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Background & Career of Lothar Mork
Lothar was born in Worbis, former East Germany, as the second child to poor parents. His father’s family had been wealthy once, but their factory and estate was confiscated by the Russians after WW II.
His mother came from Bielefeld in West Germany, but after getting married, she moved to Worbis to escape the allied bombings of the Ruhr industrial area of Germany.
Lothar went through elementary school and then changed to High School. His hometown of Worbis was only 10 miles from the East German border. Due to this proximity to the West he was able to listen to West German radio stations and loved the early Beat and Rock music of the Sixties. His mother’s sisters in the West regularly sent care packages and Lothar got to enjoy many Western goods, things one couldn’t buy in East Germany.
These influences made Lothar realize early on that he was born on the wrong side of the fence and he developed a longing for the West.
In 1963, at age 15, he made his first attempt to flee the country. But the border had been heavily fortified since 1961 and consequently his attempt to escape failed. He got thrown out of High School and was forced into construction work. After finishing a 3 year apprenticeship as an Industrial Electrician, he managed to enroll at a college in East Berlin. He had never given up the idea of eventually trying to leave this country again,
but he wanted to finish his education first. However, the proximity of the Berlin Wall was a heavy psychological burden for him and made his desire to leave this country grow by the day. Consequently, the college authorities figured out real quickly that Lothar was politically untrustworthy and his convictions were not with the socialist country of East Germany. Again, he was expelled from college for political reasons and faced an uncertain future. By now, trying to cross the border from East to West Germany
amounted to suicide, and Lothar made plans to try to escape through communist Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and make it from there into Italy.
Once again, it wasn’t meant to be. He was arrested in Yugoslavia, deported back to Bulgaria and after spending 3 months in Bulgarian prisons under appalling circumstances, extradited back to East Germany. After one year in solitary confinement at a State Security Detention Facility he was convicted to 3 years in prison and spent the remaining 2 years a State Penitentiary in East Berlin. Then fate turned in his favor. Through a complicated
process and with a bit of luck, his name got on the list of names for the ongoing, clandestine exchange of political prisoners for hard currency.
On the 19th of June 1970, Lothar was sold right out of prison to West Germany for the sum of about 40,000 Deutschmarks. He was now a free man and hell-bound to make something out of it.
Between 1962 and 1989, East Germany sold over 33,000 political prisoners to the West, cashing in over 3.5 Billion Deutschmarks.
Career of Lothar Mork
Upon gaining his freedom, Lothar went to college in Darmstadt, West Germany and graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1974. He got a job with Honeywell and started to work in Design Engineering of their Disc Drive Division.
The very first business trip to the United States made Lothar realize that his journey was not over yet and that he some day wanted to immigrate to the US.
After a few years he had made it to Manager of the European Training Center of his company and now traveled to the United States several times a year. He was able to secure a job offer from his company’s headquarter in the Midwest and in March of 1982, he emigrated to the United States of America, where he soon got married and built his first home.
As a young, German engineer he was well respected by his employer and soon was given more and more responsibility. After implementing some innovative technologies, he was promoted to Project Leader and soon after to Manager of Manufacturing Engineering.
When he was invited to an Executive Meeting in Seattle in 1990, Lothar was Executive Director of Manufacturing Engineering for two large disc drive plants. He had not been given a reason of why to attend this meeting and the surprise was complete.
Late October 1990, Lothar was promoted to Vice President of Singapore Operations and left for Singapore the same day, not knowing that he would stay in Asia and not return.
His Asian career involved building and running disc drive plants in Singapore, China and Malaysia. He spent his last year leading an important technical project in Bangkok. After successfully finishing this project, he retired and settled on the Island of Phuket, where he lives to this day.
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