Edith-Karla Eiselen
at the University of Chiang Mai, Thailand
Edith-Karla Eiselen (née John) was born on February 5, 1936 in Königsberg, East Prussia. Her happy early childhood was abruptly interrupted by the outbreak of war. In 1943/44 the bombing of Königsberg became more and more severe, so that in the summer of 1944, due to the approaching Russian front, the evacuation to a village near Königsberg took place. With one of the last refugee trains out of East Prussia, the family was able to move to Vogtland and then to Saxony-Anhalt.
At the age of 12, Mrs. Eiselen was admitted to a boarding school, the former Hermann Lietz School in Haubinda, where she remained until she was 14. She was then transferred to a high school in Schleusingen. In the summer of 1954, Mrs. Eiselen prepared for her Abitur. Before the exams, the students in her class were asked to apply for the "candidacy of the SED" (Socialist Unity Party of Germany). Since the entire class refused to sign, the consequence was "no admission to university".
Instead, her new field of activity was to "prove herself in production" as a laboratory assistant. Mrs. Eiselen's parents left the GDR before the Berlin Wall was built, but she was not allowed to leave with them. In 1958, Mrs. Eiselen was offered a place at the University of Greifswald. However, when she received permission for a short vacation with her parents shortly before, she stayed in the West, where she began her professional life, attending business school and later working at the Hanover Fair, among other places.
In 1977, Mrs. Eiselen met her future husband, Hermann Eiselen, who was already considering selling the Ulmer Spatz company. The idea of setting up a foundation was also being considered at the time. The Father and Son Eiselen Foundation was established in 1978, and the Ulmer Spatz company was sold in 1980. In the same year, on May 16, 1980, Mr. and Mrs. Eiselen married.
From the beginning, it was a marriage in which conversation and lively discussion played an important role. Mrs. Eiselen was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Eiselen Foundation, but resigned from this office and from her office in the fiat panis Foundation at the end of 2013 for personal reasons after difficult years, and in the same year founded the Hermann and Edith-Karla Eiselen Memorial Foundation.