Most of the people who owe their lives to Siegfried Steiger don't even know that.
Today, anyone who is involved in a traffic accident and sustains a serious injury takes it for granted that they will be taken to the nearest clinic in an ambulance within a few minutes and receive medical treatment on the way there.
Rudiger Soldt
Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.
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But this high standard was not common in Germany until the early 1970s: there was no organized rescue service, no ambulances manned by emergency doctors.
Even the uniform emergency numbers 110/112 did not yet exist.
Injured people were taken to an ambulance and observed in the rear-view mirror, that was all.
The existence of modern rescue services goes back to the commitment of Siegfried Steiger, who was born on December 15, 1929 in Vogtland, Saxony.
Steiger came to Baden-Württemberg from the GDR in 1952 with his wife Ute and settled down as an architect in Winnenden.
After their eldest son Björn died of shock on May 3, 1969 because he had to wait too long for the ambulance after a traffic accident, the Steigers founded the foundation named after their dead son on July 7, 1969.
They fought tirelessly to set up a modern rescue service and wrote more than 300 letters.
The couple did pioneering work: they received the telephone numbers of influential politicians for their lobbying work from the wife of former Federal President Heinemann.
At that time there were 20,000 traffic fatalities per year in Germany, in 2019 there were still 3046. Steiger's foundation managed emergency telephones and had modern emergency ambulances developed.
The DRF air rescue service also goes back to Steiger's initiative.
Siegfried Steiger died on Thursday evening at the age of 92.
Ute Steiger had died two weeks earlier at the age of 88.