Aspekte Baden-Württembergische Bank AG September 1992

A special birthday gift for the 40th anniversary Baden-Württemberg

Unfortunately, the weather was not ideal at the Reutlingen Burger and Partnership Festival in honor of the 40th anniversary of the state on Saturday, June 20. 1992. But at least it didn't rain like it had eight days earlier at the Bürgertest in Schwäbisch Gmünd, and so the Reutlingen market square was still late at night well filled.

Groups from neighbouring towns brought musical and dance performances the whole evening from Reutlingen, and it was soon approaching midnight. Suddenly all the lights went out on the market square and the eyes of the crowd were directed to a futuristically styled stage in front of the town hall, bordered by two towers of loudspeakers as high as a house. With deafening fanfare blasts, a huge screen slowly rolled down into the middle of the loudspeaker announcement of the birthday laser show. The logos of the sponsors appeared on the screen, all companies from Baden-Württemberg, which bear the state name. Among these ten was the Baden-Württembergische Bank, whose logo appeared taller than a man on the screen and was repeatedly transformed by laser flashes. It got really warm in your heart as an employee.

The gratitude to the sponsors made me tremble again, but a tiny part of it was also for me and the other employees of the Reutlingen branch who were present.

Rhythmic music, pulsating and driving, accompanied the emergence of the anniversary logo, and then we were all drawn into a spinning spiral stream of particles and into our country's history, accompanied by a deep soaring synthesizer note.

A kind of genie in a bottle condensed out of the spiral fog, inviting the audience on a journey through Baden-Württemberg with a booming voice and a raised index finger. The hand of the spirit stretched across the whole marketplace and caught the audience: in a time machine at breakneck speed, the state of Baden Württemberg developed from the globe in the borders of 1952, and the ghost disappeared with a rocket-like hiss into the depths of our homeland.

After that, the scenario got a lot livelier and lighter. In a flight over the country, striking sights were shown such as the Stuttgart TV tower, the Karlsruhe Palace, Lake Constance and the island of Mainau, with one image developing from the other.

Cuckoo clock, Baden n-Baden, Stuttgart ballet, Upper Swabian carnival, Wengerter, the tailor from Ulm, Count Zeppelin, Albert Einstein, Steffi Graf, Carl Benz, Robert Bosch, Ulf Merbold, Hermann Hesse merged and were to be the diverse facets of our state history illustration. It was a truly colorful mixture that flew past my eyes at breakneck speed.

At the end, the ghost reappeared from the depths of the country and wrote "Congratulations Baden-Württemberg" on the screen with a laser beam. The obligatory birthday fanfare sounded, colorful rockets burst on the screen, and loudly accompanied by loud music, a laser beam show began, immersing the Reutlingen market square in a sea of colors and shapes from several cannons. Artificial fog was blown up and the laser figures on it were plastically transformed in all colors of the spectrum, into a myriad of symmetrical shapes. The whole market place a resounding light and color spectacle.

After about 15 minutes the show was over. I made my way back to my car, half stunned. My head was pounding, but for a big cause you have to make small sacrifices.

Summary: A high-tech laser show for the 40th birthday of a high-tech country - what could be more appropriate? And more importantly, we were there!