Thanks to his close friendship with Eugen Krings, Uwe has been closely involved with World War II vehicles for many years.
I have been working with Uwe for many years and have always been responsible for digital image processing.
It must have been around 2019 when Uwe took pictures of Eugen’s Sonder Kfz 9 (half-track) and wanted to give him a large print of it as a gift.
He asked me if I could do something nice with the pictures, and I immediately saw this vehicle in an environment that looked like it was from the time it was in use.
So I incorporated it into the environment that can also be found here in the calendar, and Uwe was immediately enthusiastic.
Uwe had already created countless calendars for various companies and immediately had the idea of making a calendar called “Vehicles of World War II.”
He didn’t have to convince me for long—I was immediately enthusiastic about the idea.
Where would all the pictures come from? Of course, we would have to create them ourselves.
The vehicles are scattered far and wide, of course, all over Germany and into neighboring countries. Thanks to Eugen, that was no problem at all.
He put us in touch with some fantastic contacts, and the collectors really welcomed us with open arms.So in 2020, we traveled across Germany to photograph the first motifs.
Then came the shock of 2021—the pandemic. Corona brought the project to a complete standstill. Now we had to wait. Who would have thought it would take so long?
As soon as the pandemic was over, we continued working on the project, photographing vehicles and creating calendar pages.We actually wanted to finalize the calendar as quickly as possible, but then the unrest in Ukraine began.A war – very close to our home country. A really bad time to launch a calendar with these motifs.We continued to work in the background and were patient – hoping that the war would soon be over.Since this hope was not fulfilled, we searched for and photographed additional motifs. Our last trip took us to Belgium, where we photographed the Panther tank in Houffalize.While we were in Belgium, we also visited two other collectors there to add more vehicles to our image collection.We didn’t want to stop at just this one calendar. The plan was to market further annual calendars afterwards.
Then disaster struck—right after our trip to Belgium, Uwe suffered a very severe stroke with multiple organ failure. It was a matter of life and death, and we can consider ourselves very lucky that Uwe survived.Unfortunately, he has not been able to recover from it to this day. The year after the stroke was marked by rehabilitation, hospital stays, various operations, and great suffering.
Uwe is now in a nursing home, paralyzed on one side and desperate. Every time I visit him, I notice that there is only one ray of hope for him – our calendar.It is, of course, a matter close to my heart to make my friend’s big dream come true and finally bring the calendar to market. Especially since it would also be a great help for him togain at least a little financial support from the sale of the calendars.
Anyone who buys one of our calendars not only acquires 12 high-quality digital prints with which they can create a historical gallery – no, they also support a person in need.