of the Wall, and finally reunification. Occasional
disagreements in tactics have never undermined the underlying
unity of purpose.

And just when, on both sides of the Atlantic, the end of
the Cold War had evoked a seemingly endless debate about the
continuing validity of the democratic partnership, the
terrorist attack on New York and Washington has returned the
democracies to fundamentals. Too many of us had been seduced
by the siren song of the end of history, of the reduction of
politics to psychiatry and social work, and of the
predominance of narrow national concerns. We have learned
that there are incompatible values rampant in the world around
us and that there are those so eager to destroy our
civilization that they will sacrifice their lives to do so and

will not recoil before the murder of innocent civilians. It
has obliged the West to relearn what it had nearly forgotten:
that in its unity and solidarity resides its ultimate
strength. So I want to take this opportunity to thank our
German friends here for the many expressions of support and
compassion that reached us from all over Germany and for the
appreciated demonstrations of solidarity from the German government.

None of this would have surprised Hans Merkle. He was
born in (what was) then Baden, now Baden-Württemberg, but he
incarnated some of the best values of the Prussian ethos. One
of these is, "Always be more than you seem to be" (mehr sein
als scheinen). Applied to Merkle and adapting it to one of
the quotes I mentioned earlier, I would rephrase his own basic

maxim this way: "Always say less than you know and always do more than you say."

For all I have said, Merkle's heroe posture of aloofness
did not reflect a lack of deep feeling. On the contrary, it
was wrested from a deeply passionate nature. He obscured this
aspect of his personality because he did not wish to impose
his sentiments even on his friends. Like one of the heroes of
classical drama, Merkle took on himself the battles to which
he thought destiny had called him. Those of us whom he
honored with his friendship therefore felt as if we had been
admitted into a chivalrous order. When he mentioned my name
in the centenary speech in which he stressed achievements over
personality, it was as if being awarded a decoration.

The emotions from which Merkle's aristocratic conduct had been wrung can be seen in a letter he wrote in November 1944, when his hometown of Pforzheim had been destroyed in the war: "Fate would not pass this town by. But for me this place is not of brick and mortar; it is founded on quite a different kind of building block that cannot be reduced to rubble so long as the heart does not allow it. And the heart will not acquiesce. It clings to old scenes, to hills and trees, and to the memory of many days which were gifts of God and of youthful dreams. For, in the end, ideas are stronger than men and more long-lasting."

A few months after his death, Merkle's daughter Monika and Dr. Scholl did me the honor of accompanying me to Hans Merkle's grave on a still, verdant hillside, shaded by trees

overlooking the city of Pforzheim which had risen from the
ashes, rebuilt by men and women whose dreams overcame their
reality.

After that occasion, Monika graciously let me see the
letter I have just read to you. I thought then how lonely a
life this caring man imposed on himself, how much of the
travail of others he took on himself, and I wondered whether
some of us might have broken through this solitude by an act
of grace.

But then I reflected that Hans Merkle lived just as he
wanted. Duty was his companion, honor his imperative. He
expressed this best in his essay, "Virtue and Trust:"

"Confidence in the future - that virtue of the soul, as the
French put it - must be fought for every day. It involves

TO: 09-30-01 23:04

FROM:703 941 4072

P14

23

permanent exertion, a coming-and-going; yet, to console us as

we travel our path so strewn with stones, God occasionally

*inspired*
*thirstful*
*this smile*

shows us a smile."

Hans Merkle helped many of us in traveling these stony
paths and thereby vouchsafed a occasional smile from a
God.

09-30-01 22:02 TO:

FROM:703 941 4072

P01

9/30/01-#3

Merkle Lecture

It is a great honor to be asked to deliver a speech in
memory of one of the most remarkable men I have known. It is
a daunting task as well. For those in this room who knew Hans
Merkle, nothing I can say will be able to reflect his
complexity and inspirational quality. For those who did not
have the opportunity to encounter his extraordinary
combination of dedication and authority, any description of
him will, in this age of standardized norms, seem out of
scale.

Hans Merkle was a man of seeming paradoxes. He was my
friend, yet he rarely spoke a personal word to me. One knew

one could always rely on him, yet he would have considered
statements to that effect as an elaboration of the self-
evident or a derogation from the nature of friendship. Merkle
was an inspiring leader who moved people by his aura without
having to insist on the prerogatives of hierarchy. Even while
achieving enormous success in business (it is no exaggeration
to describe him as the most influential German businessman for
two decades), he spent much of his free time reading and
developing an astonishing erudition in philosophy, history,
even poetry - all without a university degree. He displayed
this staggering knowledge only rarely in conversations; Hans
Merkle would have considered that as so much unworthy
ostentation. "One must never say all one knows," he noted in
his speech, "Service and Leadership" (Dienen und Führen).

TO: 09-30-01 22:03

FROM:703 941 4072

P.02

2

SEP-30-01 SUN 10:59 PM J WILLIAMS

T03 941 4072

P.02

The range of Merkle's interests is reflected in the titles of his speeches and essays: "The Art of Prediction;" "Man, Machines, and Technology;" "Rights and Duties in the Republic;" "Service and Leadership;" "Elites and How to Encourage Them;" "Profession as Experience;" "A Critique of Technology;" "Virtue and Trust," among many others. How many modern managers would have been able to write an essay reflecting on the meaning of Caesar going to the capital on the day he was assassinated even though he had received many warnings? Did it reflect the virtue of trust in republican institutions or the sin of arrogant self-confidence challenging republican norms?

Merkle's essentially philosophical essays did not deal with the issues directly related to his company. But they do

09-30-01 22:03 TO:

FROM:703 941 4072

P03

explain its extraordinary success under his leadership,
growing from sales of DM 2 billion in 1964 when he took over
the reins, to DM 21.2 billion in 1985, and to DM 60 billion in
the year 2000. And the smoothness of the transition shows
that Merkle achieved his highest aim of raising management
beyond the personal and imparting to his successors the
standard of meticulous attention to detail, insistence on a
striving for perfection and, above all, on an ethic of decency
and a selection based on character, which I consider the
hallmark of Bosch.

I met Hans Merkle 24 years ago at a dinner of Chase
Manhattan Bank's International Advisory Board, which took
place in a New York museum. Sigmund Warburg had urged Merkle
to introduce himself to me. That, however, proved easier said

09-30-01 22:04 TO:

FROM:703 941 4072

P.04

K]

4

SEP-30-01 SUN 11:00 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

P.04

than done. Merkle did not want to impose himself, while I waited for him to approach me. Finally I introduced myself. And Merkle's first words to me were: "You should know that I worked in a responsible position in a military ministry in Berlin. I did not like the Nazis, but I served my country during the war. If that bothers you, you should have nothing to do with me."

That night at the museum laid the basis for permanent
respect. For it was clear that Merkle wanted nothing less
than to obscure the past. He often said that people who deny
their history also reject their future. But the appropriate
lessons had to evolve in the realm of conscience of the
individual and his society and not in comments to foreigners.
Merkle took many actions to make clear where he stood,

including the activities of the Bosch Foundation in Israel.

But, true to his signature style, he never publicized them.

Hans Merkle was infinitely solicitous of his friends but became embarrassed when one acknowledged his concern as if that would destroy its moral significance as an act of grace.

On the occasion of my being made honorary citizen of Fürth, the town in which I was born, Merkle appeared, having driven over two hours to get there. Only later did I learn that it had been the first day of radiation treatment for the illness that ultimately claimed his life and that he had come straight from this exhausting procedure to a formal ceremony and a boisterous lunch.

So when one writes or speaks about Hans Merkle, one deals with the incarnation of intangibles. To him, the central

quality of a society or of any organization was trust
(Zuversicht). Confidence as the essential precondition of
human coexistence implied less the conscious goal of
deliberate policy than the intuitive acceptance of those
personalities who inspire by example rather than verbal
declaration. He quoted with approval a line from Alfred
Tennyson: "And trust me not at all or all in all. The
ultimate requirement of leadership was, as Merkle would quote
Peter Drucker, to earn trust: "Trust is the conviction that
the leader means what he says."

Merkle always meant what he said because, to him,
leadership was an expression of service. In his view,
leadership requires an attitude that avoids self-satisfaction
during periods of success and provides inner strength to

09-30-01 22:05 TO:

FROM:703 941 4072

P.07

persist in times of adversity. It consists in equal parts of
delegating credit for achievement while assuming
responsibility for failure. The chief executive must not only
outline a direction but inspire its execution. And he must
never rest on what has been achieved. Thus Merkle ended his
speech at Bosch's centenary celebration summing up the
achievements of the past 100 years with a warning against
complacency: "We at Bosch know our worth. But this
consciousness does not entitle us to lean back in our chairs
in self-satisfaction. We see our challenge not in reaping
what we have sown but in sowing what will be reaped tomorrow."

In his style of leadership, Merkle confronted the root
dilemma of modern society: how, in a period of rapid change,
to bridge the gap between a society's experience and its

09-30-01 22:06 TO:

FROM:703 941 4072

P.08

8

possibilities, between the preservation of what is valuable
and the space needed for the emergence of the new? Societies
grow attached to the familiar, but leaders must point toward
what does not yet exist. Leadership, in Merkle's view, is
based on permitting others to participate in working for
common goals. Even if these originated with one or a few
individuals, they must be internalized by those who execute
them and become, as it were, their own convictions. The role
of leadership is, in a sense, lonely, but the execution cannot
be solitary; it must reflect a consensus. Democracy is
therefore a mandate of modernity. The vitality of a society
depends crucially on the interplay between the inspiration of
the individual and the translation of it into the commonplace
of the society or of the enterprise.

A democracy whose leaders rely only on exploiting the mood of the moment will soon drift without direction and end in dictatorship. But, equally, leadership conceived as the expression of the arbitrary of an individual will turn power into a demonic enterprise. For that reason, a well-conceived concept of national interest is less an assertion of power than a limitation of it.

Hans Merkle feared an unprecedented form of tyranny as potentially inherent in the modern technological world.

Permit me to quote from his essay, "The Demonism of Power:"

> "It is conceivable - and perhaps we have an obligation to face it - that the demonism of power in the future cannot be related to the individual any longer. Power becomes increasingly anonymous but no less dangerous for the free

evolution of humanity. Falsification of concepts turns into
the herald for the development of concentrations of power of a
new kind - impersonal, intangible, almost ghostly; one is
reminded of Kafka. And because society so emasculated will
not be able to deal with social processes without some
mechanism, social tasks will be assigned to organs of a new
kind. The despotism of tyrants will be replaced by the
despotism of the apparatus."

Therefore, the individual's fulfillment must not be
subordinated to the demands of politics, and politics must not
be defined as the sole, or even the principal, purpose of
social life. The ultimate goal of political life should not
be imposition of a ubiquitous, interchangeable norm but to
promote independence in enterprises and individual identity in

09-30-91 22:57 TO:

FROM:703 941 4072

P02

11

the personality. Wherever it is forgotten that political
duties are, in the end, based on political rights and that
these rights must be revitalized in each period, politics
turns into manipulation.

Real conservatives - among whom Merkle counted himself -
were not opposed to progress; on the contrary, they create the
condition for progress by preserving the foundations on which
to build and by warning of those steps urged in the name of
progress that lead into an abyss.

The executive is tested above all when adversity strikes.

A prescient quote from Merkle from 1975 may be appropriate:

"Too extended periods of unrestrained growth spoil both
managers and workers, distort a sense of proportion, erase
distinctions, and weaken the sense for the essential, for the

09-29-91 22:58 TO:

FROM:703 941 4072

P03

12

necessary, for the possible. They obscure the peril that
threatens every society and every economy which prevails too
easily without having to prove itself. If the wind changes
and storms threaten, the hour of ultimate testing has come;
then we will learn who can read the weather map and who is
able to navigate against the wind."

This is why for Merkle - as already for Robert Bosch -
the fostering of talent was a primary preoccupation. The
Bosch Foundation, created by the founder of the company but so
named by Hans Merkle only after the founder's death, who had
refused the personal identification, had in its guidelines
defined one of its goals to prepare society for the adaptation
of thought processes and procedures to the latent changes

TO: 89-30-91 22:58

FROM:703 941 4072

P94

13

SEP-30-01 SUN 11:54 PM J WILLIAMS

T03 941 4072

P.94

occurring subtly in all societies. Foremost among these was
the free and unhindered development of the human personality.

These fragmentary summaries of the thoughts of a
remarkable man explain what I would describe as the "Bosch
style:" total reliability, an unflagging sense of service, a
dedication always to function at the frontiers of knowledge, a
notion of profit based on energetic enterprise and insistent
competitiveness made always available to the common good. "To
belong to the elite," wrote Merkle, "brings with it duties
rather than rights. To be sure, the performance demanded of
leaders should not and does not remain unrewarded. But the
goal of the effort must never be material reward. Elites
should not define themselves by ruling but by serving - or
better, they rule best by serving. Those who belong to the

real elite do not insist on being called elites. Those who do
insist on it do not belong."

This explains the seemingly anonymous, almost impersonal,
and yet, in its ultimate sense, deeply personal style of Hans
Merkle. For his work to be meaningful, it could not be the
expression of a personal preference; this would undermine its
moral significance. It had to be a reflection of a higher
obligation which evoked the sense of duty. Merkle would quote
from Max Planck: "The ultimate good of which no power in the
world can deprive us is a pure way of thinking which finds its
expression in a conscientious carrying out of one's duties."

To which Merkle added: "No more can be expected of us but
also no less."

In this spirit, I want to say a few words about the
contribution that Hans Merkle and some members of his
generation - at least one of whom is here tonight - have made
to the rebirth of Germany and its relationship to the
international community in the aftermath of the Second World
War.

Biographers make much of my German birth. And it is, of
course, true that one's environment shapes one's attitudes
even in difficult times (which is why I still take an active
weekly interest in the four Bavarian football clubs in the
Bundesliga - although Fürth is regrettably in the second
Bundesliga). But my real connection with Germany stems from
the end of the war. I arrived here with the army of
occupation in 1945 after a seven-year absence. Few of you

present will remember the devastation, desolation, and
spiritual despair of those months; it belongs to the formative
experiences of your fathers and grandfathers. There is no
time now, and this is not the occasion, to review the
political evolution of more than half a century -- though it
seems like only yesterday to me.

But I do want to pay tribute to those who had the moral
courage to start again, to rebuild their country, and to bring
it back to the community of nations by the very qualities I
have called the Bosch attributes: reliability, steadiness,
enterprise, and an abiding commitment to democratic values.
Governments of both major parties established a steady policy
tied to the democratic West. In the process, America and
Germany together went through two Berlin crises, the building

will not recoil before the murder of innocent civilians. It
has obliged the West to relearn what it had nearly forgotten:
that in its unity and solidarity resides its ultimate
strength. So I want to take this opportunity to thank our
German friends here for the many expressions of support and
compassion that reached us from all over Germany and for the
demonstrations of solidarity of the German government.

None of this would have surprised Hans Merkle. He was
born in [what was] then Baden, now Baden-Württemberg, but he
incarnated some of the best values of the Prussian ethos. One
of these is, "Always be more than you seem to be" (mehr sein
als scheinen). Applied to Merkle and adapting it to one of
the quotes I mentioned earlier, I would rephrase his own basic

For all I have said, Merkle's heroic posture of aloofness did not reflect a lack of deep feeling. On the contrary, it was wrested from a deeply passionate nature. He obscured this aspect of his personality because he did not wish to impose his sentiments even on his friends. Like one of the heroes of classical drama, Merkle took on himself the battles to which he thought destiny had called him. Those of us whom he honored with his friendship therefore felt as if we had been admitted into a chivalrous order. When he mentioned my name in the centenary speech in which he stressed achievements over personality, it was as if being awarded a decoration.

permanent exertion, a coming-and-going; yet, to console us as
we travel our path so strewn with stones, God occasionally
shows us a smile."

Hans Merkle helped many of us in traveling these stony
paths and thereby vouchsafed us an occasional smile from a
God.

9/29/01-#2

Merkle Lecture

It is a great honor to be asked to deliver a speech in
memory of ~~ tributes to~~ one of the most remarkable men I have
known. [N.B.] It is a daunting task (as well). For those in
this room who knew Hans Merkle, nothing I can say will be able
to reflect the complexity and the inspirational quality of his
character. For those who did not have the opportunity to
encounter his extraordinary combination of dedication and
authority, any description of him will, in this age of
standardized norms, seem out of scale.

For Hans Merkle was a man of seeming paradoxes. He was
my friend, yet he rarely spoke a personal word to me. One

Sep 30 01 08:13p

SEP-29-01 SAT 10:39 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

P.U.1

P.1

ended the speech at Bosch's centenary celebration, in which he

summed up the achievements of 600 years, with a warning

against complacency: "We at Bosch know our worth. But this
consciousness does not entitle us to lean back in our chairs
in self-satisfaction. We shall remain humble. We see our
challenge not in reaping what we have sown but in sowing what
will be reaped tomorrow."

In his style of leadership,

Now it is a period of rapid change to bridge the gap between a

society's experience and its possibilities, between the

preservation of what is valuable and leaving room for the new?

Societies are attached to the familiar, but leaders must point

toward what does not yet exist. Leadership is, in Merkle's

8

P.02

703 941 4072

SEP-29-91 SAT 10:43 PM J WILLIAMS

Sep 30 01 08:16P

is based on common
view, ~~we permit others to participate in working for goals.~~

with one or a few individuals
which, even if originated in an individual, must be created
elsewhere

by those who execute it as if it resulted from their own
and therefore, as it were,
convictions. The path of the leader is, in a sense, lonely,

but the execution cannot be solitary; it must reflect a
Democracy in which a mandate or majority
consensus. The vitality of a society depends on the interplay

between the inspiration of the individual and the translation
of it into the commonplace of the society or the enterprise.

A mass democracy whose leaders rely only on the organization
cooperating

or the mood of the moment will soon be without direction and
end in a dictatorship. But, equally, leadership conceived as
the expression of arbitrary will turns power into a demonic

enterprise. And for that reason, a well-conceived concept of

SEP-29-01 SAT 10:44 PM J WILLIAMS

Sep 30 01 08:17p

09-00-01 22:17

ID=212 4215882

P01/04

10

national interest is not an assertion of power but a limitation of it.

Hans Merkle saw an unprecedented form of tyranny, an inherent vice, in a potentially dangerous from the modern technological world, which different in character from traditional notions of tyranny, as he said, will quote from his essay, "The Demonism of Power." "It is conceivable - and perhaps we have an obligation to face it - that the demonism of power in the future cannot be related to the individual any longer. Power becomes increasingly anonymous but no less dangerous for the free evolution of humanity. Falsification of concepts turns into the herald for the development of concentrations of power of a new kind - impersonal, intangible, almost ghostly; one is reminded of Kafka. And because society so emasculated will not be able to

P.04

702 941 4972

09-30-91 20:56

ID-212 4215882

P01/10

10d

FROM:

01 98:61 10-08-60

style: "total reliability, a sense of service, a notion of profit based on energetic enterprise and insistent competitiveness" made available to the common good; a system of knowledge and education. "To belong to the elite," wrote Merkle, "brings with it duties rather than rights. To be sure, the performance demanded of leaders should not and does not remain unrewarded. But the goal of the effort must never be material reward. Elites should not define themselves by ruling but by serving - or better, they rule best by serving. Those who belong to the real elite do not insist on being called elites. Those who do insist on it do not belong."

This explains the anonymous, seemingly impersonal, and yet, in its ultimate sense, deeply personal style of Rana

09-30-91 20:56

ID-212 4215882

P02/10

P02

FROM:

01 93:61 10-00-90

Merkle. For his work to be meaningful, it could not be the
this would undermine its own
expression of a personal preference, it had to be a
superficial

reflection of a sense of duty that is of higher obligations, so
involved in the sense of duty

He would quote from Max Planck: "The ultimate good of which
no power in the world can deprive us is a pure way of thinking
which finds its expression in a conscientious carrying out of
one's duties." To which Merkle added: "No more can be
expected of us but also no less."

I had originally intended to say only a few words about
Hans Merkle in keeping with his characteristic subordinating
of the person to the cause. But, as it turns out, Hans Merkle
achieved his life's goal: his person embodied a cause
manifold in its expression, determined to prevail by
performance rather than by personal insistence. And, in this

60

P.2

785 441 1972

SEP-29-91 SAT 18:05 PM J. WILLIAMS

Sep 30 01 08:24p

09-30-01 20:57

ID-212 4215882

P03/10

C04

FROM:

01 93:81 10-03-60

spirit. I want to say a few words about the contribution that
Hans Merkle and some members of his generation - at least one
of whom is here tonight - have made to the rebirth of Germany
and its relationship to the international community after the
Second World War.

Biographers make much of my German birth. And it is, of
course, true that one's environment shapes one's attitudes
even in difficult times (which is why I still take an active
weekly interest in the four Bavarian football clubs in the
Bundesliga - although Furth is regrettably in the second
Bundesliga). But my real connection with Germany stems from
the end of the war. I arrived here with the army of
occupation in 1945 after a seven-year absence. Few of you
here will remember the devastation, desolation, and spiritual

09-30-01 20:57

ID-212 4215882

P04/10

P04

FROM:

01 90:61 10-03-69

despair of those months; it belongs to the experiences of your fathers and grandfathers. There is no time now, and this is not the occasion, to review the political evolution of more than half a century - though it seems like only yesterday to me.

But I do want to pay tribute to those who had the courage to start again, to rebuild their country, and to bring it back to the community of nations by the very qualities I have called the Bosch attributes: reliability, steadiness, enterprise, and an abiding commitment to democratic values.

Governments of both major parties established a basically-steady policy which waited until the democratic West. In the process, America and Germany together went through two Berlin crises, the building of the Wall, and finally reunification.

09-00-01 21:00

ID=212 4215882

P08/10

F03

R:OM:

TO: 09-00-01 19:37

pass this town by. But for me this place is not of brick and mortar: it is lived on, built and changed. It is quite a different kind of building block that cannot be reduced to rubble so long as the heart does not allow it. And the heart will not acquiesce. It clings to old scenes, to hills and trees, and to the memory of many days which were gifts of God and dreams. For, in the end, ideas are stronger than men and more long-lasting."

A few months after his death, his daughter, Monika and Dr. Scholl did me the honor of accompanying me to Hans Merkle's grave on a still, verdant hillside, shaded by trees overlooking the city of Pforzheim which had risen from the ashes which schrill by men + something whose slayers + outlaws this reality.

P.8

TO: 941 4072

SER-29-01 SAT 10:30 AM J MILLIONS

Sep 30 01 08:26P

P10/10

ID=212 4215882

FROM:

TO: 09-30-91 19:38

09-30-91 21:01

F10

When Hans Merkle died, I felt a deep loneliness and a certain loneliness, relieved by the majority of my friend - much as he lived, when his birthplace was destroyed, not an end but a commitment to a spirit of integrity and service.

Hans Merkle showed us many of these paths andouchsafed us an occasional smile from God.

9/29/01-#2

Merkle Lecture

It is a great honor to be asked to deliver a speech in
[memory of? tribute to?] one of the most remarkable men I have
known. [But] it is a daunting task [as well]. For those in
this room who knew Hans Merkle, nothing I can say will be able
to reflect the complexity and the inspirational quality of his
character. For those who did not have the opportunity to
encounter his extraordinary combination of dedication and
authority, any description of him will, in this age of
standardized norms, seem out of scale.

knew one could always rely on him, yet he would have
considered assurances an elaboration of the self-evident or a
derogation from the nature of friendship. Merkle was an
inspiring leader who moved people by his aura without having
to insist on the prerogatives of hierarchy. He achieved
enormous success in business, but he spent much of his free
time reading and developing an astonishing erudition in
philosophy, history, and even poetry. Yet this staggering
knowledge was never displayed in conversations; Hans Merkle
would have considered that unworthy ostentation. "One must
never say all one knows," he said in his speech, "Service and
Leadership" (Dienen und Führen).

The range of his interests came to expression in the
titles of his speeches and essays: "The Art of Prediction;"

703 941 4072

P.02

"Man, Machines, and Technology;" "Rights and Duties in the Republic;" "Service and Leadership;" "Elites and How to Encourage Them;" "Profession as Experience;" "A Critique of Technology;" "Virtue and Trust," among many others. What other modern manager would have been able to write an essay reflecting on the meaning of Caesar going to the capital on the day he was assassinated even though he had received many warnings?

Merkle's essentially philosophical essays did not deal with the problems of his company directly. But they do explain its extraordinary success under his leadership, growing from sales of DM 2 billion in 1964, to DM 21.2 billion in 1985, and to DM 60 billion in the year 2000 - demonstrating that Merkle achieved his highest aim of transcending the

SEP-29-01 SAT 10:40 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

P.03

personal and imparting to his successors a standard of
meticulous attention to detail, insistence on a striving for
perfection and, above all, a leadership based on decency and
character.

I met Hans Merkle 24 years ago at a dinner of Chase
Manhattan Bank's International Advisory Board, which took
place in a New York museum. Sigmund Warburg had told me that
he had suggested to Merkle [that he] introduce himself to me.
That proved easier said than done, however. Merkle did not
want to impose himself, while I waited for him to approach me.
Finally I introduced myself. And Merkle's first words to me
were: "You should know that I worked in a responsible
position in a military ministry in Berlin. I did not like the

[x]

P.04

783 941 4072

Nazis, but I stood by my country during the war. If that
bothers you, you should have nothing to do with me."

On the contrary, it laid the basis for permanent respect.
For it was clear that Merkle wanted nothing less than to
obscure the past. He knew that people who deny their history
also reject their future. But the appropriate lessons had to
evolve in the conscience of the individual and his society and
not in obsequious comments to foreigners. Merkle's many acts
in this regard, including the activities of the Bosch
Foundation, were the expressions of the need for an attitude
rather than a posture.

That meeting was the beginning of a relationship that
ennobled my life. Hans Merkle was infinitely solicitous of
his friends, but he would be embarrassed if one acknowledged

[Y]

P.05

703 941 4072

SEP-29-01 SAT 10:41 PM J WILLIAMS

the personal attention; making it a personal matter in a way
destroyed the moral significance of friendship. When I was
made honorary citizen of Fürth, the town in which I was born,
Merkle appeared, having driven over two hours to get there.
Only later did I learn that it was the first day of radiation
treatment for the illness that was to prove fatal, and he had
come straight from this exhausting procedure to sit through a
ceremony and long lunch.

So when one writes or speaks about Hans Merkle, one deals
with the incarnation of intangibles that had to be lived
rather than expressed. To him, the central quality of a
society or of any organization was trust (Zuversicht). It was
the essential precondition of human coexistence. Confidence
implied less the conscious goal of deliberate policy than the

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[Y]

intuitive acceptance of a personality whose integrity derived
from example rather than verbal declaration. He quoted with
approval a line from Alfred Tennyson: "And trust me not at
all or all in all." Societies thrive when based on this
confidence. The final requirement of leadership was, as
Merkle would quote Peter Drucker, to earn trust: "Trust is
the conviction that the leader means what he says."

Merkle always meant what he said because, to him,
leadership becomes an aspect of service. In his view,
leadership requires an attitude that avoids self-satisfaction
during success and provides inner strength to persist in
adversity. It consists of delegating credit for achievement
but assuming responsibility for failure. The chief executive
must not only outline a direction but inspire its execution.

P.01

T03 941 4072

SEP-29-01 SAT 10:43 PM J WILLIAMS

And he must never rest on what has been achieved. Thus Merkle
ended the speech at Bosch's centenary celebration, in which he
summed up the achievements of 100 years, with a warning
against complacency: "We at Bosch know our worth. But this
consciousness does not entitle us to lean back in our chairs
in self-satisfaction. We shall remain humble. We see our
challenge not in reaping what we have sown but in sowing what
will be reaped tomorrow."

Merkle confronted the root dilemma of modern society.
How is a period of rapid change to bridge the gap between a
society's experience and its possibilities, between the
preservation of what is valuable and leaving room for the new?
Societies are attached to the familiar, but leaders must point
toward what does not yet exist. Leadership is, in Merkle's

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view, to permit others to participate in working for a goal
which, even if it originated in an individual, must be treated
by those who execute it as if it resulted from their own
convictions. The path of the leader is, in a sense, lonely,
but the execution cannot be solitary; it must reflect a
consensus. The vitality of a society depends on the interplay
between the inspiration of the individual and the translation
of it into the commonplace of the society or the enterprise.
A mass democracy whose leaders rely only on the organization
of the mood of the moment will soon be without direction and
end in a dictatorship. But, equally, leadership conceived as
the expression of arbitrary will turns power into a demonic
enterprise. And, for that reason, a well-conceived concept of

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P.03

Hans Merkle saw an unprecedented form of tyranny
potentially arising from the modern technological world quite
different in character from traditional notions of tyranny. I
will quote from his essay, "The Demonism of Power:" "It is
conceivable - and perhaps we have an obligation to face it -
that the demonism of power in the future cannot be related to
the individual any longer. Power becomes increasingly
anonymous but no less dangerous for the free evolution of
humanity. Falsification of concepts turns into the herald for
the development of concentrations of power of a new kind -
impersonal, intangible, almost ghostly; one is reminded of
Kafka. And because society so emasculated will not be able to

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11

Therefore, the individual's fulfillment (or that of enterprises) must not be subordinated to the demands of politics, and politics must not be defined as the sole, or even the principal, purpose of social life. The ultimate goal of political life should not be the interchangeable average norm but that of an individualistic personality who had evolved his own identity. Wherever it is forgotten that political duties must be based on political rights and that these rights must be revitalized in each period, politics turns into manipulation.

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703 941 4072

SEP-29-01 SAT 10:45 PM J WILLIAMS

Real conservatives - among whom Merkle counted himself -
were not opposed to progress; on the contrary, they create the
condition for progress by preserving the foundations on which
to build and by preventing that steps urged in the name of
progress lead into the abyss.

A prescient quote from Merkle from 1975 may be
appropriate: "Too extended periods of unrestrained growth
spoil both managers and workers, distort a sense of
proportion, erase distinctions, and weaken the sense for the
essential, for the necessary, for the possible. They obscure
the peril that threatens every society and every economy which
prevails too easily without having to prove itself. If the
wind changes and storms threaten, the hour of ultimate testing

This is why for Merkle - as already for Robert Bosch -
the fostering of talent was a primary preoccupation. The
Bosch Foundation, created by the founder of the company but so
named by Hans Merkle only after the founder's death, had as
one of its goals to prepare society for precisely thought
processes needed to master the unforeseen. Robert Bosch
described in his guidelines the need to adopt thought
processes and procedures to the latent changes in society.
And foremost among these was the free and unhindered
development of the human personality.

style:" total reliability, a sense of service, a notion of
profit based on energetic enterprise and insistent
competitiveness but made available to the common good at the
frontiers of knowledge and dedication. "To belong to the
elite," wrote Merkle, "brings with it duties rather than
rights. To be sure, the performance demanded of leaders
should not and does not remain unrewarded. But the goal of
the effort must never be material reward. Elites should not
define themselves by ruling but by serving - or better, they
rule best by serving. Those who belong to the real elite do
not insist on being called elites. Those who do insist on it
do not belong."

This explains the anonymous, seemingly impersonal, and
yet, in its ultimate sense, deeply personal style of Hans

Merkle. For his work to be meaningful, it could not be the
expression of a personal preference. It had to be a
reflection of a sense of duty that is of higher obligations.

I had originally intended to say only a few words about
Hans Merkle in keeping with his characteristic subordinating
of the person to the cause. But, as it turns out, Hans Merkle
achieved his life's goal: his person embodied a cause
manifold in its expression, [determined to] prevail by
performance rather than by personal insistence. And, in this

16

spirit, I want to say a few words about the contribution that
Hans Merkle and some members of his generation - at least one
of whom is here tonight - have made to the rebirth of Germany
and its relationship to the international community after the
Second World War.

Biographers make much of my German birth. And it is, of
course, true that one's environment shapes one's attitudes
even in difficult times (which is why I still take an active
weekly interest in the four Bavarian football clubs in the
Bundesliga - although Fürth is regrettably in the second
Bundesliga). But my real connection with Germany stems from
the end of the war. I arrived here with the army of
occupation in 1945 after a seven-year absence. Few of you
here will remember the devastation, desolation, and spiritual

P.10

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But I do want to pay tribute to those who had the courage
to start again, to rebuild their country, and to bring it back
to the community of nations by the very qualities I have
called the Bosch attributes: reliability, steadiness,
economy, and an abiding commitment to democratic values.

Governments of both major parties established a basically
steady policy which united with the democratic West. In the
process, America and Germany together went through two Berlin
crises, the building of the Wall, and finally reunification.

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And just when, on both sides of the Atlantic, the end of
the Cold War led to a debate about the continuing validity of
the democratic partnership, the terrorist attack on New York
and Washington has returned the democracies to
fundamentalists. Too many of us believed too easily in the
end of history, in the reduction of politics to psychiatry and
social work, and in the predominance of narrow national
concerns. We have learned that there are incompatible values
rampant in the world around us so eager to destroy our
civilization that those who hold them will sacrifice their
lives for it and do not recoil before the murder of innocent
civilians. It has obliged the West to return to fundamentals

CYJ

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P.12

19

and to relearn what it had nearly forgotten: that its unity
and solidarity was its ultimate strength. So I want to take
this opportunity to thank our German friends here for the many
expressions of support and compassion that reached us from all
over Germany and for the demonstrations of solidarity of the
German government.

All this would have been in the spirit of Hans Merkle. I
have said enough about what he thought to leave me only a
personal word. Merkle came from Baden-Württemberg, but he
incarnated some of the best values of the Prussian ethos. One
of these is, "Always be more than you seem to be" (mehr sein
als scheinen). Applied to Merkle and adapting one of the
quotes I mentioned earlier, I would phrase his basic maxim

[x]

P.13

703 941 4072

SEP-29-01 SAT 10:49 PM J WILLIAMS

Let me conclude with a final paradox. The heroic pose of
aloofness did not reflect an unfeeling nature. On the
contrary, it was wrested from a deeply passionate nature.

Merkle obscured this aspect of his personality because he did
not wish to impose his sentiments even on his friends. Like
one of the heroes of classical dramas, he took on himself the
battles to which he thought destiny had called him. Those of
us whom he honored with his friendship felt as if we were
admitted into a chivalrous order. The emotions from which
this aristocratic conduct had been wrung can be seen in a
letter Hans Merkle wrote in November 1944, when his hometown
of Pforzheim had been destroyed in the war: "Fate would not

21

pass this town by. But for me this place is not of brick and
mortar; it is based on building blocks of quite a different
kind - building blocks that cannot be reduced to rubble so
long as the heart does not allow it. And the heart will not
acquiesce. It clings to old scenes, to hills and trees, and
to the memory of many days which were gifts of God and dreams.
For, in the end, ideas are stronger than men and more long-
lasting."

A few months after his death, [his daughter] Monika and
Dr. Scholl did me the honor of accompanying me to Hans
Merkle's grave on a still, verdant hillside, shaded by trees
overlooking the city of Pforzheim which had risen from the
ashes.

[Y]

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22

Monika [graciously] let me see the letter I have just
read to you. I thought then how lonely a life this caring man
imposed on himself, how much he took on [personally], and
wondered whether some of us might have broken through this
solitude by an act of grace.

But then I reflected that [Hans Merkle] lived just as he
wanted, accompanied above all by his sense of duty. He
expressed this sense best in his essay, "Virtue and Trust:"
"Confidence in the future - that virtue of the soul, as the
French put it - must be fought for every day. It involves
permanent exertion, a coming-and-going, yet, to enable us to
travel our path so strewn with stones, there flashes
occasionally the smile of a God to console us."

P.16

703 941 4072

SEP-29-01 SAT 10:51 PM J WILLIAMS

When Hans Merkle died, I felt a deep emptiness and a
certain loneliness, relieved by the memory of my friend - much
as he felt when his birthplace was destroyed: not an end but
a commitment to a spirit of integrity and service.

Hans Merkle showed us many of these paths and vouchsafed
us an occasional smile from God.

SEP-29-01 SAT 03:56 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

9/29/01

Merkle Lecture

It is a great honor to be asked to deliver a speech in honor of one of the most remarkable men I have known. The task is as honorable as it is daunting. For those in this room who knew Hans Merkle, nothing I can say will be able to reflect the complexity and the inspirational quality of his character. For those who did not have the opportunity to encounter his extraordinary combination of dedication and authority, any description of him will, in this age of standardized norms, seem out of scale.

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CJ

2

knew one could always rely on him, yet this was based on the
it would come round
aura not on statement he would consider an elaboration of
or as a drop in the nature of friendship
the self-evident. He was an inspiring leader who moved people by his example
without insisting on the hierarchical of organizational
theory. He achieved enormous success in business, but he
spent much of his free time reading and developing an
astonishing erudition in philosophy, history, and even poetry.
Yet this staggering knowledge was never displayed in
conversations; Hans Merkle would have considered that unworthy
ostentation. "One must never say all one knows," he said in
his speech, "Dienen und Führen." [And] it came to expression
in the titles of his speeches and essays: "The Act of
Prediction;" "Man, Machines, and Technology;" "Rights and
Duties in the Republic;" "Service and Leadership;" "Elites and

SEP-29-01 SAT 04:00 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

P.01

3

How to Encourage Them;" "Profession as Experience;" "A Critique of Technology;" "Virtue and Trust," among many others. What other modern manager would have been able to write an essay reflecting on why Caesar went to the capital on the day [he was] assassinated even though he had received many warnings?

[Merkle's] essentially philosophical essays did not deal with the problems of his company. But they [do] explain its extraordinary success under his leadership, growing from sales of DM 2 billion in 1964, to DM 21.2 billion in 1985, and to DM 60 billion in the year 2000, demonstrating that Merkle achieved his highest aim of transcending the personal and imparting to his successors a standard of meticulous attention

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7

all or all in all." Societies thrive when based on this
confidence. The final requirement of leadership, ~~(as)~~ *Merkle*
is ~~therefore~~ *is not*
[would] quote Peter Drucker *~~(is)~~* *is to earn trust* "Trust is

Merkle already meant while he said, *because he is this way*.

In this manner, leadership becomes an aspect of service.

In Merkle's view, leadership requires an attitude that *places* *avoids* *limits on* self-satisfaction during success and provides inner strength to persist in adversity. It consists of delegating *achievement* credit for *success* but assuming responsibility for failure.

The chief executive must not only outline a direction but inspire its execution. And he must never rest on what has been achieved. [Thus] Merkle ended the speech at Bosch's centenary celebration, in which he summed up the achievements of 100 years, with a warning against complacency: "We at

SEP-29-01 SAT 04:04 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

9

the execution cannot be ~~that of an individual alone; it must~~ *soletary*
*refused*
achieve a consensus. *Democracy is a requirement of modern*
*technology as well as of basic human values. The vitality of*
*a society therefore depends on the interplay between the*
*inspiration of the individual and the translation of it into*
*the commonplace of the society or the enterprise. A mass*
*democracy whose leaders rely only on the organization of the*
*mood of the moment will soon be without direction and end in a*
*dictatorship. But equally a reliance on leadership is needed,*
*conceived*
*the expression of the arbitrary will of an individual turns*
*power into a demonic enterprise. And, for that reason, a*
*well-conceived concept of national interest is not an*
*assertion of power but a limitation of it.*

SEP-29-01 SAT 04:06 PM J WILLIAMS

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12

to build and by preventing that *an imaginary step forward* be made.

leads into the abyss.

A prescient quote from Merkle from 1975 may be appropriate: "Too extended periods of unrestrained growth spoil both managers and workers, distort a sense of proportion, erase distinctions, and weaken the sense for the essential, *the necessary, for the possible*. They obscure the peril that threatens every society and every economy which prevails too easily without having to prove itself. If the wind changes and storms threaten, the hour of ultimate testing has come; then we will learn who can read the weather map and who is able to navigate against the wind."

703 941 4072

13

These fragmentary summaries of the thoughts of a
remarkable man explain what I would describe as the "Bosch
style:" total reliability, a sense of service, a notion of
profit based on energetic enterprise and insistent

SEP-29-01 SAT 04:07 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

14

competitiveness but made available to the common good at the frontiers of knowledge and dedication. "To belong to the elite," wrote Merkle, "brings with it duties rather than rights. To be sure, the performance demanded of leaders should not and does not remain unrewarded. But the goal of the effort must never be material reward. Elites should not define themselves by ruling but by serving - or better, they rule best by serving. Those who belong to the real elite do not insist on being called elites. (Those who do insist on it do not belong, to the elite.)"

This explains the anonymous, seemingly impersonal, and yet, in its ultimate sense, deeply personal style of Hans Merkle, the author of these reflections. For his work to be meaningful, it could not be the expression of a personal

SEP-29-01 SAT 04:08 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

15

preference. It had to be a reflection of a sense of duty that
is of higher obligations. He would quote from Max Planck:

> "The ultimate good of which no power in the world can deprive
> us is a pure way of thinking which finds its expression in a
> conscientious carrying out of one's obligations." To which

I had originally intended to say only a few words about
Hans Merkle in keeping with his characteristic subordinating
of the person to the cause. But, as it turns out, Hans Merkle
achieved his life's goal: his person embodied a cause
manifold in its expression, insistent in prevailing by
performance rather than by personal insistence. And, in this
spirit, I want to say a few words about the contribution that

703 941 4072

16

Hans Merkle and some members of his generation - at least one of whom is here [tonight] - have made to the rebirth of Germany and its relationship to the international community after the Second World War.

Biographers make much of my German birth. And it is, of course, true that one's environment shapes one's attitudes even in difficult times (which is why I still take an active weekly interest in the four Bavarian football clubs in the Bundesliga - although Fürth is regrettably in the second Bundesliga). But my real connection with Germany stems from the end of the war. I arrived here with the army of occupation in 1945 after a seven-year absence. Few of you here will remember the devastation, desolation, and spiritual despair of those months; it belongs to the experiences of your

SEP-29-01 SAT 04:09 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

P.13

fathers and grandfathers. There is no time [now], and this is
not the occasion, to review the political evolution of more
than half a century - though it seems like [only] yesterday to
me.

But I [do] want to pay tribute to those who had the
courage to start again, to rebuild their country, and to bring
it back to the community of nations by the very qualities I
have called the Bosch attributes: reliability, steadiness,
enterprise, and an abiding commitment to democratic values.

703 941 4072

18

And just when, on both sides of the Atlantic, the end of
the Cold War led to a debate about the continuing validity of
the democratic partnership, the terrorist attack on New York
[and Washington] has returned the democracies to
fundamentalists. Too many of us [too easily] believed in the
end of history, in the reduction of politics to psychiatry and
social work, and in the predominance of narrow national
concerns. We have learned that there are incompatible values
rampant in the world around us so eager to destroy our
civilization that [those who hold them] will sacrifice their
lives for it and do not recoil before the murder of innocent
[fundamental] civilians. It has obliged the West to return to [basics] and

SEP-29-01 SAT 04:10 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

19

703 941 4072

P.16

CYJ

20

this way: "Always say less than you know and do more than you say."

But these maxims omit one important aspect of Hans Merkle's life.

The heroic pose of aloofness did not reflect an unfeeling nature. On the contrary, it was wrested from a deeply passionate nature. This aspect of his personality Merkle obscured because he did not wish to impose his sentiments even on his friends. Like one of the heroes of classical dramas, he took on himself the battles to which he thought destiny had called him. Those of us whom he honored with his friendship felt as if we were admitted into a chivalrous order. The emotions from which this aristocratic conduct had been wrung can be seen in a letter Hans Merkle wrote on November 4, 1944, when his home[town] of Pforzheim

SEP-29-01 SAT 04:11 PM J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

P.17

21

had been destroyed in the war: "Fate could not pass this town
by. But for me this place is not of brick and mortar, but it
is based on building blocks of quite a different kind -
building blocks that cannot be reduced to rubble so long as
the heart does not allow it. And the heart will not
acquiesce. It clings to old scenes, to hills and trees, and
to the memory of many days which were gifts of God and dreams.
For, in the end, ideas are stronger than men and more long-
lasting."

When Hans Merkle died, I felt a deep emptiness and a sense of
loneliness relieved
compensated by the memory of my friend - much as he felt when
his birthplace was destroyed: not an end but a commitment to
a spirit of vitality and resilience

to
p21