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J WILLIAMS

703 941 4072

P.02

9/29/01

Merkle Lecture

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity 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.

For Hans Merkle was a man of seeming paradoxes. He was [we] in terms of my friend, yet [he] rarely spoke a personal word to me. One always

GINA'S
DRAFT

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but his
knew one could always rely on him, but this was based on the
rather than which in any event have
 aura —not on statements he would consider an elaboration of
 to be mere

the self-evident. He was an inspiring leader who moved people

[invoking] ES
without [insisting on] the hierarchies of organizational

Even while
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.

broadthrough [rarely]
But this staggering knowledge was [never] displayed in

as much
conversations; Hans Merkle would have considered that unworthy
↑ noted
ostentation. "One must never say all one knows," he said in
↑ a theme which often found
his speech, "Dienen und Führen," [And] it comes 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

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How to Encourage Them;" "Profession as Experience;" "A

Critique of Technology;" "Virtue and Trust," among many

How many written
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 did
indeed achieve his highest aim of transcending the personal and
imparting to his successors a standard of meticulous attention

[Y]

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an ever

strong

to detail, insistence on / striving for perfection and, above

^ human ^ all, 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 and I should use the

*to hold*

*that proved easier said than*

* occasion for a conversation.*

*done, however)*

*Merkle did not want to impose himself*

*when I*

*[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 stood by*

*my country during the war. If that bothers you, you should*

*have nothing to do with me."*

[Y]

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all or all in all." Societies thrive when based on this
confidence. The final requirement of leadership [as] Merkle
noted is to earn trust. "Trust is the conviction that the leader means what he says."

In this manner, leadership becomes an aspect of service.
Merkle's view leadership requires an attitude that places
limits on self-satisfaction during success and provides inner
strength to [persist] in adversity. It consists of delegating the
credit for success 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 the speech at Bosch's
centenary celebration by summing up the achievements
of 100 years, with a warning against complacency: "We at
this

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And therefore Hans Merkle saw in the modern technological
...

---

> "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 can become the herald for the development of
> ...

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."

* Several lines missing from my fax. Probably not that important, since the second lot is a quote.

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condition for progress by preserving the foundations on which
to build and by preventing that an imaginary step forward
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, 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."

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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 it. 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 [______ these reflections.] For his work to be

as if it were merely his own
meaningful, it could not be the expression of a

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preference. Is had to be a reflection of a sense of duty that comes a Merkle is of higher obligation. 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 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 that was as far as I can tell as it was, a manifold in its expression insistent in prevailing by virtue of its being a performance rather than a personal insistence. And in this spirit, I want to say a few words about the contribution that

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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 wake of 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 in this room will remember the devastation, desolation, and spiritual despair of those months; it belongs to the experiences of your

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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 on the basis of the very qualities I
have called the Bosch attributes: reliability, steadiness,
technical enterprise, and an abiding commitment to democratic values.

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

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to relearn what it had nearly forgotten: that its unity and
*in our*
*besides our*
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
*you now with*
*have said enough about what he thought to leave me only at this*
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
*to*
*his*
*re- own*
*quotes* / mentioned earlier, I would phrase his basic maxim
*^*

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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 certain emptiness that was
compensated for by the memory of my friend - much as it felt when
that this was a part of a continuing
his birthplace was destroyed: not an end but a commitment to
[the]
a spirit.