Innovating vaccines: From gene expression to translational entrepreneurship

Born 1950 in the small town of Coburg in post-war West Germany, I was surrounded by a strange mindset that was coded by a "Gemisch" of "Verdrängung" of the country's Nazi past and by a blind optimism that the divided country - in spite of the cruelties and the horrors of the war and the Nazi period - could be rebuilt and regain the respect of other nations. Luckily, I was raised in a family where the reality of destruction and Nazi crimes of the past were openly discussed and not suppressed; the exodus and deportation of Jewish citizens and concentration camps such as Auschwitz were not taboo topics.