"Maecenates voco!": laudation for Hans-Joachim Molitor
Laudation
„Maecenates voco!“
thats what the politicians in old Rome called out when necessities had to be financed but budget was short. Meant by this call were Gaius Clinicus Maecenas and others who (like Maecenas) were ready to help in such cases. This call might sound familiar to Hans-Joachim Molitor. Not only since he has always stuck to the principles of his classical philological education, but because he has probably heard this call very often during the last 45 years.
Until this very day a “patron” is “a person sponsoring somebody during the development of a creation with money or monetary values without directly asking for any return”. Even scientists, who are unavoidably more or less familiar with economical principles, sometimes smile benignly at such an outmoded position. Is anyone giving anything today without asking which advantages may directly or indirectly be deriving thereof?
One person who has done this for all of his life and is still doing it, only limited by the means available, has recently celebrated his 70th birthday. We are congratulating by remembering and by this remembrance we might motivate imitation.
Hans-Joachim Molitor is born in 1935 in Menden/ Sauerland. He visited a grammar school which laid the foundation of a humanistic concept that will be formative for his whole life. After studying economical and social science in Cologne he gets his first employment in an advertising agency in Düsseldorf. At the age of 35 he arrives where he will stay from then on: he changes sides from agency to industry to join DESOWAG Chemicals, responsible for disinfectant classics like Incidin and Spitacid. After a short time he is being called to Hamburg to join Schülke & Mayr, at that time the biggest company within the category in Europe. Hans-Joachim Molitor becomes marketing director for the whole European business and a member of the executive board.
Meetings with scientists from all over Europe quickly give him an outline of the necessity to become active: based on his initiative the first “International Colloquy” is taking place in 1971. This actually is the first initiative to bring together scientists from all over Europe. At that time he is the only one believing in the possibility to bring the test methods for the efficacy of disinfectants in Europe into line. The task force, consisting of 12 scientists, elected during the first, accredited during the second International Colloquy, built the base for far-reaching, still valid results and the ongoing European dialog. Administration, coordination, presentation and sometimes even motivation of the task force as well as of other comprehensive events were in his hands.
It is his conviction that people need to talk to each other in order to reach agreements. That’s why during all those years he initiates and supports events, round tables, work shops or other task forces, he brings together people from all over Europe – never linked to any matter-of-fact interference or any targets. All the young talents which were able to join “elitist scientific circles” due to his direct or indirect help and who were able to make their talents visible faster and easier will remember his sponsorship.
Not only did he support scientific work by sponsorships but e.g. also by inciting the establishment of the “Rudolph-Schülke-Foundation” in 1973, which is awarding the most renowned price for scientific performances in the area of disinfectants until this very day.
1975 he leaves Schülke & Mayr to follow his dream of founding an enterprise by himself in order to enable him to act by his own principles: in February 1976 Antiseptica chem. pharm. Produkte GmbH comes into existence – a company which is based from the very beginning on the newest state-of-the art scientific findings and on consequent international marketing: today Antiseptica is represented in 24 countries.
This small company does not have the funds of one of the “Big Ones” in the market, but the general manager still has the ongoing willingness to sponsor science. EURIDIKI is founded in 1979, a group consisting of intensive care doctors and hygienists with the objective to bring the theory (hygiene) more in line with the daily routine (intensive care medicine) and to ask doctors and nurses to do not only the necessary but the most feasible. Over the last 20 years this group has been doing a tedious and surely even unspectacular fundamental research. Hans-Joachim Molitor has sponsored and animated business friends to join in – for more than 20 years.
Those who know him have experienced the strong visionary power he possesses. With this power he has, without striking a pose, significantly co-designed most of the important developments within the branch during the last decades: be it by initiating round tables and direct financial sponsoring, be it by inspiration, motivation but most of all by his everlasting readiness and his courage to deal with novelties, to invest in novelties. He sponsors European scientists speaking in the United States about alcoholic hand disinfection and while at the headquarters of the competitors everybody is smiling at this fact, Antiseptica Poly Alcohol hand disinfection is the first alcoholic product being sold in the Gulf States. Hans-Joachim Molitor believes in the idea and the necessity to experiment as well as in the absolute freedom of science. And he shows a lot of patience when he believes in something.
In times when shareholder value has priority and the pressure for success, on expense and on time of scientific departments only promote rather mediocre solutions than first-class performance, these principles are not popular. Ethics, fairness and modesty are only of conditional relevance. Dr. Hans-Joachim Molitor has old-fashioned principles. And it is exactly this fact that the authors want to thank him for.
We will do this on the following pages in a way that is most adequate to him: in form of a free scientific discourse about what has been achieved in the area of infection prophylaxis during recent years.
Erratum
The second part of the section "Zusammenfassung" starting with "Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten förderte er ..." was erroneously omitted in the initial publication.
