relate to the phases of his life as an electrical engineer. The 20 chapters are like a sequence of short stories charting his journey through the highs and lows of life. To his successful high school leavers, the world appeared to be their oyster. Likewise he set out chasing the rainbow unaware how international conflicts would influence those aspirations.His path was littered with a number of medical problems which might have been dealt with differently in today's world. Early in his professional life, August Petri learned that in order to progress along the slippery path, it wasn't what you knew but who you knew that really mattered. In that regard his humble origins were a considerable handicap. Furthermore, he soon discovered that signatures on pieces of paper were meaningless without knowing the real motivation of those signatories, who more often than not were driven by personal power and greed and not by humanitarian ideals. From 1870-1940 Germany had periods of greatness which historians should not forget. Unfortunately the history of conflict is coloured by the conscious desire of the victors, to exaggerate their own version of events and in so doing to cover up their own culpability. These were times driven by empire and the trappings of power that defrauded the naïve populations of the world. Unless this period is examined from within Germany and one sees the world as her people saw the world, then the reader will miss the very essence of historical reality. In 1910 August Petri was employed by Siemens & Halske to oversee the building of a power station in Belgard and to establish the necessary network to electrify Eastern Pomerania (Hinterpommern).At that time Belgard was a small rural Pomeranian town - a step up from Hohenhausen, but a step down from Munich. That August and Gusti would hit it off in this environment, turned out to be a feat of endurance and innovation.He moved on from Belgard to Stettin (the capital city of Pomerania) and finally to Berlin as a Director of MEW - Märkischen Elektrizitätswerkes AG (originally founded by AEG), to oversee their electricity generation and transmission facilities.The political upheaval which came with the Great War had to be overcome, but that came with a cost - the cost of losing direct contact with his workforce, and becoming the slave of ever increasing authoritarian politics, and politicians who manoeuvred pieces on an invisible chess board without any knowledge of the scientific basis that should underpin their strategies.Our unremembered past is a collection of the bad experiences which we do remember but choose to appear to have forgotten. This is not a denial, but in a way it is like coming to terms with bereavement.This is a story based on real people and their experiences - warts and all. Although August Petri might have appeared severe and strict, his enduring legacy is his love for his kith and kin and determination to keep "Alles in Ordnung."
