Number 3800 is finally being retired
Irmgard Wiznerowicz has been the archetype of a department and laboratory secretary over the course of a career that began at the Akademie der Wissenschaften, the scientific institute on the Berlin-Buch campus in GDR times. She is now embarking on her next career – as a retiree.
She holds the record for the longest occupancy of the same office and same telephone number on campus. For decades, even prior to the establishment of the MDC, anyone who dialed the number 3800 knew who would pick up on the other end: Irmgard Wiznerowicz. In December that record will come to an end, along with a long career as assistant to some of the most prominent scientists on the Berlin-Buch campus. “Irmchen” – as she is affectionately called by the latest of her many bosses, her many friends, and generations of scientists whom she has helped in some way – is finally retiring. Which is to say she’ll be her own boss. So when the phone rings at 6am, she can just ignore it.
Newcomers on campus know Irmgard as Walter Birchmeier’s secretary – a job she has held since 1993. But they had met several years before. In 1985 Walter had been invited to visit the Academy of Sciences, the GDR institute on the Buch campus, on the invitation of Richard Grosse, Head of the Academy’s “Biomembranes” Department. Irmgard was his secretary, and she typed the letter of invitation in this office, right at this desk. She still has a copy of it, impeccably preserved, 31 years later. She has kept it because without knowing it, she was writing to her future boss. And the trip she organized for Walter was the first of hundreds to follow.
He is acutely aware of the essential role Irmgard has played in his lab. “Nobody has worked so hard for me, day and night, as Frau Wiznerowicz,” Walter says. “Our former grad student Tamara Grigoryan says, ‘When Irmchen is no longer here, the lab will surely fall apart!’ ” Hopefully not, he adds, but her shoes will be certainly be difficult to fill.
“For one thing, Frau Wiznerowicz had an excellent relationship with the administration and always ensured that everything ran smoothly,” Walter says. “She helped in applying for and administering our grants, and was involved in all kinds of negotiations. She organized several international meetings for me. She even managed to keep our collaborators in check! – making sure that everything came in on time.” His predecessor told him that not to keep her on would be a terrible mistake. “We say that it’s not the professor who selects her as his secretary, but Irmchen who chooses her professor!”
Irmgard began working on the campus at the age of 16, initially serving food in the Academy cafeteria, then moved to a service department that distributed electronic equipment to scientific groups. Salaries were meager and she had to supplement her income with night shifts as a waitress. But working for the institute in any capacity was considered prestigious, she says – everyone considered it an honor.
Over time she began gravitating toward the job she would do so well, for so long. “I had to spend a lot of time on the telephone,” she says, “which was something I liked.” In search of a greater challenge, she began attending night classes – which started at the end of a full day’s work – to learn skills such as typing and office management. Not to mention English – which she hadn’t had in school, but would be crucial when she got her first secretarial job.
“I had to type the group’s papers and letters in English,” she says. “From the handwriting of my boss at the time – which wasn’t very good!”
Then came German reunification, which brought the dissolution of the Academy and questions about the fate of its staff. Like most of her colleagues, Irmgard was interviewed by Detlev Ganten, founding Director of the MDC, and then waited for “the Letter.”
“The day it came, I couldn’t open it,” she says. “I waited and waited, and then I finally it was time to see what it said. I had to read it three times before I really grasped that I would have a position in the new institute. What a feeling! It was better than winning the lottery!”
Over the years she took on more and more responsibilities, particularly when Walter Birchmeier was appointed Director of the MDC. While Elisabeth Kujawa-Schmeitzner handled most of that business, his lab was still going strong, and managing it cost Irmgard a lot of sleepless nights. “The publications were obviously the central thing for the laboratory and all the members of his group,” she says, “and they just kept coming and coming.”
Irmgard has high praise for all of her former bosses, who were without exception, she says, extremely supportive. “They were always very correct with me,” she says, and laughs ” – of course, first, I had to get them ‘under control.’ ” She cites in particular the directors of the former Academy, along with names well known to anyone familiar with the early years of the MDC: Prof. Detlev Ganten, Dr. Erwin Jost, and Marion Bimmler.
And of course, Walter Birchmeier. Every new boss takes some getting used to, and Walter had one habit that surprised her again and again: “Every day he said, ‘Thank you,’ ” she shakes her head. “Thank you for what? I was just doing my job.” A few years later his appreciation went far beyond words, when Walter tirelessly went to bat to get better salaries for Irmgard and her fellow secretaries. She calls it an unexpected and exceptional reward for a job she always felt honored to do.
Irmgard leaves not only a personal legacy in terms of her accomplishments to the laboratory, but a lasting impression on many other secretaries and other workers she helped over the years. “If I have one piece of advice to pass along,” she says, “it is to communicate openly with your boss. If there’s a problem, don’t let it lie; speak up right away.”
