65 years ago, Herbert Achleitner from Eferding emigrated to the USA one month after completing his apprenticeship as a butcher. Of course, not to supply the Americans with schnitzel and steaks, but to obtain the higher education he had long desired. It was not an easy road for him to become a university professor and an internationally sought-after consultant. The OÖNachrichten met the now 82-year-old in Zell am See, where he likes to spend his summer holidays.
The year was 1959 when Achleitner, then 17, saw his life take the direction he had longed for. His maternal grandfather, a patriarch of the old school, had chosen him as the future boss of the butcher’s shop on Eferding’s town square. Opposition was not tolerated. So he had to reluctantly learn the butcher’s trade: “I knew it wasn’t for me and I wouldn’t be successful at it.”
Following the mother
Grandpa also insisted that he complete his apprenticeship when his mother leased the business and emigrated to America at the age of 44. Her husband Karl had not returned from Stalingrad, so she had to run the business alone, but she qualified in BBC radio courses in English, probably already thinking about leaving.
The son passed his journeyman’s examination and immediately began preparing for his own emigration. He took the train via Frankfurt to Rotterdam, then took a ship to New York and then to Chicago, where his mother worked as a secretary. With his excellent secondary school certificate, his mother got him accepted into a Christian Brothers high school, but because of his age he was put in the third grade. “I had a hard time with my school English, especially when it came to writing,” he says. But despite the initial difficulties, he managed to graduate. Because his mother did not have enough money for the school fees, he was initially required to clean the classroom and the hallway after class.
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Source: Nachrichten
