»At Jowat I laid the foundations for the rest of my career.« Dieter Fricke, former apprentice at Jowat SE A treasured memory: Dieter Fricke as an apprentice with his former colleagues. In the top left, you can see Jowat’s logo from the 1950s. manager in 1953, a young Dieter Fricke had to learn the ropes at Jowat from the ground up. “I rotated through all the departments in Jowat then, to get as full a picture as possible of the operations and processes. I worked in manufacturing, the warehouse, dispatch and even the administrative and accounting departments,” he remembers. As assistant to the former manager Ruth Fuhs, he supported the creation of the Export Dieter Fricke reads the Jowat chronicle enthusiastically. The location couldn’t have been more appro- priate. For just over a year now, the House of Technology has been uniting Jowat’s past, present and future under one roof, making it the perfect setting for a meeting of the gener- ations. It’s a place that Dieter Fricke, who now lives in neighbouring Lemgo, can remember well, albeit under slightly different ownership: “Right here there used to be a meat process- ing plant. Those buildings had vanished, of course, when Jowat moved its technical centre from Wittekindstraße to Ernst-Hilker-Straße.” The memories come flooding back walking through a small exhibition in the entrance hall. From people in the group photo from the 1950s to the exhibits on display, like one of the first delivery vehicles, the former ap- prentice, born in Brake, recognises plenty from his time as an apprentice and an employee at Jowat. “Even though the training was some- times physically quite tiring – we still had to transport dispersion adhesives in their iron vessels in wheelbarrows, for example – I spent four fantastic years here. It was in Detmold that I really laid the foundation for my future career,” concludes Dieter Fricke, who had completed his secondary education at the Engelbert-Kaempfer Gymnasium (Grammar School) in Lemgo. Grabbed opportunity by the horns He actually would have preferred to train to be a radio or television technician, or even an electrician, but his father heard about the open apprenticeship at Jowat by chance. Just a few days later, Dieter applied to one of the only training positions in the area. “It was difficult to get apprenticeships in those days. Germany was only just at the start of its economic boom, so apprenticeships were not only rare, they were also highly sought after. You really had to strike while the iron was hot.” It’s a scenario that is rather in- comparable with today’s situation and job market. Nowadays, many apprenticeship positions go unfilled because the demand in many industries is too low. It’s not a fa- miliar problem at Jowat, however. Here, the available training positions in ten different roles are filled year after year. Just like today’s apprenticeships, as a prospective industrial 13