In 1971 the craft school in Aachen was in both transition and decline. There were two factors involved here.The first was that all German higher education was in a situation at the time of being an asylum run by the inmates. Student radicals had taken over and the administrators and professors were virtually powerless.As a consequence many of the students simply didn't show up much.Most of them had previously come out of their fathers' shops or others which they would return to and saw no need to improve or practise their skills.The student government would do clever things like call a student strike two days before the winter holidays started. About the only time they did show up,except for a couple and myself, were the couple of weeks before the end of semester and then all fight over the equipment.

It is not widely known in the U.S. that in the early '70's in the German colleges that the inmates were running the asylum. The students were all Marxists and had these little cells with really boring discussions about how to be a good , self realizing Marxists. One of my two best friends, Thomas Kenngott (presently a smith in the Stuttgart area)and the only person in the smithy besides me who spoke English was in one of these and I went with him a couple of times and spent most of the time outside smoking. Well, they were all inside smoking too and using all these political words I wasn't familiar with. They did really clever things like call a student strike two days before Christmas holidays began.

I had just recently moved to Athens ,Ga to begin grad school with Prof.Robert Ebendorf. I usually watched the CBS evening news on tv and looked forward to Charles Kuralt's On The Road episodes. One evening lo and behold , he did a story on Alex whose book publisher had sponsored a blacksmith convention in Atlanta for the publishing of the Art Of Blacksmithing. I thought it was interesting and curious but wasn't that interested at the time. The next spring the other grad students and I attended the North American Goldsmiths conference in St.Paul and heard from the attendees from Carbondale ,Ill. that they were having a workshop at SIU for several days with Alex in the Spring. I still wasn't that interested but all the studiomates and Bob Ebendorf decided to go ,and since I had never ridden a train, I decided to go too.It was a turning point in my life, Alex was such a fascinating speaker, a real story teller and a great teacher. I got a copy of his book and read it on the train trip home, This was the same weekend as the Kent State massacre and the SIU campus was pretty nervous that weekend , but we were isolated at therir outdoor research center and were busy getting blisters and hand cranking the twenty forges they had set up. Alex did the near impossible and demonstrated forge welding in the sun, and neary fried the piece, but he was irrepressible. He went around to each forge and advised the students. He was from Valdosta ,GA and had a very interesting accent.Educated southerners have quite different accents than country folk and his was entrancing.They did a great film on the workshop showing all this and it is now on cd. I inherited Alex's copy and donated it to the University of GA.