Make yourself at home

Regina Philipps (Schoser) owns and runs Villa Blum, a bed and breakfast, in Waldenburg (Hohenlohe). The villa was built by the Earl of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg between 1910 and 1914. It has four single and five double rooms, each with an individual design and high comfort.

The description on the website sound promising:

"Each morning, the scent of fresh coffee wafts through the entire house and invites you to the lavish breakfast buffet. In the evening, you are welcome to relax in the winter garden and enjoy a glass of wine."

And for those who nonetheless plan to leave the villa, there is also some sightseeing to be done.

A soft spot for big beasts

Susanne Hillmann (Schoser) is editor at the German public broadcaster ZDF. Her speciality are animal and nature programmes.

Recently, Susanne has edited several TV series on animal life in zoos. She has presented the whistling Orang-Utan of the Heidelberg zoo, the only European howler monkies in Cologne and the removal of ice bear Flocke from the Nuremberg zoo to the (not so arctic) French Côte d'Azur.

Apart from these zoo series, Susanne has ventured into documentaries about the culture, customs, flora and fauna of far-away places. In her documentary 'Magic of Cappadocia', she reports about life in the famous underground cities of Cappacdocia in Central Anatolia (Turkey).

In an episode of the documentary 'On the road with Starship', she presents animal life in the impenetrable rainforest of Venezuela. The full episode is available on Youtube.

The unconventional convention

ConventionCamp is an annual conference about the future of the Internet. And it is meant to be different!

The organisers do not even want to label it a 'conference', rather a 'non-conference' or 'camp'. 'Those who have left ConventionCamp will think differently about the Internet' is the declared objective. Hence, you would be forgiven to think that ConventionCamp takes place in the Amazon jungle with participants sleeping in tents and fighting for survival. However, it is not quite like that... 

ConventionCamp takes place at the exhibition centre of the - not so thrilling - city of Hanover (Germany). Participants do not seem to sleep in tents either, rather they are offered special rates at the five star Radisson Blu Hotel. And food and drinks are provided for.

Andreas Schoser went through the ConventionCamp experience in November 2010. He spoke about the topic 'Connected Life = Smart Living?!' Being Head of Marketing Planning at Deutsche Telekom, he presented his employer's view on new services in the area of 'connected communication' and 'connected entertainment' taking adavantage of the increasingly interconnected way of living. 

Whether convention(al) or not, it's pretty well connected after all.

Master of the City

Every year, Cologne's High School basketball teams compete for the title of 'City Master'. In 2010, Nicola Schoser was part of the girls' team (age group *1996-*1999) of her High School Apostelgymnasium.

On 4 November 2010, Nicola and her team indeed secured the City Master title. In the finals, they did not concede any defeat. The photo shows Nicola's team together with her school's boys' team who on the same day became 'City Masters' as well.

100 Schosers

100 Schosers on these pages so far. A reason to take stock!

First of all, gender balance is respected: There are 52 Schoser men and 48 Schoser women. In the latter case, there is a fair number of in-laws: 30 women became Schosers by birth, the remainder by marriage.

There is also quite some variation in lifetime: 71 of the Schosers mentioned are still alive today, 29 deceased. Of the latter, twelve were born as early as in the 19th century. Of those, ten lived to see the 20th century. In contrast, eight passed away as recently as during the past decade.

In terms of nationality, 38 are US American, the remainder German. This abstracts from some borderline cases where Schosers for example kept their nationality - at least for some time - after immigration.

In terms of names, there is less variation than may be expected: Five names are shared by two Schosers each: Frank, Gustav, Joachim, John and Josef. In some of these cases, the tradition of passing on the father's or grandfather's name seems to have been at play.

Allowing for some linguistic variation, it becomes even more apparent that some names are particularly popular among Schosers:  Mary/ Maria/ Marianna, John/ Johannes/ Hans, Karin/ Katrin/ Katharina, Joe/ Joseph/ Josef and Carl/ Karl/ Carol. Needless to say where many Schosers got their inspiration from when christening...

Student power

Jessica Schoser is up for election at the student elections at Mannheim University on 12 and 13 April 2011. Jessica is third year student in business administration and will finish her Bachelor degree this summer.

Jessica is member of the student organisation RCDS and runs for a seat in the university's students' committee AStA. Campaign issues are crowded lecture halls, excessive workload and waste of tuition fees. If elected Jessica will have to tackle these issues which seem as long-standing as the invention of universities themselves.

The glazier

Donald Schoser of Hatboro, Pennsylvania was glazier. He worked in particular at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral near Philadelphia, PA which belongs to the New Church congregation.

The cathedral was built in the early 20th century and is famous for its stained glass windows. To manufacture these windows the medieval technique of making stained glass had to be revived.

In his book 'Bryn Athyn Cathedral: The Building of a Church' published in 1971, Bruce Glenn describes the making of the stained glass. The book also features a photo of Donald assembling a stained glass window. While the book does not mention Donald's name, the link is made by a member of the New Church congregation. He personally knew Donald and has published some memories of Donald alongside some other 'wise and happy thoughts'.

Going green

On 5 September 2010, Donauwörth hosted the 16th edition of its 'eco-market'. The market is an annual event and offers a wide range of organic food and other green products mostly of local origin.

For a number of years, Joachim Schoser has been part of the team organising the eco-market. He represents 'City Initiative Donauwörth' (CID), an association of local businesses and the municipality supporting diverse events in the city. From 2006 to 2008, Joachim promoted the event also directly on the myheimat blog.

The eco-market concept appears to fit nicely with Joachim's own business Via del Gusto which imports food products from Italy made by small, traditional producers.

In case you missed it, the next and 17th edition of Donauwörth's eco-market is scheduled to take place on 4 September 2011 and Joachim will, once more, be in charge.

Jetsetting

Who hasn't envied travel journalists writing about distant destinations?

Michelle Schoser has made that dream come true. She occasionally writes for the online Jetsetters Magazine offering 'everything under one Internet roof you need for planning your dream vacation'.

Michelle has featured articles about stunning places such as Bali, Fiji, Nicaragua and Hawaii. Her reports give ideas on how to discover these places and their inhabitants.

Other articles cover the San Diego area where Michelle could find dream places to write about right on her doorstep.

Fridges on fire?

Can fridges catch fire? Can they even cause fire? Should politicians be worried about fridges? Does it all matter to Schosers?

To answer these questions, let's return to the year 1997. In June 1997, the Committee on Natural Resources of the Nevada Assembly held a hearing to debate Assembly Bill 612 prohibiting the sale of certain highly flammable refrigerants. The refrigerants in question were used in older car fridges where they were said to cause car fires as well as asphyxiation.

During the first hearing on 25 June 1997, Christina Schoser, President of Nevada Refrigerants Inc., testified in opposition to the Bill. She stated the Bill would prohibit the sale of refrigerants sold by her company Nevada Refrigerants. The products sold by Nevada Refrigerants were however legal and lawful to sell, and used in every province in Canada as well as most other countries in the world including the United States. 

Five days later, on 30 June 1997, a second hearing on this issue took place. That time, Christina's husband Bob Schoser, Executive Director of the Alternative Refrigerants Association, testified in opposition to the Bill. Bob presented a video to demonstrate the safety of using hydrocarbon refrigerants in automobiles. In conclusion, Bob stated there had not been any known incidents attributed to hydrocarbon refrigerants, they were absolutely safe and were the answer the industry had been seeking.

The issue surfaced again two years later. On 10 May 1999, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources of Nevada organised a hearing on Assembly Bill 179 prohibiting the sale of certain highly flammable hazardous materials, in particular automotive refrigerants. Once more, Bob Schoser took part in this hearing - this time as 'concerned citizen' - and spoke in opposition to the Bill.

While Bob's views on the issue were unchanged arguing that the refrigerants in question would be safe, we learn something new about the impact of the ban of these refrigerants on the Schoser family. When asked by the chairman how he was related to the issue, Bob replied that his wife was President of Nevada Refrigerants that had to close in 1998 because of the previous ban.