Today, as we bid farewell to Erhard, it is to me a very special concern to honor his personality especially considering his deep bond to the Ding – Family, to show my gratitude for his understanding, his support, his dedication to assume responsibility according to his capabilities. After successfully graduating from High School, Erhard visited us in Feldberg in 1953, precisely at the same day, at which I had passed the entrance examination for the Gymnasium Müllheim [High School]. Both of us were in high spirits. On our excursions (for example to Schloss Bürgeln [castle] he would rave about how nice schooldays had been, which inspired me and later I always would want to follow in his footsteps. In those days began a lifelong friendship, which lasted notwithstanding those many stumbling blocks, we encountered during our lifetime. His youth was affected by the horrors of war and postwar period. Even shortly before his death he would remember how he carried his sister Gisela as a Baby out of the air-raid shelter of a burning house. After the war was over, he had to take part in providing for the family, as his father, as soldier, was a prisoner of war and later as teacher he was absent for months due to the denazification procedure. He told me how as a 13 year old boy he had to obtain staple foods like milk, potatoes etc. from related farmers of Leimen, Gaiberg and the nearby Odenwald. From them he learned how to care for a beehive and soon he was successfully trading in honey. Not without pride he stood devoted to this passion even into old age and on Swiss mountains. In nearby Edingen he got to know his grandparents and experienced the willingness to help of the related Ding, Koch and Wacker families - farming families and families of craftspeople – who helped each other especially in the midst of adversity. He had more than 30 cousins and to him it went without saying that he joined the trombone choir his father had founded together with his five brothers. I remember that on the morning of New Year's Day in 1955, at the last minute he drove to the church service and the car – his father’s brand new VW - skidded on the icy Hauptstraße (main road) of Edingen and wrapped around a telephone pole, coming to a halt next to the church and the former mortuary house. His relatives got him out of the wrecked car almost uninjured. It’s not surprising that he felt close and committed to the family, wanted to participate at the big family reunions, contributing the whole expenses for the rent of the hall, financed the documentation of the family tree, even accompanied us to St. Cierge, the village our family originates from, making a dazzling offer to the local museum for the first motorized aircraft which took off in the canton of Watt.