I'll work on it
OK, this is roughly it. Not a word by word translation, but it should get the message across.
I doubted long and hard about revealing my feelings and thoughts about this, but the thought about the notes that Joachim Görtz never published in his book as well as my own personal memories about him have made me decide to do so.
Even when it means that there is a certain danger that I will lose all credit here, I have to say that it hurt me to see that a part of the personal archive of Joachim Görtz has ended up in the hands of a private collector, although this is by no means unacceptable in it’s own right. A similar thing happened before, the loss of the private notebooks of the former small arms foreman of Mauser, August Weiss, to a well known German gun expert (H.B. Lockhoven) was described in Joachim Görtz his book “Die Pistole 08” on page 24.
This is not about envy, everybody who knows me even a little knows that I enjoy the beauty of things in other people’s possession. No, archive material like this, even when it is ‘only’ the photo archive belongs in the hands of all (!) collectors, not the ‘better’ collector, but all, also the new ones, yes especially to them, how would we otherwise find a next generation for our research.
Unfortunately the amount of documents in Germany that are of interest to our subject is extremely limited after a lost world war, since most archives were largely destroyed. It is therefore very important to open up such interesting material, as the Görtz legacy, to the collecting masses. No collector or expert alone is able to fully recognize the contents of the archive material, let alone understand and document it; many hands and a lot of time is needed for this.
Also as I was in contact with Joachim Görtz for many years, understandably his friend Reinhard Kornmayer knew him better than the unimportant Klaus but I have sincere doubts about the ‘pleasure’ that Görtz would have with these proceedings.
In conclusion, a small anecdote will explain that for a time Joachim Görtz and I had a somewhat strained relationship: He had told me once that his 08 pistol, which he used regularly at the shooting range, had a vague trigger pull that was miles away from the quality of the Swiss gun maker tuned triggers. I told him about the good workmanship of my own gun smith and I mediated between both, which caused me to get stuck in the middle of a fire fight: Both couldn’t stand each other. Görtz must have said something to the gun smith which caused the gun smith to call him a third rate writer. My efforts to achieve a quick end to the work were in vain: the gun smith did keep his word and Görtz got his 08 back with a perfect trigger pull, but it all took weeks and it took months before the smoke cleared. But many times I had the feeling that the honoured Joachim Görtz never really forgave me for this out of frustration, in his eyes I did not put enough pressure on the gun smith.