Josef Mayer — A Life

I was born on 6 February 1881 in Parabuc, in the Bácska region of Hungary. (After the First World War the Bácska was assigned to Yugoslavia, so I inevitably became a Yugoslav national.)

At the age of six I came to Vukovar. The population of the town was made up mostly of Serbo-Croats. Here I attended the Croatian elementary school and also learned the barber's trade. The journeyman's work-book was issued to me by the local authority on 15.09.1896.

I worked here from 1898 to 1900. I attended the trade school and won first prize in the iron-waving examination in the final hairdressing work.

After more than a year working as a journeyman in Vienna, I accepted a position in Karlsbad. I worked in the salon of Mr. Mzick, in the Göttingen building, on the Bahnhofstraße (Station Street), from 11.10.1901 to 1902. Mr. Mzick, a Czech, was a man of the world and had worked for many years in England. It was he who prompted me to go out into the world and make better use of my professional abilities.

In the autumn of 1902 I came to Nice and found a position there in a newly established business in the Rue de la Paix, with a Pole by the name of Miskowsky. At the same time, in Miskowsky's salon, I learned French and Russian, since a large part of the clientele were Russians and Poles.

I attended the trade school here and, in the final hairdressing examination on 11.03.1903, as the only foreigner I won first prize, the Médaille d'Or (gold medal).

I spent the summer season of 1903 in Paris and London, for further studies in my profession.

On 2 April 1906, the École Professionnelle des Chambre Syndicale Cuvrière des Coiffeurs des Nice awarded me the Diplôme de Professeur in recognition of my professional activity there.

In 1906 I settled permanently in Karlsbad. The greater part of my clientele consisted of Slavs. The Russian priest of Karlsbad was my greatest patron and promoter. In time the gentlemen's salon was converted into a ladies' salon. Only a few individual customers, among them the Russian priest, continued to be served in the ladies' salon.

In the autumn of 1915, although I was not a soldier, I was called up for military service in Hungary.

After brief training and front service, I was taken prisoner by the Russians in August 1916, in the Battle of Zborow. Upon capture I immediately reported at Zborow to the Russian officer, and was therefore assigned to run the barber's shop in Podwoloczska of the 45th Lines of Communication [Etappe] and also to serve as an interpreter.

The 45th Lines of Communication was moved deep into Ukraine, which made an escape in the uniform of an Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war all the more difficult. The commander (himself a persecuted man) enabled my escape for the return home by outfitting me with a Russian uniform. On 31.01.1918 I reached the Austro-Hungarian front, where I myself, as a returnee, was received with fixed bayonets. They put me in prison, but after a short stay I was taken to a quarantine camp.

As a consequence of overexertion I fell seriously ill and spent my granted home-leave in the field hospital. Afterwards, on account of general bodily weakness, I was sent to the convalescent home in Fünfkirchen [Pécs].

Since during my military service another colleague had installed himself in my business, in the autumn of 1918 I took over the management of the French salon Lois, on the Giselaplatz — the first ladies' hairdressing salon in Budapest. The owner himself had been called up for military service in Budapest after the French had entered the World War.

When communism broke out in Budapest, I, as the manager of the French salon Lois, lodged a protest against the communization of French property. The consequence? In a meeting of the communists it was decided to eliminate me. I was warned and fled, with great obstacles, across the Austro-Hungarian and Czech borders.

Upon my return to Karlsbad I found that entry was made difficult. The legation itself was besieged day and night by people demanding admission. After an eight-day stay in Vienna, I returned with the Karlsbad physician Dr. Komaromy — who had a school friend from Kaschau [Košice] in the legation — and I was issued a pass into the legation, and later an interim passport for entry. The gentleman in the legation had himself spent many years in Sarajevo and spoke excellent Serbian.

In Karlsbad I immediately sought to be released from the Yugoslav state association and to be admitted to the Czech state association (26.11.1919). The Zemská správa politická v Praze [Provincial Political Administration in Prague], Z 5/B 2601/3 ai 1919 (26.583 ai 1921) — dated Prague, 09 July 1921 — gave the assurance of admission. My documents sent to Belgrade were lost, and I received from the Ministry of the Interior in Belgrade the release certificate from the Yugoslav state association under number 33983 of 21.11.1925. The admission also extended to my wife and children, who were assigned to me according to a letter from the Zemská správa politická v Praze of 24.11.1926, no. 454.093 ai 1926, under 5/B 2387/ai 26.

Achieving a true-to-nature Realistic wave by electrical means required tireless study. This achievement drew the attention of all professional colleagues throughout the world, where my permanent-hair-wave method became the world system. It resulted in a new source of income and a quite tremendous development of a new industry in all the states of the world. In order to document the naturalness of the artificial wave, and to make it comprehensible to all colleagues abroad in an understandable form, I chose the name "Realistic," and I had this name protected internationally — in America under no. 215,301.

Since my achievement had become a world system, I was appointed an honorary member of the professional associations in various regional associations, at home and abroad; and when the wave was discussed, in recognition of the achievement — since one is a professional colleague — our [system] was called "Mayer." Akademie Dámských Kadeřníků v Praze [Academy of Ladies' Hairdressers in Prague] — active and honorary member.

This new branch of the profession first had to be taught to the professional colleagues. For this purpose, in my former hairdressing salon in the Leopard building, on the Alte Wiese (Old Meadow), on the first floor, I gave specialist courses for masters and journeymen late into the night. The late hours with the salon fully lit also attracted the attention of the spa guests staying in Karlsbad. This in turn had the consequence that there was sometimes a complete traffic jam in front of the business. The spa guests, for their part, were among those who helped to spread my system of permanent hair waving throughout the world.

It turned out that it was not enough to send instructors to the individual countries and states; the need arose to hold permanent-wave competitions in Karlsbad, in order to eliminate — on the spot, through lectures and demonstrations — the sources of error that were being committed. The international competitions, which were discussed not only in the trade press but also in the daily press, were also associated with Karlsbad.

This gave me the idea of establishing an international training institute for professional colleagues in Karlsbad. At a competition for 120 participants, the equipment of the course hall in Karlsbad — a self-contained and complete permanent-wave salon with 60 permanent-wave machines and a 60-seat central drying installation — was described by all the international colleagues present as "unique."

With regard to a training institute, I got in touch with Dr. Wotawa, the former Chief of Police, and asked his advice on the best basis on which one might build up a fund, through collections, for the establishment of an international training institute. Dr. Wotawa recommended that I found a club — for example, the Association of the Mayer-Realistic Permanent-Wave Operators — so that with the founding of the club there would be a corporate body, in the event that some bequest should be made in favor of the aforementioned training institute. I followed Mr. Wotawa's advice, founded the club and registered it, and its statutes were soon approved. On my business trips at home and abroad I collected on behalf of the training institute, and I then doubled the collected sums from my own funds.

As a member of this aforementioned society (22 countries), I also collected at the annual meetings — where the meeting was held each year in a different country — in these capital cities as well.

One day a lady came into my salon in the Leopard building and introduced herself, in English, as the wife of Ministerial Counsellor Dr. Jan Masaryk, the envoy in London. The lady expressed her appreciation to the effect that it gave her extraordinary pleasure that a Czechoslovak achievement should find such a response among the English professional colleagues in London.

Lady Masaryk pointed out that she had already had her hair permanently waved with my system several times, to her fullest satisfaction. For the 1927 competition — which, as always, took place in the Kurhaus [spa house] — I took the liberty, in view of the recognition with which the President and Liberator Masaryk honored us with his visit to the business, of inviting the same Ministerial Counsellor Dr. Jan Masaryk to visit the competition.

The English envoy Dr. Jan Masaryk did indeed appear at the competition with his wife, and took a lively interest in the whole event and the work. The Czech colleagues present from Prague were very pleased about the visit, and Ministerial Counsellor Dr. Jan Masaryk conversed at length and warmly with the President of the Academy of Ladies' Hairdressers, Mr. Karel Kubak.

On a renewed visit by Lady Masaryk to Karlsbad I had the high honor of corresponding with the lady — who in the meantime had been in Switzerland and America — in French. Lady Masaryk expressed her goodwill toward my enterprise on the occasion of her visit to the Realistic works on 25.05.1930. On this occasion I also showed her the newly fitted-out Odd Fellow Goethe Lodge, of which she spoke very appreciatively. (See the report in the Realistic-Bote / Posel-Messenger of 30 June 1930, page 26.)

Her Majesty the Serbian Queen, who resided in Belgrade, and the Queen Mother of Romania in Bucharest, had their hair permanently waved with my system several times; Her Majesty honored me with her visit during her spa stay in Karlsbad in 1932, at my business in the Grillparzer building. Her Majesty expressed her fullest appreciation to the effect that it had been a Yugoslav who had succeeded, through artistry, in turning the permanent wave into a natural wave. Her Majesty said, literally, that it gave her extraordinary pleasure that this Yugoslav achievement had found worldwide dissemination.

Her Majesty was given a permanent wave by my nephew J. Duhatscheck. On this occasion Her Majesty expressed the wish to be able to look around the works sometime. I was highly delighted by this distinction. On 24.11.1932 Her Majesty paid an official visit to the works, and was secured on the way from her hotel, the Loib, to the works (approx. 3 km) by guards in festive dress posted at short intervals. Dr. Wotawa and Mr. Nemeček, as well as the incumbent Velitel [commander] Wechta of the state police in the Syrius building, were present with me during the visit.

Her Majesty showed the greatest interest in the individual components such as the protectors [Schützer] and rollers [Wickler], which are indispensable for the permanent wave. After Her Majesty had left the works, Mr. Wotawa and Nemeček congratulated me on the high visit with which Her Majesty had honored me. (Stavební úřad hl. m. Prahy, Odbor 15 (Strojní) Praha 1–957 — Univ. table.)

The Czech trade teachers in Prague drew my attention to the fact that a trade school was to be built in Žižkov, and asked me to help them with the equipment of the school.

I put all my ambition into it and concerned myself with the idea of constructing a universal school table, as well as an adjustable washbasin (adjustable in height and depth) — so that the new trade school would be equipped with a perfection that was unique, in order that, when visitors from abroad came to Czechoslovakia, they could get to know the high standing which our profession held in Czechoslovakia. I constructed a universal work table which, in itself adjustable and stowable, contained: mirror, hair-working stand, hackles [Hecheln], carders [Kartetschen], teasing frame [Toupeerahmen] — all attachable without the usual clamp screws. I made the model work table out of wood. My offer was not accepted, and this equipment was awarded to another firm in Prague. I can, however, note with joy and satisfaction that my suggestion did fall on fertile ground insofar as the equipment of the school table was executed — not in wood, but in metal — by another firm.

At the tenth-anniversary celebration of the Prague Academy of Ladies' Hairdressers, the adjustable washbasins attracted great attention at the exhibition. At the spring event in Berlin, the work table was described as the sensation [Clou] of the exhibition.

For the centenary celebration of the trade there, which took place in August 1938, I received an invitation to attend the event. I decided to exhibit the adjustable washbasin there in person. This likewise attracted the greatest attention there and was discussed in detail in the trade and daily press. There was a prospect of being able to export this washbasin in large quantities. (Unfortunately, however, the Second World War intervened.)

The I.G.D.C. exists in 22 countries. The Belgian Expositions Nationales du Travail, whose aim is the maintenance, promotion, and development of quality work in all fields of national endeavor, decided to award an Olympic Crown of Labour to a ladies' hairdresser. The competition was to be held on the occasion of the 1937 Paris World Exhibition, where the meeting of the International [body] took place at the same time. This world body proposed the colleagues Rambaud (Paris), Mayer (Karlsbad), and Müller (Hamburg). The Olympic Crown was received, with a majority of two votes (from France and Belgium), by colleague Rambaud of Paris. The Czech and German national association of hairdressers, as well as the section of the I.G.D.C., nominated me unanimously as a candidate for the aforementioned competition. Of the 22 countries, 3 candidates were nominated: 1 Frenchman, 1 German, and 1 Czechoslovak.

At the suggestion of colleague H. Heeberger (Vienna) and Brandtmöller (Copenhagen), the Czechoslovak section of the I.G.D.C. was founded in the year 1926.

In the matter of the licence for my Realistic lodge in Gottesgab, I came into contact with the District Captain [Bezirkshauptmann] Dr. Vladimír Juránek from Joachimsthal [Jáchymov], of the provincial authority in Prague. This gentleman visited me several times with his wife at my lodge. Often Mr. L. Kačena, the incumbent 2nd Deputy Mayor of Karlsbad, was also present at the same time.

The Czech trade associations which came to Gottesgab for visits and were fond of singing sang their songs at the Czech customs office and at the border. This had the consequence that disadvantages accrued to me from various quarters, in that those Czech bodies marched through the town and the surroundings of Karlsbad and Gottesgab in an explanatory [propagandistic] manner.

On 5 October 1938 I was with my wife at the lodge in Gottesgab, and in the morning, between 4 and 5 o'clock, I was alerted by the caretaker that an armed SS man was down below, and that I had to drive the car immediately to the German Wehrmacht at Gottesgab. The SS man meanwhile came up himself and left me no time to put on trousers. In my underclothes I had to get into the car, in order to bring it by the fastest route to Gottesgab. Since the car, because of the cold, did not start immediately, the SS man held the revolver to the nape of my neck and said: "You Czech son of a bitch, you'll get a bullet in the neck right now if you want to go on committing sabotage." After I had finally managed to get the car moving, I noticed, at the entrance to the garage, Armin Günther from Gottesgab, who then also got into the car with the SS man.

The caretaker of the lodge, Mr. Emil Günther, threw my overcoat in after him into the car. On arriving in Gottesgab it turned out that the information had been false. I was forced — under constant threat with the revolver — to drive to Joachimsthal. At the crossroads of Joachimsthal – Abertham, the SS man, who was sitting in the back, came forward over the car seat and held the revolver to my temple and tried to drag me out of the car, with the words: "You Czech son of a bitch, I'll show you all right." A struggle for life and death ensued. I clung to the steering wheel, and since the SS man had knocked the gear out, the car moved forward only slowly. Their intention was to kill me in the car. With all my strength, clinging to the steering wheel, I managed to avert this. Armin Günther jumped out of the car and the SS man followed him. In the course of this struggle the bend was meanwhile rounded. Owing to the slope of the state road and the car's own weight, the SS man — who had come to stand in front of the car door — was pushed forward by the weight of the vehicle and had to let go of the car so as not to be run over.

I used this one second to engage the gear again, and — bending my head down deep (to protect against a shot to the head) — I escaped the attack. My overcoat fell out of the car during the struggle, and was later found by pedestrians and brought to the police at Gottesgab. Through the bunch of keys that was in the overcoat my property was recognized and reported to me at the lodge. They searched, and the SS man was found wandering about in the forest. I myself brought the car to Karlsbad at about 6 o'clock in the morning. Since all the police stations known to me were closed, I was only able to report the incident to the police authority at 8 o'clock. They promised to punish the SS man — who was himself brought to the Gestapo at about 9 o'clock together with Armin Günther — in exemplary fashion. Günther defended himself to the effect that he had seen me several times with the District Captain Dr. Juránek and other Czechs. — It was known to certain elements that I was internationally minded, and also that I had a great deal of international visitors in Karlsbad as well as in Gottesgab. Moreover, I was the founder of international associations and refrained from all political activity. Through this I had made myself very many enemies.

The plot of land of the Mayer-Realistic Club in Gottesgab was confiscated by the authorities upon the invasion by the Germans. To this belonged the sports field, the sports hut, and a cash sum of 1,760 RM. The plot passed into the possession of the D.A.F. [German Labour Front], and the municipality of Gottesgab purchased it from the D.A.F.

It was known that I was a member of the Odd Fellows Lodge, likewise that I had distinguished visitors in my works and a large number of Czech professional bodies of the Republic visiting in Karlsbad. I therefore lived in constant fear of being called to account.

Josef Wirkner from Lichtenstadt had worked for many years before the German invasion as works manager in my business. He tried, through the annexation [Anschluss], to extract personal advantages for himself. At the end of December 1938, I was forced by various incidents — in the interest of peace in the business — to terminate the employment relationship with Mr. Wirkner. Wirkner therefore came with the threat that I should withdraw the written notice and pay him 50,000 crowns; otherwise he would plunge me and my family mercilessly into misfortune. The demand was rejected by me with the remark that only gangsters are accustomed to buying themselves off. Wirkner informed the D.A.F. that I was in a lodge and consorted with Jews and Czechs. I was summoned to the D.A.F. under a pretext, and suddenly Wirkner appeared as well. I let the D.A.F. functionary know that I had, for their information, communicated Wirkner's demand to the police. I received the answer that it was not Wirkner but I who was ripe to be handed over to the Gestapo.

As a result of the attack in Gottesgab and the threat from the D.A.F. representative, I lived in constant fear (since an acquaintance confidentially told me that I was being listed [kept under surveillance]). I consequently withdrew completely and lived like a hermit.

The guest book lying open in the works — in which Lady Frances Crane Masaryk (photograph with me at the Mühlbrunn Colonnade) and the many Czech bodies had expressed their appreciation — forced me, unfortunately, to cut out the picture with the signature. Likewise the articles contained in the Realistic-Bote / Posel-Messenger in Czech and German, in the bound annual volume of the Realistic trade journal. I nevertheless hid the guest book for the whole duration of the war, and a copy of the Realistic-Bote among old magazines.

The firm Feinbau GmbH in Oberursel in the Taunus, with which I had been forced by the armaments command to enter into a production partnership in filter construction, assigned me an old, fanatical party member as works manager in the autumn of 1943. His work, purpose, and aim was to expropriate me of my business. Walter Gimpel from Bad Homburg, SA-Sturmführer [SA Storm Leader], got in touch with the payroll accountant Werner Mölöcke, and all office drawers etc. were searched in order to find suitable material against me. He found, from the Goethe Lodge, a congratulation on my 50th birthday. With this document Gimbel went to the SA and reported there — with a Staatsanzeiger [state gazette] brought along from Frankfurt (Main) — that the assets of a certain Rachel Mayer had been confiscated, and that I was a Jew, or half-Jewish [Judischen], since I had after all also employed Jews in the office of the business before the annexation. Gimpel further pointed out that I was anti-Nazi-minded. The two friends, when distributing the roles of the future management of the business, fell out with each other, and so I learned from Mölöcke himself about the game of intrigue.

Is it necessary to note that I never sympathized even with a single party, let alone that I resisted inducements to join one. As a man of the world, I was and am anti-Nazi-minded. I was always an enemy of the sergeant-major [Feldwebel] regime. I always worked, wherever I could, directly and indirectly against Nazism — also through indirect sabotage, which my long-standing employees Mr. Ladislaus Fabik (an old communist, for 17 years) and Mr. Wenzel Reinl (an old Social Democrat, for 14 years) can confirm in my business. Fabig and Reinl are, as their attitude itself shows, likewise anti-fascists and anti-Nazis.

The firm Faudi GmbH in Oberursel was forced into a further relocation. The filter discs produced in my business were to be moved to Neu Rohlau [Nová Role], and my business was to be enormously enlarged through conversions and additions. Over 100 workers (prisoners of war) and over 30 lathes etc. were to be accommodated. As the owner of the business I raised an objection against this, and so the firm was forced to relocate to a city less favorable in terms of transport — to Weipert [Vejprty]. (Filter construction Weipert.)

After the invasion and the annexation of Karlsbad to the Reich, I had to acquire a new passport for business trips, including for abroad. I was told at the police authority that, although I was born in Yugoslavia, I had automatically — since I had lived and been settled in Karlsbad for so long — become a citizen of the Reich through the annexation, and they confiscated my Czech passport. At the last police registration that took place, I truthfully gave my national sentiment as Yugoslav, in the assumption that this declaration was not a forced option for Yugoslavia, and that an option opportunity was soon to be expected again for the old, loyal citizens of Czechoslovakia.

By a decree (official ordinance) of President Beneš, all property, without exception, in the former occupied territory (Sudetenland) was confiscated.

Through my political inviolability I was spared the fate of being expelled from the country. I was retained in my own business as a specialist advisor.

In July 1945 Mr. Rudolf Sulc from Prague appeared at the business, accompanied by four gendarmes. He pointed out that he held the correct decree as national administrator [Nationalverwalter] of the Realistic business, and he forced the first administrator, Mr. Adolf Kloub from Prague, to hand over the books and the cash and to leave the business immediately.

In order to gain possession of the business, the 2nd national administrator accused me of a withdrawal of money from the business cash, according to the book records. They had, after all, no political handle for my removal. Long before the assumption of office of a national administrator, I had withdrawn an amount of 5,500 RM from the business cash, which I had deposited at the savings bank for security reasons. Mr. Sulc brought me to the police and handed me over to the court. For four and a half months I was in pre-trial detention — first employed in hard labor and finally as a prison barber. In mid-February 1946 I was released from prison and acquitted at the main hearing in Eger [Cheb] on 17.05.1946. At the same time I was granted the right to full compensation. This was, however, not possible, since my opponent was the communist leader of the town of Äschern.

During my pre-trial detention, a Russian staff confiscated the Villa Realistic (situated next to the Hotel Imperial) in November 1945; they refused my wife — with my two small children, then aged four and six — access and the handing over of the most necessary underclothing. At the end of the year the staff left the villa and took everything — and really everything — "as a memento." Dear colleagues from America and England provided the most essential outfit.

On 01.03.1946 I was nominally taken back into the business as an advisor. The 4th national administrator employed me on the lowest tasks and forbade me to enter the works. The 5th national administrator, a real specialist and linguistically skilled, employed me as an assistant storekeeper. They further allotted me one room with a kitchen in my villa.

I applied again for Czech citizenship; it was refused to me without grounds being given. The true reason is not hard to guess: the existing property, and not being a member of a left-wing party.

In July 1947 I was benevolently issued a statelessness certificate by the police directorate. Through this we received, with regard to the allocation of food ration cards, the same rights as the Czechs.

All the political events in Czechoslovakia were now tumbling over one another. Murders, arrests, and abductions among the Czechs themselves were the order of the day. An insecurity prevailed such as one cannot imagine worse. Mutual threats, a bleak future — unthinkable what the day of retribution would bring. To escape all this, and not to end up — as the former owner of the Realistic businesses, which had now become a national enterprise — once more in a mine, or be abducted, the circumstances forced me to flee. My life's work, my old parents-in-law in Brüx [Most] (then around 80 years old) — everything I had to leave behind, and above all my still-unfinished social work, which I regret the most.

My children from my first marriage were in Germany, in the American zone. I sent them SOS calls, and they managed to obtain a residence permit for us.

I presented myself at the American consulate and asked for a legal crossing, with reference to the fact that I myself had given life to a new industry in America, and that a street in Cincinnati had been named after my world brand: Realistic Avenue. I received a positive and a negative reply, in order to be able to leave the Czech lands after 47 years of residence — where I left behind millions.

After crossing the border (with my two children, boys of seven and nine) at Asch on 12.10.1948, and marching several hundred meters with hand luggage, we were kindly received by German guards; we were directed to a small collection point, where, thanks to the support of the guards, the hand luggage was taken by cart to the German customs office, opposite which the Czech customs office stood only about twenty-five paces away.

After being questioned, we — together with the accumulated fellow-sufferers, so-called returnees — were accommodated that same night, by means of a cart, in Selb, in the Protestant hospice.

The next morning, 13.10.48, one could at last breathe free air, and with my family I visited the border town. On this occasion I sought out a barber's shop to have a shave. In the course of this I also learned, from a customer, of the tragic manner in which the chairman of our association of German hairdressers in the Sudeten Gau, Mr. Wenzel Leitner, had lost his life.

IN SECRET, with my dear wife — who is herself a professional colleague and was active at home for 30 years, partly in her father's own salon in Brüx and with me in the hairdressing profession — I carried out further professional studies at home, with success. I informed the Norwegian colleagues of it first.

On the occasion of the centenary celebration of the trade there in 1938, I was in Oslo in August of that year. I had come to appreciate the character and the country, and it gives me great pleasure to be able to demonstrate to my dear Norwegian colleagues — in the first place the latest professional achievement — on the occasion of the inter-Scandinavian session of the I.G.D.C., taking place from 27.02. to 05.03.1949, to which I received an invitation to attend. Consideration has been given to producing this important innovation in Norway.

We later moved to the family of my eldest daughter Gerda Rothberger in Bad Kissingen, whose husband had previously worked in my business as an authorized signatory [Prokurist]. Later, in 1938, Wolfg. Rothberger had then been called up as a town councillor in the Karlsbad town hall, and in 1939 took over the management of the spa administration of the most important spa town in the world, Karlsbad.

After some time we found a temporary dwelling in an old school, 9 km before Bad Kissingen, where we were able to settle down for the time being.

Later an opportunity arose to get a small apartment in a farmhouse in Oerlenbach. It was only two rooms — one room and a kitchen — and Friday was supposed to be the moving-in day. The moving-in date on Friday did not please my wife quite so well. "One does not move in on a Friday," she said (an old superstition). Well, we postponed it to Saturday. Yes, and what should I say to that — my wife was right. On Friday evening a fire broke out in the barn of the farmer where we were supposed to move in, and the fire nearly spread to the neighboring residential house with our new dwelling. Fortunately only the barn was destroyed; the residential house could be saved.

The dwelling in Oerlenbach, in the house of the farming family Kügel, no. 50, consists of a kitchen and a room. In the morning hours the sun sends its rays into the kitchen window, which leads out onto the farmyard. From this window one has a fragrant view of the manure heap. Otherwise the view is boarded up — not with boards, but by the wall of the barn opposite.

The small kitchen is a universal room (after the motto: there is room in the smallest hut). It was a hairdressing salon, office, hobbyist's workshop, common room, wash- and cook-kitchen, children's room, and much more. — One progress we can record, in that the local inhabitants came and inquired of the house owner where the courtyard [Hof-] barber Mayer lived?

The 25th anniversary of the Realistic wave, in October 1949, was — in Europe, but especially in America — for the trade and daily press an occasion to commemorate this incisive innovation, which had truly stood the test. On this occasion my fate was also pointed out. I had to leave the sphere of activity that had become dear to me in Karlsbad, and found an asylum in the West. We moved from Oerlenbach to Darmstadt, after I had — in Darmstadt, in the Holzhofallee — founded my newly established enterprise, the firm "Mayco – Friseurbedarf – GmbH" [hairdressing supplies].

At the I.G.D.C. congress in Cologne in 1950 I was appointed an honorary member, and my firm received a gold medal in the evaluation of the innovation by me.

On 6 February I was able to celebrate my 70th birthday, and was congratulated by the trade and daily press.

After the owner of the building of our apartment in Darmstadt needed the premises for his own employees, we were given notice (Landrat Becker). Wella in Darmstadt helped us in the search for a new apartment, and in October 1951 we were able to move from Heinrichstraße 105 to the Dieburgerstraße, into a former Gestapo building, no. 80.

Already 14 days after our move into the new apartment I got a high fever and had to take to my bed. At the beginning of November I was once more called to Wella, to greet a brother of the director Megerle from America. Despite the high fever I complied with the request, dressed, and drove to Wella. My state of illness worsened and I had to visit the hospital. I was admitted on 5 November 1951 to the Alice Hospital in Darmstadt, on the Dieburger Straße. I had never been seriously ill in my life, and had now contracted a gall-and-liver complaint. At Christmas an improvement set in, and there was perhaps a prospect of being able to celebrate the festival together. The condition then worsened again and a hardening of the liver set in. The liver also cannot be operated on. On 4 January 1952, during the visit of my wife with my two boys, Seppi and Wolfi, I felt that this was probably the last time I would see them, and I took both children by the hand and said goodbye to them.