My Grandfather was what a typical American would picture as the typical German. He was extremely technical, completely immersed in his craft of the design and manufacturing of bells. My mother once told me that she was very confident that he had never taken a picture of a human being and he took a camera everywhere with him. He produced over 7,000 church bells which were hand made, no two were alike. The replacement of cracked bells yielded what the city of Vienna claims is the largest privatlely held collection of church bells worldwide. He kept the cracked bells and in fact owned bells dating as far back as the twelth century. One of my fondest memories of him was when he rigged up an electronic ringing system for his bells and then proceded to play jingle bells for me on bells that were 500 years old. I have scanned in some pictures of his bell collection for your viewing (lower left).
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