Exactly 30 years ago, a colleague strongly recommended an article from “DER SPIEGEL” to me. It was an essay entitled Die Menschheit ist am Ende (Mankind is at the End) by Herbert Gruhl, who was completely unknown to me until then. It was not only the meaningful title that made me curious right away, but the content was also like a strike of lightning strike for me and opened up a whole new perspective on the environmental debate. For the first time, I understood that environment, politics and social issues are interrelated.

I immediately began to gather information on his person and his career.

Born in 1921, Herbert Gruhl had already had a long political career by 1992.

https://herbert-gruhl.de/sample-page/

During his many years as a politician in various parties, he always sought his own path, which he never really found. Even more than a politician, Herbert Gruhl earned a significant reputation as a writer, ecological mastermind and conservative admonisher against the careless treatment of nature.

In the SPIEGEL article, his new book Himmelfahrt ins Nichts (Ascension to nowhere) was announced at the same time. I immediately plunged into reading it, followed by his most famous non-fiction book at the time, Ein Planet wird geplündert – Die Schreckensbilanz unserer Politik (A planet is being plundered – the horrific state of our politics), which had been published in 1975.

After reading it, I absolutely had to get in touch with this man to present and discuss my approach to Equilibrism. Above all, I wanted to find out from him whether the direction I had taken with this new concept was realistic and made sense.

I reached Herbert Gruhl on the phone and learned that he lived in Marktschellenberg. After several telephone conversations, he invited me to visit him at home. What impressed me most about him was the fact that he took a lot of time for our conversations, in which he encouraged me again and again not to be dissuaded from my chosen path. When I asked him whether it was absolutely necessary to go into politics in order to achieve our common goals, he answered with a clear no. I still remember his reasoning today. Politics, Gruhl said, is about a lot of things, but not the environment. Political parties would give topic at most ten percent of their energy.

I had the pleasure of meeting this extraordinary man three times in person at his home in Marktschellenberg, where he gave me all his publications, which today identify him as an admonisher of the first hour, because in his works he laid out a record of political horrors more unsparingly than anyone else.