Ceremony in the Duderstadt city hall on January 13

For Otto Bock HealthCare, a ceremony in the historical Duderstadt city hall kicked off its anniversary year. On Tuesday, January 13, 2009 – 90 years to the day after Orthopädische Industrie GmbH was founded by eponym Otto Bock – around 300 guests of honour including premier Christian Wulff (Lower Saxony) and minister Gerold Wucherpfennig as a representative of premier Dieter Althaus (Thuringia) were expected at 1:00 pm. The musical highlight was provided by Peter Maffay, who performed unplugged versions of his hits.

The representatives of both federal states gave opening speeches to express how Otto Bock has been a special German-German company in the nearly 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In many ways, the national turning points are reflected in the company and family history.

The ceremony in Duderstadt on January 13 also addressed another key Otto Bock topic: The company’s commitment to the Paralympics. Not only Heinrich Popow and Mathias Mester, medal winners of the games in Beijing, talked about sports but they also addressed the connection between performance and acceptance in life with a disability in general. With his social involvement, Peter Maffay is connected both to the Otto Bock Foundation and to sports for the disabled. His current song “In dir ist immer noch ein Licht” (“In you there is still light”) was introduced as a limited single release at the tribute to the Paralympics athletes of the year in Berlin and is considered the anthem of disabled sports.

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