Donation for TU Darmstadt

Alumnus Eginhard Jungmann expresses his thanks to his alma mater

2024/07/31 by

Eginhard Jungmann came to Germany as a young man and late resettler from the former Upper Silesia in 1958. Since he had come across publications and books by two professors teaching in Darmstadt, his path led him to the Technical University. More than 60 years and a successful management career with Siemens later, he now expresses his thanks to his alma mater and his former department of Electrical Engineering by making a generous donation.

Alumnus Eginhard Jungmann

1945 Eginhard Jungmann became “Jan Jedrzej”. The boy, then eight years young, had lived with his parents in Beuthen; but with the end of WWII, Upper Silesia became Polish territory, his father was conscripted as an accountant, and the family was not allowed to leave the country. Jungmann, today 87 years old, recounts how he and his parents were “polonized”. Under his new name of Jan Jedrzej, he went to Polish schools, graduated with very good grades, and successfully applied for a scholarship awarded by the Polish government for studying in Moscow. Starting in 1955, he studied at the department for Control Systems Engineering for six semesters at the “Institute for Energetics of the Order of Lenin”.

When it became possible in the course of family reunification for Germans to leave Poland, his parents made determined efforts to emigrate to Germany. His mother had relatives living in the Ruhr district. “In 1958, we arrived at the Friedland displacement camp and were later transferred to Aurich,” Eginhard Jungmann remembers. There, after a tedious bureaucratic struggle, Jan Jedrzej once again became Eginhard Jungmann.

Continuation of studies in Darmstadt

The young electrical engineer was determined: he wanted to continue his studies in Germany. Fortunately, he met a Catholic priest in the camp who advised him and with whom he could discuss his ideas during these hard times. And sometimes it is the coincidences and the little things which tip the scales. “I didn’t know my way around German academia, but I had heard of Winfried Oppelt, author of the ‘Kleines Handbuch der Regelungstechnik’ [Little Handbook of Control Systems Engineering], and I knew that he was a professor in Darmstadt,” Jungmann recounts. What is more, the camp priest let him read the book “Der NS-Staat” [The NS State] by Eugen Kogon. This famous sociologist held the first professorship for Political Science at TH Darmstadt. “After that, it was all set: I wanted to study with these two professors,” he says.

“As a grinding poor late resettler” he enrolled at what was then still the “Technische Hochschule Darmstadt” in the summer semester of 1959. He lived in a rented room in Pfungstadt, and rode his bike to Darmstadt to attend the lectures, come rain, shine, or sleet. And in fact, he attended the lectures by professors Oppelt and Kogon. “The lectures held by Eugen Kogon were totally crowded. I was one of hundreds of students,” Jungmann remembers. But he was right where he wanted to be. The academic workday in Darmstadt was very different from Moscow, “but I wanted to achieve something and tried to fit in.”

Careers at Salzgitter Industriebau and Siemens

He graduated in Electrical Engineering and Control Systems Engineering in 1962, receiving his Diplom with a very good grade from professor Oppelt. When still a student, a professor helped Eginhard Jungmann establish a contact to the company Salzgitter Industriebau, which had been looking for a Russian-speaking student for doing translations, and that company hired him directly after his graduation. He started as a clerk in the department of chemistry within the work area of Measurement and Control Systems Engineering and quickly worked his way up, later being responsible for construction sites in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Pakistan. Upon meeting Franziska, who then was a history student in Munich and who later became his wife, Eginhard Jungmann switched employers and went to Siemens in Munich where he also started a remarkable career which led him to the upper echelons of management; there he worked as Director of the Central Production Tasks department from 1990 until his retirement in 2006.

At Siemens, he was also responsible for research cooperations and contacts to TU Darmstadt. In particular, it was TU Darmstadt professor José Luis Encarnação, the department of Computer Science, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD) with whom “I had a good personal relationship,” he fondly remembers.

Large donation for the alma mater

“TU Darmstadt proved to be an important building block for my development in Germany,” says Eginhard Jungmann. And that is precisely the reason why he and his wife have now decided to make a very generous donation to the Technical University. They take 100,000 euros of their own private funds and give this sum to Darmstadt. This 87-year-old alumnus wants to give something back to his former university. Part of these funds are earmarked for his former department of Electrical Engineering, “but I have given the university some latitude in how to allocate the money,” he emphasizes. SO this donation will now pay for a “Unite!” guest professorship and support “Deutschlandstipendium” scholarships as well as school activities.

Professor Tanja Brühl, President of TU Darmstadt, expresses her thanks to Eginhard Jungmann: “I cordially thank Mr Jungmann for his generous commitment to his alma mater TU Darmstadt! I am impressed by Mr Jungmann’s academic and professional career which started in those difficult and in many ways uncertain times after the war. I am very happy that his connection and attachment towards our university that he has maintained from his student days to the present time can now give rise to new opportunities for exchange, cooperation, and personal development.”