Protosimplex

Burkhard Heim
a biography

by Olaf Posdzech
(1988)

Contents

Childhood and youth
Heavy blow and planning of a new life
First steps to a unified field theory
The way to the mass spectrum of ponderable particles
About life before and after death
The not-material background of the world and its effects
Support, envy and ignorance
Armament and civil fights
A visit to the Heim family, Gerda Heim – guardian angel and loving soul

Childhood and youth

Burkhard Heim was born in Potsdam, Germany in 1925. Even as a small boy he was characterized by large curiosity and a certain inclination to play tricks. Still today he loves to tell gladly of his early excursions into the natural sciences. He was particularly interested in biology and explosive chemistry.

One day, he and some friends decided to assemble a human skeleton whose parts had come to light in a building site in Potsdam. His biology teacher was also pleased withe their diligence. However in the end he was surprised to find, that the male skeleton had a female pelvis.

Another story happened during one of Potsdam's winters. A friend of Burkhard Heim had noticed that the ice flowers on the windows had very different shapes and these shapes often reminded to the shapes of different plants. They studied these shapes in detail. Eventually they came up with the theory that the shape of the frost flowers might be the shape of the plants that were actually in those rooms. So they started ringing people's doors: Excuse me, we just want to know if you have some kind of plant in your room, don't you? Their first impression proved to be true time and time again. The shape of the plants had settled in a way unknown to us in the shape of the ice flowers.

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Heavy blow and planning of a new life

In 1941, Burkhard Heim made an invention in the field of explosives. In 1944, on the orders of the German Army Command, he was sent from the front to work at the Chemical-Technical Reich Institute in Berlin. There, in 1944, he had an accident while working in the laboratory. He lost both hands and 90% of his sight and hearing when an object exploded in his hands.
This severe blow plunged the 19-year-old Burkhard Heim into a deep crisis. Up until then he'd been extraordinarily alert, thoughtful, humorous and thirsty for knowledge, enjoying his existence in the world. The accident almost completely cut him off from the world. At the end of this crisis, Burkhard Heim decided to continue with the things that had remained - his curiosity and his intellectual capacity.

In these weeks he decided to establish a timetable for his further investigations, which he had followed purposefully until his dead (more than 50 years!). He wanted to understand how life and the psyche are connected to the material processes of our world.

Burkhard Heim realized very fast that such a theory only could base on a complete theory of the material world, which he first had to find. For this purpose it was necessary to become a physicists. Despite his severe handicaps and complete disablement Heim began studying chemistry in 1945, and (4 years later) in 1949 theoretical physics in Goettingen. He was 24 years old at the time.

In 1950 Burkhard Heim married his wife Gerda, who became his loving guardian angel. She assisted him in his scientific work until the end of his life.

In 1954 Heim finished his study in physics with the main diploma. Afterwards he worked two years at the Max Planck institute for professor von Weizsaecker. In 1958 he founded his own institute in Northeim to be able to test experimentally the effects that were predicted by his theory of gravitation. However due to limited financial resources, this venture had to be postponed.

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First steps to a unified field theory

Already in the first year of his studies in physics Burkhard Heim began to work independently on a general field theory. His goal was to describe all physical fields and their sources uniformly as dynamic characteristics of purely geometrical structures of space.

In 1959 Burkhard Heim published his first essay The principle of dynamic contrabary (Das Prinzip der dynamischen Kontrabarie) in the German magazine Flugkörper. There he presented the results of his research up for discussion. In glowing colors he drew a vision of technological realization of his results by describing a space flight to Mars. (Some years later his attitude regarding maximization of technical possibilities becomes more critical.)
Even today it is very impressive, how Heim outlined the destinations of his future work (calculation of mass spectrum of ponderable particles, understanding life, syntrometric method).

Heim 1959 (190 kB)

Apart from mathematical-physically accessible processes there still are also life processes bound to material happening, whose elementary process cannot be understood mathematical-physically despite its linkage to material happening. The biological description way again fails, if one seeks to understand the psychological process that is bound to life process …
In view of these contradictions mentioned above, from which breaks in the scientific conception of the world originate, I came to the conclusion that the method of human thinking is not sufficient to describe reality in a uniform way. In my judgment the antagonisms seems to be of principle nature and only to a lesser extent they go back to the absence of further empirical facts …
Thus it appeared reasonably to me to develop a completely new analytic method. It is planned to apply these method to the physical description of nature; however for this it is necessary to generalize the mathematically formulated physical laws of nature in such a way that an assertible system develops which is closed in itself.

from The principle of dynamic contrabary (Das Prinzip der dynamischen Kontrabarie, 1959)

Illobrand von Ludwiger writes in his essay Unified 6-dimensional quantum geodynamics of Burkhard Heim (Die einheitliche 6-dimensionale Quanten-Geometrodynamik nach Burkhard Heim) (MUFON-CES) in 1979:
This method of formal composition of most general term structures (syntrometry) … was already developed 20 years ago by B. Heim. And the formalism was already prepared on several hundred pages in 1962 for later publication. (Page 313)

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The way to the mass spectrum of ponderable particles

Since that time Heim has been working on a unified description of elementary particles. This part of the theory was developed during the next 20 years (!) under very difficult conditions and it has been partly published in several stages since 1975.

Now from union of field theories and quantum mechanics a six-dimensional space could be designed, which contains our real world and describes these two different parts of reality at the same time. An investigation of its characteristics led to different patterns of cyclic internal condensations in these six dimensions. A part of them could be understood as ponderable mass-containing physical particles. The mathematical description of this group of cyclic condensations provides the spectrum of all conceivable physically ponderable particles.

(In fact, this spectrum is relatively compact and it contains many values, that have never been observed. This may be because life span of the underlying processes are too short to be observable as interactions. Heim later retracted his statement that he had been able to calculate the life times of particles. However in 1997 he decides together with Droescher to publish another way to calculate life spans.)

Heim first published the results of his work in short form in 1977 in his essay Proposal of a way to the unified description of elementary particles (Vorschlag eines Weges zur einheitlichen Beschreibung der Elementarteilchen, Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, 10 pages, received on 5 August 1976). But he had not found a publisher for a global presentation of his theory, because no referee was able to get into this complex theory. For the physical establishment the path and results of the Heim theory are too out of way. They do not want to deal with with it.

So he asked the Catholic publisher Professor Resch to publish the Heim Theory in his own publishing house. Although printing of such a complicated book (great quantities of formulas) represented a great business risk. In 1980 Resch Verlag published Elementary structures of matter – volume 1 (Elementarstrukturen der Materie, manuscript submitted September 17, 1978.) However the first edition contained so many errors that it was replaced by a corrected second edition om 1989.
In 1984 Burkhard Heim published the second part as Elementarstrukturen der Materie - volume 2 in the same publishing house. Thus a relatively complete description of Heim's quantum field theory was available to the public.

Remark 2015: Meanwhile we have the impression, that the derivation of the Heim Theory as it is described in volume 1 and 2 does not fully match the real way how B. Heim has developed it. In his logical and physical conclusions Heim made use of the syntrometric method. This methods allows to construct an infinite variety of possible interactions or logical interactions which can be described mathematically. In a second step from this infinite variety those versions must be filtered out, that do not match physical reality. In opposition to this procedure in the books Heim used more conventional methods to develop his ideas.

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About life before and after death

After Heim had found a unified field theory he was able to prove its usefulness by calculating the mass spectrum of ponderable particles purely from the internal characteristics of the physical space (without the use of additional artificial calibration factors).
After he was able to understand the material world so far, he finally was able to ask the question: Is life a phenomenon that ourely follows the physical laws of our world? Among other things this lead to the question, whether there would exist structure-giving processes, which work against the general tendency of destruction and balance of dead nature (entropy). Where are these processes to be settled, and how do they work?

Life can be regarded as permanent structuring process (e.g. in a cell), which is always adequate to environmental influences. It was therefore necessary to examine, which internal structures and laws do exist whithin the structure-controlling coordinates (x₅, x₆), that can cause such a phenomenon.
At the same time it was necessary to find a way to move over from the computingable micromar range into the range of higher complex systems. For example processes in living cells cannot be calculated in detail by numbers. They rather must be described with their qualitative characteristics. Thus a way had to be found to translate regularities of a logical predicate system (that of calculable processes) into another system. This task was to be performed by the syntrometric method, the foundations of which Heim had already developed during his studies.

Beyond that the question arose, whereby thinking humans stand out against the general process of life, and where this special difference can be settled in the physical world. Whether there is such a thing like a non-material mental principle (mind) which is expressing itself in the material world by using material bodies and making experiences within them.

Structure-giving processes of the material world are obviously controlled by non-material, highly complex structures in the structure coordinate space (x₅, x₆), which exist there as a kind of dynamically changeable structural blueprints. Understanding of these structures is very difficult because these structural blueprints exist both timelessly and placelessly, i.e. they can always operate at any point in time and at any place in this world.
However their actual acting requires the presence of suitable material building blocks, which have to be selected out by an evolution-like process. (Otherwise it would be like trying to build a computer with help of an exact electrical connection diagram in stone age.)

On the other hand these structural blueprints undergo modifications, they make experiences with themselves and with the material world. The personality core of a human being can be understood as such a structure in x₅, x₆, possessing a very high complexity (T > 25) . The question was, what happens to this structure during biological death or during an accident when the material body disintegrates which was connected to it? And – if this personality core may survive – how is it possible for it to come into contact with a new developing biological body. For this purpose (among other things) Heim examined in detail, what characteristics material structures must possess, so that such couplings can take place. He also discussed in detail carbon chemistry and the properties of DNA.

In his book Postmortale statuses? (Postmortale Zustände? 1980, 122 pages) Heim discussed these questions. What happens after death? Can there be a personal core that exists after death? However this essay was extraordinarily difficult to understand, because Heim used exclusively categories of his syntrometric method, which are unknown to a normal reader.

In the conclusion Heim takes up a metaphor from ECCLES. The personality core as organist plays a symphony on his biological body (organ), which is recorded in spirit (as on tape). After the last chord is finished (beginning of death) the organist rises and transfers this symphony to a record by use of filters. In postmortal status he reflects over this arbitrarily reproducible symphony. The symphony is unique, however the organist can play it in varied form again.
The essential point is that the symphonies (as a metaphor for life) are unique and transient, however the organist is not, and he expresses himself in these symphonies.

In 1982 Heim's book The cosmic experience space of Man (Der kosmische Erlebnisraum des Menschen, 49 pages) appeared. Here Heim again justifies the need for a six-dimensional description of the material world. On the one hand because of the requests of his uniform field theory. On the other hand from empirical experience of the life process which only can be understood by a structure-controlling effect of the additional transcoordinates (x₅, x₆).

These considerations are developed in more detail in the following book The elementary process of life (Der Elementarprozeß des Lebens 76 pages, 1982). In this book Heim summarised his results of 30 years of research on this topic.
He starts with a summary of observable characteristics of organisms (self-structuring, metabolism, symbioses, hierarchical layering of structures from dead atoms up to the formation of states of organisms, reproduction, organic compounds and DNA).
A look at evolutionary processes that happened on earth shows a remarkable characteristic: i.e. the sudden appearance of new building principles in biologic organismens. A model calculation of possible natural mutation rates supplies the result that this sudden (typostrophic) emergence of new species cannot be explained with coincidental random mutations, but that a physically limited number of mutations appears in this phase as ingenious fluctuations.
The question about the source of these probability shifts again points to the structure coordinates x₅, x₆. Their probability-shifting interaction expresses itself in real space (R3) as something that could be called gravitons.
An analysis of the material prerequisites for animatable structures leads on the one hand to a small spread of necessary physical / chemical boundary conditions (carbon base of life, temperature range of liquid water is necessary).
On the basis of simple cosmological observations (rotation rate of planet-afflicted suns) and the circumstance of self structuring of planetary biospheres Heim comes to the conclusion that both life process and emergence of suitable planets are afflicted with amazingly high probability.

In addition this analysis of conditions for life led Burkhard Heim to a radical break with the destruction of terrestrial living conditions by humans. In the last section of The elementary process of life he confirms this dangerous future perspective with some mathematical models.

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The non-material background of the world and its effects

In Walter Dröscher, Heim had found an utmost care and thorough coworker, who was deeply inspired by Heim's theory. Eventually he succeeded to derive things from it that even surprised Heim himself. He surprised Burkhard Heim with the fact that all the coupling constants of physics can be derived from the primary number set of the world at time t = 0 by simple addition and multiplication.
Thereby the physical world carries the characteristics of its temporal origin to this day. Heim was astonished about this, because he did not consider a theory of coupling constants to be feasible.

The derivation of the law of dimensions in its general form also came from W. Droescher. From this a first view was opened into a non-material background of the world (another six dimensions), without being able to know at this time what exactly would exist in this space.

From observation of the world it was clearly seen that apart from material appearances and processes just as well non-material phenomena exist, such as: thoughts, attitudes and ideas, whose origin from material world cannot be explained completely.

With the help of his syntrometric method Heim had succeeded in obtaining a conception of the inherent laws of structure-giving structures in x₅, x₆ (structure space S₂ ). The impressin emerged that there are stored timeless structural blueprints for equivalent structures (so-called holomorphisms). These structural blueprints implement themselves under suitable material boundary conditions and settle in reality, whereby matter from the elementary particles up to the living organism appears to be strictly structured.
During his research into the process of life, Heim noticed that during the evolution of organisms on Earth, new structural blueprints often show up at the same time within different animal species (e.g. wings appeared at the same time in different species of dinosaurs).

A mathematical estimation of natural mutation rates showed that these phases of substantial generation of new species with ingenious modifications could not be explained by stochastic mutations (caused by radiation, temperature and chemical processes). Rather it seemed that the probabilities during mutation were controlled somehow in such a way that ingenious results were favoured.

Now, the question was, how such a control of the material world could take place, without violating physical principles. In addition, he wanted to find out, where the structural blueprints in structure space came from, which could not have evolved on their own.

At that time it was only well-known that the space of non-material coordinates R₁₂ (x₇ ... x₁₂) is structured in two subspaces. A simple logical analysis showed that organization is materialized information.
Therefore he could assume coordinates (x₇, x₈) describing a space of ideas I₂, and there must be projection processes out from this space of ideas (I₂ ) into structure space (S₂). The mathematical description of these projections was possible. About the remaining coordinates (x₉ … x₁₂) it only was known that probably the sources of ideas are resident there. (There was not much to say about the internal structure of this space concluding from its effects on the physical world.) Heim therefore jikingly called this space G4 which will stand for God only knows.

In the beginning a mathematical description of these projection processes from G₄ was not possible. Heim had the idea of describing this by means of multidimensional Fourier transformations. However it was not clear exactly how to handle these tools. One day Droescher coincidentally found an old book in a library, that exactly described this mathematical tool.
Thus a closed mathematical description of these projection processes became possible. As result of this projection chain exactly the descriptions of probability amplitudes appear as they are actually observed in quantum mechanics. (Although quantum mechanics cannot make any predictions about the source of this phenomenon.)

At the same time, the explanation was found at which point of the known physical laws this control intervenes: namely in the probabilities of the micromar quantum mechanical processes. So controlling of material events thus takes place from within, so to speak, from the smallest constituents of matter.

In his essay An image of the background of the world (Ein Bild vom Hintergrund der Welt, 1994, 12 pages) Heim presented the results of this work in short verbal form. He suggested that the possibility of such controlling interventions exists especially at high structural levels (thus e.g. in organisms).
He also raised the question of whether there could exist timeless and disembodied entities in the non-material background of the world.
In 1996 Droescher and Heim published their mathematical derivations in Volume 3 of Elementary structures with the subtitle Structures of the physical world and its non-material part (Strukturen der physikalischen Welt und ihrer nichtmateriellen Seite).

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Support, envy and ignorance

Although Burkhard Heim developed his theory in relative isolation, the word quickly got around that someone in Northeim, Germany might be developing something very spectacular. Unfortunately Heim's Theory sometimes attracted the interests of aerospace and defence companies in particular.
In the 1950s there were even attempts to acquire advanced know-how by kidnapping German researchers who then should operate abroad for special companies. In the preface to his 1959 essay The principle of dynamic contrabary Helmut Goeckel wrote: Heim could write an evening-long detective story about his experiences with criticism, fraud, theft, attempted kidnapping of his own person, suspicious evaluations by small and large intriguers. Only an unknown lady and the Hamburg publisher Nannen had supported Heim, who had to fight alone.

Heim withdrew from the amaments industry by turning for a while to paraphysical research, which he carried out together with Professor Bender. Among other things they experimented with instrumental transcommunication. On the one hand Burkhard Heim was able to install an image of himself as a kind of crank which discredited him in the intended way to the business management. On the other hand he had experiences during this time, that convinced him about the existence of rare paranormal phenomena. Heim later defined these phenomena as transitions between the two worlds of physically normal and psychologically normal phenomena. This transition hasn't been fully understood until today, although it takes place constantly and unnoticed every day in some areas of normal biological life.

Burkhard Heim always wanted to understand the possibility of these transitions and he wanted to describe them as part of his theory.
At the same time Heim became acquainted with Andreas Resch. On his congresses on border science Burkhard Heim often was a regular guest. There he met various scientists, from whom he received many suggestions, that were integrated into his concepts. It is also thanks to Andreas Resch that we have now access to the printed works of Burkhard Heim.

Photo from book (96 kB)

Perhaps it was not possible to publish Heim's theory in physics journals, because Heim began too late trying to publish the results of his theory. Nevertheless at that time (1977) it was the result of 30 years of thinking. No journal in the world would risk publishing a scientific paper without evaluation (peer review). But which peer would want to work himself into a theory that has evolved over more than 30 years?

Another handicap may have been that Heim's approaches were too unusual.
Some of them were also far apart from what his own teachers (e.g. Heisenberg) postulated.
In fact there was no one who wanted to publish his theory. Also among his teachers there wasn't anybody who supported Heim.

On the other hand we can read in the preface of his 1959 article being an outsider in the beginning, his theories are checked now with acknowledgment and he found collaborators and material support.
Dr. L. Boelkow of the MBB company supported Heim's research over many years. On november, 25. 1976 Heim gave his legendary lecture at MBB Ottobrunn, in which he presented all of the thoughts of his quantum field theory in free speech (a paper exists).
Illobrand von Ludwiger of MBB was entrusted with the task to train himself in Heim's Theory. Over long years he dealt together with Burkhard Heim with the question, how they could acknowledged experimentally his predicates for manipulation of the gravitational field. In his own MUFON articles, von Ludwiger cites some MBB notes on this subject as sources.
Among other things he mentions a 1985 note from Heim, in which von Ludwiger suggested an alternative experiment to MBB for the investigation of coupling between magnetic field and angular momentum density.

However Heim told me that these attempts failed because of practical boundaries of physical reality. In order to prove the interconnection of gravitation and magnetic field among other things it was proposed to rotate a rock crystal ball at a very high speed. However such a rotating mass has such an enormous impact force that such an experiment could not be carried out safely.

Another experimental setup would be to generate an enormous amount of modifying magnetic field within a short time, which would produce a gravitational effect of, say, 1 g. However, it is not so easy to imagine a setup that can generate such a powerful collapsing magnetic field fast enough and strong enough. Because of the characteristic of self induction a coil tries to maintainthe magnetic field when the current is switched off. This makes to temporal change too small. An arrangement would be conceivable, in which this coil was lightning-like destroyed, e.g. by an explosive charge. But how do you want to measure still 1 g during such an explosion?

Heim experienced once that a lecture, which he had held on a congress appeared literal in a magazine where a foreigner stated to be the author.
Since then he has been carefull make his priority known by printing his works. Infact these books are poorly suited to reconstruct the theory completely in all its mathematical-physical aspects. One should always bear in mind the unbelievably difficult conditions under which this theory and these publications were developed!
Heim dictated the books to his wife who typed them into the typewriter. Formulas were added by hand. It is a long and difficult way to publish a book in these circumstances.

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Armament and civil fights

All over the world, the defence and aerospace industries are interested in new physical research. So they were in the case of Heim.

In 1994 I asked Burkhard Heim whether he was afraid that his theory would give the wrong people even more possibilities to use technology against the interests of life and humanity. His reply was, "Oh, you mean, will they be able to build better bombs with my books?  No, no, he continued, I omitted anything of this to pretend any mischief.

Burkhard Heim, reflecting (116 kB)

Heim is deeply connected to life. When one has looked so deeply into the laws of nature, onw's respect for the miracle of life and the world increases even more. While in his 1959 article he was still inspired by the technologically conceivable maximum, Heim later has engaged himself very much for preservation of life and nature. Therefore he was very close to the ideas of the green environmental protection movement when they established in the 80s.

Burkhard Heim got very known in his hometown Northeim when he supported local citizens in their fight against the demolition of a part of the old town. At that time there were certain people intending to let a by-pass road sacrifice the old buildings in the city center because they promised themselves more sales from doing so. Heim stated that he used the laws of syntrometry to prevent the almost decided destruction of the old part of the town with very few but however very effective impacts. In some moments his home must have looked like the headquarters of an army commander, where the powerless but however upright fighters against the dictatorship of money met to discussing their strategy. In the long run they won. Today Northeim is an attractive city presenting its beautiful old town center with pride.

In another anecdote Heim recounted how he once got a call from some top managers of the German energy industry. They had heard that he was working on a potentially revolutionary theory. So they wanted to know, whether it would be possible with his theory to win unlimited energy in order to solve all energy problems of mankind.
Heim answered: If I knew for sure that my research would get into the hands of responsible people, I would do it. However I have to assume that it will end up in the hands of salesmen. Those are people, who allways want to sell as much as they can.
Let's make a gedankenexperiment: You want to provide unlimited energy. What would happen? If the energy consumption in the whole world – say – would increase tenfold (and that is not much compared to what is used today in America) – then within a few years we would interfere int the energy balance of weather of the whole Earth. Because what happens with energy? At least it is always converted into heat. And this heat has to go somewhere. Therefore I rejected this offer.
You find this thoughts also in the last section of Heim's book Der Elementarprozeß des Lebens.

In his book The cosmic experience space of Man (Der kosmische Erlebnisraum des Menschen, 1982 ) Heim wrote about the consequences of human illusions of growth:

Heim's book Der Elementarprozeß des Lebens closes with an urgent appeal to common sense to stop the destruction of the biosphere in these last minutes.

In spring 1996 (88 kB)

"The proposed ... ways (to save the earthly biosphere) are only effective in the global sphere, but are already completely ineffective in the sphere of individual nations. It would also be necessary ... to demand very hard sacrifices from each individual member of global human society over the period of several generations.
Even if such a global undertaking is politically and socially feasible under the compelling pressure of later conditions, the minimum time required for this ... would not be sufficient, so that possibly the socio-ecological paralytic process in the earthly biosphere could already have become irreversible."

Burkhard Heim The elementary process of life (Der Elementarprozeß des Lebens, 1982)

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A visit to the Heim family, Gerda Heim – guardian angel und loving soul

Burkhard and Gerda Heim 1988 (177 kB)

Gerda Heim received a special honour in the form of the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundeverdienstkreuz), which was presented by Ralf-Reiner Wiese, the head of the district. The honoured woman gave up her career as a concert singer and married Burkhard Heim, a graduate physicist who was blinded by war and had a lower arm amputee, in 1950. They both live and work in the house at Schillerstraße 2. For decades, Gerde Heim has not only been a loving and caring wife to her husband, but also an energetic help in his research work, including the establishment of the German Research Institute for Force Field Physics and General Cosmology, which Heim founded. She takes over the transcriptions of the scientific publications and lectures that her husband gives at home and abroad and helps with the work on state-of-the-art computers. The picture shows Burkhard and Gerda Heim working together.
(bth)

From Seniors today, Northeim  magazine for seniors (Senioren heute, Northeimer Zeitschrift für Senioren 2/88, P. 25 )

In 1996 and 1997 I visited Burkhard Heim several times to help him with computer work. He had bought a speech recognition system, but it was not ready for use. After days of trying to train the system to his pronunciation (which is severely disturbed because of his hearing loss), we had to give up without results.
In addition, Mr. Heim had many 5.25" floppy disks of his old UCSC Pascal machine with old source codes, which he wanted to work on again in the future. By this time, there was no longer a drive anywhere that was willing to deal with these large floppy disks. We solved the problem by transferring the data disk by disk from the old Pascal machine to the PC via the serial interface. I then disassembled and edited the data by hand.

During my visits, I always found Burkhard Heim to be a humorous person who, despite his disability, was also in a good mood for many jokes. He always enjoyed telling pranks and anecdotes from his youth. (That is also the reason why such anecdotes appear in this text).

In the photo, you can see the surgically created slit arms, with the help of which Burkhard Heim can operate some tools himself. For example, he has a kind of stylus with which he writes on his computer keyboard himself. However, because of his very narrow field of vision (only about 10%), he has to search for each letter individually.

Under these circumstances, he has nevertheless managed to write several hundred lines of Pascal source code in which he has run his formulas. To optimise the writing work, he first redefined each Pascal command into a command word that was as short as possible, usually consisting of only one or two letters. In order to fit as much programme code as possible on the screen (he scrolls the text with the help of a foot pedal and a trackball), his source texts also do not know any line breaks.
This proprietary programming language makes it almost impossible for strangers to easily understand Heim's programme code or to change anything in the code. This is the reason why time and again people have stuck their guns out when they wanted to deal with Heim's programmes.

Nevertheless after his death I was able to transform this code into TURBO Pascal soruce code, and later we created also other variants of the mass formala program.

Nevertheless, Heim still found time to type small joke programmes for his wife or even small texts into the computer in addition to the source codes. Heim often sits up all night at the PC.

However, the greatest part of his work would never have been possible without the energetic help of his wife. She wrote the texts of all publications on the typewriter and then added the formulas by hand. Burkhard Heim cannot read letters, books and articles himself, but his wife reads them to him. An exchange of letters is a barely solvable task under these conditions. The easiest way to communicate is by telephone.

Gerda Heim herself had a severe stroke of fate in her youth. Her dream was to be able to express her musical disposition as a singer. She had every reason to look forward to a successful future as a singer. Even during the war, some people called her the "Silesian nightingale". She even appeared in a film with Marika Röck. Then a tragic turn of events happened due to a tonsil operation  – her voice took such a beating that her dream of the stage was over forever.

In May 1996, Burkhard Heim suffered a brief paralysis out of the blue. He had gone to the station in a taxi because he wanted to travel and suddenly could no longer move when he wanted to get out. This was followed by other short transient ischaemic attacks (temporary momentary loss of consciousness due to circulatory problems). He was given medication to reduce the blood's tendency to clot, which weakened further attacks. These drugs were discontinued - which is usual - because of an operation in autumn 1996. However, he did not receive them again afterwards. While still in hospital in Northeim, he suffered a stroke at Christmas 1996, which confined him to bed for a long time. For several days he was almost completely paralysed and could not speak.

When I visited the Heim family half a year later, Burkhard Heim was still struggling with the consequences of the stroke. Due to the long period of lying in bed, many muscles were no longer trained, and with the help of a nurse, he first had to relearn simple activities such as climbing stairs or standing up. In fact, he was confined to bed because of the muscle atrophy. Inwardly, Burkhard Heim was as full of ideas and zest for action as ever, and it was also hard for him to bear the fact that his body did not want to function again so quickly. Despite daily attempts, working on the PC was not yet possible again.

These weeks of trepidation were particularly difficult for Mrs Heim in more ways than one. At such a time, it is not easy to rebuild hope for recovery and patience every day. Mrs Heim has a great spritituality that radiates outwards. With great patience and care, she helped her husband to overcome this time of having to put up with it. In the meantime, he is fortunately doing much better, even though a lot of muscle training is still necessary.

Mrs Heim also spoiled me with her care every time I visited them. I always enjoyed her meals very much and the fixed points of my days with the Heim family were always the delicious meals I looked forward to.

What touches me about this photo of Burkhard Heim with his wife is the infectious joie de vivre that two people who have been so severely tested by fate radiate. I have often thought, even if it were only that – that alone is infinitely much that we can learn from Burkhard Heim.

Olaf Posdzech
in spring 1998
used material: different articles, publishing program of Resch publishing house, stories by Burkhard Heim

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