Schmid Once I lived the life of a millionaire

The autobiography of Paul Schmid
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-99130-730-3
Verlag: novum publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 252 Seiten

We hear again and again in politics how 'entrepreneurs have to bear all the risk.' Paul Schmid shows us exactly what this means and where it can lead in his autobiography, 'Once I lived the life of a millionaire.' Woven into his family history, the engineer describes how he worked his way up to become a key player in the telecommunications industry, starting with a product he developed on his own and at his own risk. However, his many successes also led to more responsibility and, with it, greater financial risk. The book shows how quickly the wind can turn due to changes in the industry, and above all, the global economy, and how an entrepreneur can slip into serious difficulty through no fault of their own.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schmid, Paul

Leseproben

Autobiography Paul Schmid

My mother, Berta Schmid-Bürgi, grew up with her two older brothers Karl and Paul in Gachnang, Switzerland. “Berteli” Bürgi was a cheerful girl, well known to everyone in the small farming village.

Her parents’ house, located at what was once the exit from the village, still stands to this day. The former country road led right past the house and immediately afterwards up the mountain via Oberwil to Frauenfeld. If you take the path by foot, you’ll get to Frauenfeld in just under an hour. A classic farmer’s garden adorned the old half-timber construction, and behind it, the view opened out onto a magnificent garden of over seventy high-trunk fruit trees. In the barn were fifteen cows and a few oxen. Her father, Karl Bürgi, traded the oxen in addition to his business in fruit and dairy products. He bought the young animals, taught them to work, and sold them on for a small profit.

The water of the well rippled day and night beneath the window of Berteli’s small room, and the same pairs of swallows would nestle in the room year after year.

Life on the farm was far from idyllic, though. Berteli’s mother passed away when she was just seven years old. One Anna-Maria Lampert, an attractive twenty-three-year-old, came all the way from Grisons to work on the farm as a maid, bringing two illegitimate children with her. The widower soon married the maid, twenty-eight years younger than him, and the number of children on the farm grew from five to seven.

Berteli loved going to school; she found learning easy. Ninety children were taught in one schoolroom by a single teacher. The older, stronger students had to help teach their younger classmates to read, count, and write. Berteli’s academic achievements were easily sufficient to go onto secondary school, but her father refused to let her. He seemed to value her help on the farm more. Berteli never forgave him for this harsh decision.

She was only seventeen years old when her father died of pneumonia. Her older brother Paul took up the mantle of head of the family after being appointed as guardian to Berteli, even though she was just four years his junior.

The enterprising stepmother and widow Anna-Maria, only thirty-four years old, did not find it difficult to find a new pair of hands to man the farm. The new marriage soon produced two more children, breathing more life into the beautiful half-timber building.

Berti told herself: “Why ask lots of questions about money and property if I’m happy?” (Johannes Martin
Müller, 1750–1814). She left all the household effects bequeathed to her by her brother Paul to the farm’s numerous residents and set up her own family at the age of twenty-one, far away from her parents’ old home. The scene: The grand St. Ursen Cathedral in Solothurn. The only souls present were the bridal couple, their witnesses, and the pastor.

The lucky man she chose was named Konrad Schmid. He spent his early youth with very old parents and in poverty. He was reluctant to look back on his youth as an indentured child, but he was delighted to talk about the first job he chose for himself, electrifying railway lines as a trained overhead line technician. He’d proudly ride his BSA to work in 1925, stopping off on the way home at the stocking collection points that his young wife had set up to earn a little money toward the household’s budget by repairing stockings.

In 1932, my father moved to Zurich’s state electricity plant—the EKZ—in the district of Winterthur as an overhead line mechanic. In the Great Depression and subsequent war years, young men absent due to military service found their professional development stunted, especially those who were at the start of their working lives and the bottom of the career ladder. In the economic upturn after the war ended, the EKZ entrusted more demanding tasks to my father, which was reflected in the fact that his salary was no longer a worker’s but an employee’s, and it rose steadily albeit slowly. The couple used these funds to fulfill their greatest dream, which was to give their two sons a better start in life with a good education.

***

My brother Konrad was born on March 2, 1931, a good two years before me. He was my parents’ favorite, especially whenever we brought home our school reports. His last elementary-school report, top grades all around, included just one five-and-a-half out of six.

Konrad combined his many talents and outstanding intelligence with great ambition, which ensured they didn’t go unexploited. He learned to play the piano from a teacher of classical music, and later a well-known entertainment and jazz pianist in Zurich taught him “underground music”. After two years of grammar school, he switched to a vocational high school, where he and some of his classmates founded the Eleonora Jazz Society. The name was not inspired by a pretty singer, but by the street where a popular community jazz cellar was located. He bought one of the first Revox tape recorders to record his music, a Dynavox with two heads and two motors. After studying the device, Konrad built an even better one with three heads and three motors. He also added an amplifier and other electronic devices for personal use. Konrad devoured technical literature as avidly as other boys gobbled up detective stories. This curiosity for all kinds of advances in technology remained unabated for the rest of his life.

With a diploma as an electrical engineer from the Federal Institute of Technology in his pocket, Konrad took up his first job at the RCA laboratory on Hardturmstrasse in Zurich in January 1957. To introduce him to his role, Konrad spent several months in the RCA’s famous laboratories in the U.S. This was when his admiration for Americans’ technical prowess in the field of electronics—as well as their gift of forming lasting friendships—began. In the evenings, he enjoyed the music of legendary pianists like Teddy Wilson in the jazz bars of New York.

Konrad then worked around Europe helping radio and television factories use RCA patents: he spent the incredible summer of 1960 in a factory by the sea just north of Stockholm. Assuming Sweden was always this nice, he left his parents’ apartment on his thirtieth birthday—a deadline that had been set for him a long time before—and drove his MG TF up to Gothenburg, where an assistant position was waiting for him at Chalmers University of Technology. His research was aimed at improving electronic medical devices.

He rented his first apartment in Gothenburg and used what little money he had left over to buy first a bed and second a grand piano. After a few years, Konrad was allowed to give his own lectures. To his students’ amazement, he would transfer his manuscripts to the blackboard in English while lecturing in Swedish. At the same time, he worked toward his doctorate in technical sciences at Chalmers University of Technology.

A concert by Hazy Osterwald thrilled Konrad so much that he invited the whole band—along with some pretty blonde Swedes—back to his place. He liked one of the blondes, Bodil Ericsson, so much in her traditional dress that on May 5, 1967, an unforgettable wedding party took place at her parents’ home on a rocky outcrop above the fjord.

Konrad and Bodil went on to spend more than two decades of their summer vacations in a seaside vacation home in Lysekil that belonged to Bodil’s parents. Konrad enjoyed sailing in the archipelago with Bodil’s many cousins, swimming in the cold sea, and hauling the net out of the sea at dawn to release fish, crabs, and even lobsters from their agony for that night’s dinner. If the catch was worthy of an exuberant celebration, he had no trouble keeping up. He loved to dance all night long, even though he was well aware that he would have to stand knee-deep in cold water for a while before going to bed to relieve the pain in his varicose veins.

***

On May 6, 1933, I, Paul Schmid, first saw the light of day—blessed by fate—born to parents who never put their marital bliss at risk, who loved their children above all else, demonstrated endless patience, and were always there for us when we needed them.

Even as a young boy, I liked to chase after my thoughts, preferred to be alone or at most one on one to organized group activities like scouting expeditions, avoided fights, absolutely abhorred gym class, had no idea what to do with a ball, and was probably considered something of a nerd by my peers. Instead of playing out in the street with them, I crept around the neighboring sheds and garage. The truck, a Saurer diesel, could turn up at any time, though in those years it ran on wood gas. My timely opening of the gate and other helping hands occasionally prompted the driver to invite me on short—and sometimes long—trips.

My parents realized early on that, after a first push with “Heidi” by Johanna Spyri, they need not give me a second children’s book, but a subscription to the Automobil Revue. The weekly magazine explained all the latest technology in great detail, putting me on a completely different level from my classmates—who only collected glossy brochures—when it came to talking about motor vehicles… I couldn’t even talk to them about cars.

Thanks to my father’s promotion, we now lived in an official apartment in a building belonging to the EKZ’s Winterthur District Directorate. Half a dozen cars by different manufacturers lined the...