Looking at my homeland, looking at our planet, and looking at our galaxy I feel I want to live for a long, a really long time and would enjoy it. I was born in the year of the beginning of the second world war. My father, a parson, was a member of the protestant Confessing Church resisting Hitler’s German Christ church. As a chicanery (victimization?) he got an order by the Gestapo to leave his habitation and the region of Hessen (which also implied losing his position) within 24 hours with my mother. This happened 3.5 months before my birth. Thus, I was born and baptized, while my parents were housed by a sister of my mother. My father returned from war when I was 8 years of age. Spending my early childhood during the war may have contributed to my pacifism and my aversion toward killing and death.

After the war I had an almost romantic youth, growing up in a small village with my parents, one younger brother and three younger sisters in the woody hills of Hessen surrounded by healthy nature. The methods of farming and sanitary equipment reminded me of the middle ages (which soon changed rapidly). Internal traffic in the village was produced by one or two cars and a number of cattle-driven carriages. Now I realized, breathing freely, that airplanes had metamorphosed into peaceful vehicles. Mediated first by the optimism of my mother during the years of war, I now learned to love life. At a certain point during my schooling I began to see very clearly -- and with horror -- that lifetime is really limited and that time never stops. I started to study theology but somewhere in my mind the idea developed that there is only a material world and I should try to extend human life span by medical means instead of hoping for heaven. I did not become a cryonicist, I changed into medicine (even if this did not suit my talents at all) and became a biogerontologist (the first one in Germany by "habilitation"). I intended to contribute to the stopping of aging through rejuvenation.

I found aging to be a much more complicated process than most gerontologists imagine. Aging mechanisms differ between species, organs and cells. Furthermore, the function and structure of organs are not compatible with stability over a long time period and parts of our organism cannot be replaced. The meaning of the term "aging" has not been determined yet. Thus, research addresses an undefined subject, which is a paradox. Even testing influences increasing life span in man needs more than the active time of a scientist due to the length of human life span. Today only a few influences extend life span in animals to a limited extent. Even molecular biology may need too many single interventions to reach a pronounced effect on aging and nobody knows how to train stem cells to rejuvenate our whole body cell by cell.

When I read about cryonics the first time in the periodical "Der Spiegel" as far as I remember, no cryoprotectants had been used. The author noted ironically that a frozen cryopatient will be very surprised in the future upon discovering that revival does not work. Cryonics did not seem to me to be a way to achieve life extension. All those insights had a very depressing effect on me. But soon, cautiously, I started to imagine the possibility of medical repair.

Just at this time a young colleague asked me how to become a gerontologist. We had long discussions about repair. He made me familiar with nanotechnology and he had discovered the German cryonics pioneer Klaus Reinhard. He also convinced me of the fact that I could lose nothing more than money by signing a cryonic agreement and I did so with C.I. as soon as I could afford it. Further on I preferred research in life span extension, but kept cryonics in mind.

I suggested that a pronounced effect on aging is only available by repairing the human organism continuously, molecule by molecule as we find it in some immortal natural systems. The only tool to do this I am able to imagine is a very advanced nanotechnology. As a consequence none of the people living today may reach the far future without some means such as cryonics. On July 29. 1995 I invited the cryonicists I knew to a symposium in Hamburg. Later on we found out that Michael Saxer had founded an active group some years earlier. Both groups came together and planned many activities. But after a few meetings the group vanished without obvious causes. Only Michael Saxer maintained activities and German transhumanists discussed cryonic matters continuously.

I decided to devote myself to cryonics following my retirement in 2004. Michael also urged me to devote myself to cryonics activities. I contacted all cryonicists known to me and they were interested in joining an emergency team which was forming. Michael also reactivated some previous friends and Torsten Nahm, who was chair of German tranhumanists, started to convince them that cryonics is necessary. In 2006 we founded the "German Society of Applied Biostasis" joined inter al. by Klaus Reinhard, Eugen Leitl and other members of earlier groups and transhumanists. Our aim is to spread information about cryonics, to help patients to sign cryonics agreements and to improve stabilization of patients during deanimation and thereafter as well as transporting them to cryonic homes and coping with specifically (especially legal) German problems.

Thus, I hope its not to late for an improvement of my own cryosuspension and with so many helpers I‘ll also get the opportunity to spend more time with my family and friends as well as my hobbies, which I have neglected over a long period of time. I would like to swim and hike especially to walk across the Alps (an old dream of Germans) and to read a lot. I like nature and I like to collect skulls, bones and fossils being fascinated by the evolution of life. I have written a few satiric articles and would like to increase my writing and have more time to exchange experiences with my daughter Almut, who is successful in writing fan fiction. I know that all this is too much but it’s not so bad to have the choice.

No member of my family accepts cryonics, but most of them are tolerant with me. My brother helped me with signing my cryonic agreement and my sister living in Austria and her son helped me recently to find dry ice and a funeral home with weekend service in Vienna.

An exception is my religious mother who is strictly against cryonics and she is long-lived. She had been 82 years old when I mentioned that I will be stored in Michigan. But this would prevent her from visiting my tomb, she stated.

European gerontologists have been also very tolerant. They may suggest that a spleen of many of them is extension of the human life span and that the spleen of some "exotic" gerontologists may be cryonics" a similar way. If I am cryonically suspended one day in the near future this may mean nothing for mankind but it may mean the winning of a world for me.

Books:

K Sames: The role of proteoglycans and glycosaminoglycans in aging. Karger, Basel 1994

K. Sames, S. Sehte and A. Stolzing (eds.): Extending the life span. Lit Verlag, Münster, Berlin, London 2005

K. Sames (ed.): Medizinische Regeneration und Tissue Engineering (medical regeneration and tissue engineering) Ecomed, Landsberg 2000.