Franz Giglinger, 63, from Grafing is a failed hippie.
But that doesn't stop him from continuing to drum for world peace.
A visit to his two-room apartment.
Grafing -
In a desk drawer belonging to the author of these lines, a corner is reserved for Franz Giglinger.
There, the postcards that make Grafinger a constant in the editorial business are collected in a transparent cover - in one or two sentences he gives his opinion on the current reporting, usually emblazoned next to it with a peace sign painted with a ballpoint pen or a flower Slogans like “Imagine it's war and nobody goes!” Or “No power for nobody!”.
Not everything that is on the cards, often decorated with self-cut nature motifs, is ready for printing.
But they are always too good to throw away.
Maybe one day it will turn into a large collage.
Franz Giglinger says: "I always helped the weaker ones"
The sender address is a two-room apartment in a cooperative building in Grafing.
Giglinger, 63, sits there on his wrinkled leather couch, takes a sip of mineral water from the bottle and says: "I've always helped the weaker ones." The words "Opas gegen Rechts" are emblazoned on his T-shirt in thumb-thick capital letters, plus that Peace symbol as a badge.
His daughter gave him the shirt.
He wears it with pride, even if he is sometimes called stupid for it when he is outside with Maxi, his Jack Russell Terrier.
Somehow, Giglinger had been a left-wing bacillus since he was a teenager.
In his youth he set up the first youth center in the district together with the slightly older, recently deceased SPD member of the Bundestag Ewald Schurer in Ebersberger Flossmannstrasse.
“That was a lot of fun,” he recalls.
There was trouble because men and women used the same toilet - a scandal in Ebersberg in the 1970s.
Giglinger still has to laugh out loud when he talks about it.
He made the discos in the surrounding area unsafe
Gigse, as his friends called him since kindergarten, got around quite a bit.
Made the discos as far as Erdinger Land and Munich unsafe, Roth-Händle smoked without a filter.
After training as a blacksmith and the Bundeswehr, which he had not escaped, the native Ebersberger lived for three months as a hippie dropout in a flat share in Wasserburg;
lived "like on a pirate ship".
But on his own account, he emphasizes, without registering as unemployed.
At that time he even thought of health insurance for 140 marks a month.
Anyone who ticks like that is not born to be a hippie.
Giglinger made the exit from the exit.
“What was going on there was too extreme for me and what they were throwing in,” he recalls.
Until his early retirement - the back and the sugar - he calculates almost 43 working years, most of them in a car dealership and at a sporting goods manufacturer.
A good person has to like animals, flowers and music
The 63-year-old has slipped all the way forward on his gray Grafinger leather couch, his head with the white fringe of hair bobbing, his index finger whizzing through the air while talking.
“A good person has to like animals, flowers and music,” he says.
He is a rebel and a fighter for justice to this day, a member of the Bund Naturschutz, Greenpeace and the Wildlife Foundation WWF.
He donates postage stamps for people with disabilities, protested at his bank against the fact that it finances coal and armaments companies and collected signatures for the referendum on species protection.
He always has a few brochures with him when he goes for a walk - for bird protection, against nuclear power.
He is particularly worried about the political strengthening of the right.
“One shouldn't hate,” he says.
“But I don't have to like the AfD.” Franz Giglinger is his own activist group.
+
Colorful and opinionated: some postcards from Franz Giglinger to the EZ editorial team.
© Stefan Rossmann
That can also mean that he borrows Beserl and Schauferl from the gas station to sweep up a few broken glass on the next park bench.
“If I've made someone happy, it's been a good day,” he says.
If everyone thought that way, the world would be a better place.
Letters to the editor and concert reviews hang on the cabinet doors
On his cupboard doors hang pictures that his two granddaughters painted for him with colored pencils.
Many of them show peace signs, which he takes pleasure in.
Next to it hang dozens of cut-out newspaper reports, including his own letters to the editor and tons of concert reviews.
He has attended a good 90 rock concerts, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Kiss and the like.
And a good 2000 equally relevant records testify to his wild times.
In the meantime, the 63-year-old Grafinger takes things a little easier.
For the Ozzy Osbourne concert last March, the catch-up date for which he is still waiting, he has secured a seat ticket further back.
And instead of celebrating the night with parties, he prefers to put together tit dumplings in the evening, read up on political topics, write his postcards or fill out competitions.
"In old age you have to take a step back," he says, stretching out the index and middle fingers of the right hand to sign the peace.
Franz Giglinger says: "I'm glad that I used to be such a wild dog."
Home visit to a thoroughbred waitress whose life Corona has turned inside out.
A home visit to the carpenter with the most beautiful view.
