Concept and sources

This company chronicle was inspired by a picture book: HUNDRED. WHAT YOU LEARN IN LIFE. In it, its authors – Heike Faller and Valerio Vidali – tell the story of a human life in an impressive, highly concentrated and poetic way on one page of picture(s) and text per year of life.

One page of picture(s) and text per year of life of the company Gebrüder Overlack/OQEMA – that is the basic idea of this website, too. Of course, it cannot be as compressed as in the picture book, so there is a bit more text and sometimes more than one picture. But for each year there is (with a few exceptions) only one topic, one person, one idea – which are presented.

The research was based on the following main groups of sources:

1. the company archive/museum,

2. a remarkable historical website,

3. a private picture archive,

4. an original sound document.

In detail:

The company archive/museum of the OQEMA Group is housed in the basement of the villa on Aachener Straße and, in addition to relevant file material for the history and self-image of the company, holds many historical treasures from the early days of "Gebr. Overlack, Chemische Fabrik".

Helpful for the evaluation and arrangement of this material from a superordinate historical perspective was the website https://www.dhm.de/lemo/, which as LEBENDIGES MUSEUM ONLINE offers the interested public an online portal to German history. This is a cooperative project between the Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum, the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland and the Bundesarchiv.

The private picture archive includes the photo albums of Hans and Isolde Overlack as well as the historical albums of the Heinrich and Lisbeth Overlack family.

Essential for the classification and weighting of the material from the perspective of the people involved was the audio documentary DIE GESCHICHTE DER O., an audio recording that Peter Overlack compiled over the course of several years in conversation with his parents Hans and Isolde. The focus of their approximately 16-hour conversation is the family history of the Overlack and Seidel families as well as the company history of "Gebr. Overlack". The roles of the speakers are clearly assigned: Peter Overlack is the interviewer who keeps an eye on the thread, his parents are the narrators. The recordings are from October 2, 1998, October 21, 1998, November 11, 1998, November 25, 1998, December 8, 1998, September 15, 1999, September 23, 1999, October 28, 1999, November 25, 1999, March 10, 2004, December 15, 2006, December 18, 2006, December 19, 2006, January 11, 2007, January 29, 2007 and March 5, 2007. Unfortunately, the last 3 hours of the audio material have been destroyed. In this we would have learned more about Peter's early history in the company, which is under the motto: "What I did well. What I did badly". Too bad!

A few short recordings from this extensive audio document give an idea of the overall project as voice memos in the years 1924, 1953 and 1956.

The researcher for the history of the last 100 years of the company "Gebr. Overlack"/OQEMA is Anne Overlack, who was commissioned by her brother Peter. She sifted through the material, selected it and wrote the texts. The translation into English was done by Ruth Heimann and Rob Moss. The website was designed by Uli Braun (Konstanz).