Stephan's 75th birthday message

It was a little over four years ago when Stephan and I spent some days trying to write a 75th birthday message that Stephan wanted to send out to his friends. It was also supposed to serve as a kind of farewell letter because he wanted to also announce in that letter that he was in the terminal stages of pancreatic cancer. He wanted to celebrate his platinum birthday in Bremen, but his health did not permit anything more than a small celebration on Saturday, 18th May, 2019 in Volkach. Today he would have celebrated another birthday, if pancreatic cancer had not snatched him away from us on the 26th July 2019, not even three months after his 75th birthday.  Here is the letter he wrote and a few photos from that last birthday celebration. He never got to host the summer garden party that he wanted to organise in Volkach in July that year (that he mentions in the letter).  But we did organise a memorial event in his memory on the 10th August that year in that very garden in Volkach. 

Volkach, 27^th April 2019

Dear Friends,

As I turn 75 this month I wish to use the occasion to say hello and write to you a sort of Christmas-letter with an update of my latest news. Meenaxi has urged me to write a kind of review of my life, but looking back I feel I do not have enough to say. Of course I have shared my life with various people at different stages; some of those relationships have accompanied me for larger chunks of my life. I have been lucky to have found a few close and lasting friendships, mainly through mathematics, and these friends, besides my family, have given substance to my life.

Some of you might have heard of my present illness – advanced stage pancreatic cancer -- that was detected last summer and which has forced me to slow down on my travels and also with my work. It was a dull stomach ache that was the only symptom that I had, besides heavy weight loss which I had mistakenly attributed to my deliberate dieting plans, and so the disease went undetected till it was too late for surgical removal as it had metastasized to the liver. The chemotherapy treatment that I was given at the Uniklinik at Wuerzburg had worked well till the end of February this year and apart from having to go to the clinic once every week, I had been able to carry on almost as before. But now the disease is spreading further and hence the doctors are trying to find some other treatment for me.

These last months of having to come to terms with the knowledge of the disease within me, has also brought moments of reflection and introspection about the years that have gone by and also about what lies ahead. On the whole, life has been good to me. There have been problems, and the occasional crises, but that is nothing special. Today I am a proud father of my three children and six grandchildren and they, along with Meenaxi, have made my life richer and happier.

With Anne Marie Schwittek

Jochen and Helga Wirths

As for the bigger world, I think my generation lived at a very good time; yes, it is true I was born in the middle of a war and never met my father who died in it, it is also true that during those initial post-war years my mother had a hard time taking care of my sister and me in Bremen and we had to make do with very little, but still it was possible for me to study and follow my dreams and embark on a career. The years, studying and working at the Bonn University, were very happy; it was in Bonn that I met and became friends with my oldest collaborator, Jochen Wirths. Most of the seventies were spent in Afghanistan. That was a fascinating time. The years thereafter, working in Wuerzburg (with a stint in Chile), have been good. And we have had peace, at least in Germany, till now. Our children have also had it good, very good in fact, so far. But things are beginning to crumble, and it is not clear how things will look in my grandchildren’s generation.

But let me not prolong that discussion. It has been mathematics to which I have devoted most of my time and there have been times when I have seen beauty and perfection in it; I have met many amazing people and visited many wonderful places while seeking answers to mathematical questions; it is also mathematics, which was both a profession as well as a passion for me, that has led me to many of the decisions I have made in my life – professional as well as personal. I have held on to mathematics, afraid that I might cease to exist if I let go. And even today, when I realise that my mathematical abilities are not at their best, I dream of doing more.

With Meenaxi and eldest granddaughter Paula

I did manage to realise the dream of combining going to new places and doing mathematics by organising the CMFT conferences at many different points on this globe. And I have managed to do this, every four years with the help of close friends, for the last thirty years, since 1989 when the first conference was held at Valparaiso, Chile. The conference series led to the founding of the CMFT journal, which first appeared in 2000.  Doing editorial work for the CMFT journal and organising the CMFT conferences have been a big part of my professional life in the last decades. Today I can only dream and hope that the CMFT journal and conference series will continue to happen, regardless of whether I am there or not.

And there are other dreams; some dreams that have, in the meanwhile, been given up, like that of the book on Geometric Function Theory that Ted Suffridge and I wanted to write. Then there are dreams about finishing incomplete projects, like the ones I started in Afghanistan – having invested so much of my time and energy in those projects in Kabul and Herat since 2002, it hurts very much to accept that the goals I had set for those projects could not be fully realised. But such is life; one has to let go even while continuing to wish that somehow things will get better in that beautiful but troubled land to which I feel so closely bonded.

Most of my life I have lived in Volkach. But there are a couple of other places which also feel like home for me – first, Chile because of the many years I have lived there and the many visits I have made since to work with my closest collaborator Luis Salinas, and second, India, initially because of my friendship of several decades with Prof. V. Singh and later because of Meenaxi. Visiting my friends has taken me to many beautiful places over the years, for instance, Montreal to work with my dear friend Richard Fournier and Nepal to visit former students.

At the 75th birthday party with many friends and students

As for the present, Meenaxi and I have just returned from a week-long cruise along the Danube from Passau to Budapest and back. It was a fantastic experience and I am glad we went on that trip. Next month we hope to have a small family celebration for my birthday in Bremen – the city where I feel I still belong and where my sister still lives.  And later in the summer, if everything else remains stable, Meenaxi and I would like to invite you all some Saturday evening for a garden party in our home in Volkach – just as we have done many times in the past. We have not fixed dates yet but please do let Meenaxi know if you would want us to avoid some particular Saturday. And those of you who live further away, do visit us if you happen to be in the vicinity in the coming months.

I don’t want to end this letter by saying thank you or sorry. But I do want to say that I am grateful to each and every one of you for having been part of my life, just as I am grateful to my destiny for having given me this life. No, I would not change it for any other; if I could begin again, I would perhaps try to learn to play a musical instrument and to speak Assamese, but it is too late now. I do realise that there must have been times when I have been too convinced about something to be able to see the other points of view. If I have ever been an insufferable, pompous, high-handed, insensitive brat who you would have liked to bash up, there is still time!  But you better hurry up J

Either for this or for some other reason, I do hope to see you all soon. Let me end by wishing you all the very best, now and always.

Stephan