Remembering Dr. Max Schindler (1922-2021), Satellite Communication Technology Pioneer
Technische Universität Wien mourns the loss of Dr. Maximilian J. Schindler. An obituary by Maximilian Schindler's son, Norbert Schindler. My father, Dr. Maximilian J. Schindler, died this week at the age of 98 peacefully in his home in Boonton, New Jersey, where I grew up. Max - that's how my two elder brothers and I called him - was born in the Warnsdorf, in the industrial region of North Bohemia, in 1922. Czechoslovakia was formed only 4 years prior to his birth, as were many other countries in Central Europe in 1918, following President Woodrow Wilson's initiative of "self-determination." In this new country, about 23 % of the population spoke German and virtually all of those German speakers at the time still felt Austrian (and certainly not "Czechoslovak", a term coined by TomᨠMasaryk and his allies as they struggled to establish a new "nation state" of two different Slavic groups that lasted until 1993). Even today, the town is still called "Varnsdorf" (almost all other towns once inhabited by German-Bohemians now have Czech-sounding names). After the war, Max's family - like many others in the region briefly called "the Sudetenland" -was expelled from the homes that they built, in a region that was settled by Germans centuries ago.
