Thank You, Germany

To mark the 77th anniversary of the German Basic Law, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger published a different kind of piece from me this time. Not about leadership, transformation, or business, but about arriving, belonging, and the people who made Germany feel like home.

“Cheers, Walter.”

My sister and I still say those words whenever we raise a glass together. It has become a family joke, one that goes back to a man most people in Germany will never hear about: Walter Kienzle, a teacher in Schramberg, a small town in the Black Forest. The man who welcomed our family when we arrived from Iran.

On June 1, 1986, my parents, my sister, and I came to Germany. Forty years. An entire lifetime for me. This text is my attempt to say thank you. Not abstractly to “the country,” but to the people who made this country what it became for me.

Walter Kienzle found us an apartment and made sure it was furnished. He made sure my sister and I had proper winter jackets. He enrolled us in kindergarten. He invited us to his home so we could get to know his family. And he taught us how people in Germany toast with each other. That is where the phrase comes from, the one that still stays with me today.

To understand Walter Kienzle, you have to understand Article 1 of the German Basic Law: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” It is not a sentence you memorize and move on from. It is an attitude that reveals itself in a thousand small actions. In a winter jacket for a refugee child. In an apartment that someone chooses not to rent to “German students,” but to an Iranian family whose parents had only just learned the language so they could study at RWTH Aachen. That is how our later landlord in Aachen, Dr. Stockem, handled it, a dentist who treated my mother’s teeth without charging a single penny.

In Aachen, we lived directly at Templergraben. Below us lived the Sommer family, and below them Mrs. Nysten, the only person in the building with a garden, who allowed me to play football there. Whenever my sister and I became too loud, Mr. Sommer would say to my mother: “Children who are not loud are not children.” Across the street lived the Kaussen family, who owned a bakery. Mrs. Kaussen knew that both of my parents were still studying. So every time I went to buy bread, my sister and I received a Streuselbrötchen.

These were people who owed us nothing. Yet they gave to us anyway. Dignity, in the spirit of the Basic Law, is not something distributed by the state. It is created between people.

In 2002, during my third semester of medicine at RWTH Aachen, I was taking the anatomy course on the musculoskeletal system. I was assigned to Professor Prescher. Friends from higher semesters warned me: people often failed Prescher’s exams. Until then, I had never failed an exam. High school and the first semesters had come easily to me. I was curious and prepared the anatomical structures with enthusiasm. Still, I failed the first exam with Prescher. He said something to me that I have never forgotten: “Based on your enthusiasm during the course, I expected more from you, Mr. Salimi.”

My friends told me not to take the retake exam. They told me to enjoy Christmas instead and try again later with another professor. I could not do that. After hearing those words, giving up was no longer an option. I spent the Christmas holidays at my desk. I passed. From that day on, Prescher became my mentor. He gave me student assistant positions, access to courses reserved for more advanced semesters, and he continued to demand first-class work from me.

Support and challenge. That is what Prescher represented for me. Whoever only supports people makes them dependent. Whoever only demands from them breaks them. The combination of both shapes people. The fact that I was able to move from medicine into entrepreneurship is guaranteed by Article 12 of the Basic Law: the freedom to choose one’s profession. What is remarkable is not simply that this right exists. What is remarkable is that it also applied to me, the child of refugees, and that I was even supported along the way.

In my first workshop, there were four participants. One of them was Christian Mertens from Gothaer Insurance. To this day, I do not know why he came to an unknown trainer on a Thursday evening after work. After two hours, he said one sentence: “Sohrab, we need this at Gothaer. I will make it happen.” He kept his word. Over the years, Gothaer became an important client. Without Mertens’ commitment and trust, I would not be the trainer and consultant I am today.

From the teacher Walter Kienzle to the CEOs who trust me today with difficult questions about their companies, there is a common thread: trust given before it was earned. People trusted me before I had anything to prove. They opened doors for me behind which I was only then allowed to show what I was capable of.

In the American narrative, my story would be sold as a classic rags-to-riches story. One-dimensional, reduced to financial success. I believe a society should not measure itself by how many billionaires it produces, but by how many people are able to move from the bottom into the middle class.

That is precisely the promise of the social market economy. Not the spectacular rise of a few individuals, but a broad, stable middle in which people take responsibility, build families, pay taxes, and care for their neighbors. That is where I belong. I am first and foremost a father, husband, brother, son, friend, and citizen. Professional success is part of that, but not the whole of it.

The social market economy gave me access to first-class education without my parents being wealthy. Education shapes people. I am as much a child of this society as I am a child of my parents. Without Walter Kienzle, Dr. Stockem, the Sommer family, Mrs. Kaussen, Professor Prescher, Christian Mertens, and thousands of other people whose names I cannot all list here, I would not be the person I am today. I would exist. But I would not be me.

Immanuel Kant wrote that two things filled him with ever renewed admiration: the starry sky above him and the moral law within him. I would, with all humility, add a third: the Basic Law beneath us and the people around us. One is the grammar. The other is the language in which this country is written.

In Germany, people complain a lot. I hear it. I understand it. But on a day like this, the 77th anniversary of the Basic Law, we should shift our perspective. Not toward what is missing, but toward what is already here. And there is a great deal here.

Forty years. Thank you, Germany. Cheers, Walter.