|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Johannes Petrus Knetemann, 76
In the middle of the war, in a Dutch village in 1941: Johannes Petrus Knetemann doesn’t want to lend his alcoholic father five guilders. He wants some kind of security. The 15-year-old motherless child gets his father’s broken wrist watch. He gets it repaired for 4 guilders 50. He shows it proudly around. Someone offers him 13 guilders for it. „That’s how I got the idea to buy up broken watches.“ No sooner thought than done; but where does the boy get his money? As a gardener’s helper he earns less than the cost of his lodgings. By breeding rabbits, because people are starving. Only when he has secured all the watches worth looking at does he take them to be repaired. He sells each working watch at a profit. From then on, and for the rest of his life, he works as a businessman. 30 years later, his father dies and his only inheritance was a watch again. A Lasita. He keeps this one. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Book „UhrMenschen - 50 people, 50 watches, 50 portraits“, Athena-Verlag, Red Dot-Award-Winner |
|
|
