Sad News to Start 2011
 

Gentlemen, Friends,

Informed by a Mail received this morning from his son Manuel, our friend Eckhard E. passed away peacefully in his sleep in the night of the new year, around 02:00 AM Central European time. Family members were present with him to the end.

Please take a moment off from the new year rejoicings in memory of a great guy, skilled fellow collector, philosopher & priest, and above all one of the kindest persons i have ever had the privilege to know.

Eckhard, we will miss you...

Practical stuff:
Eckhard asked his son to have all internet accounts, Mail addresses & subscritions to NGs closed.
His personal Mail address may still remain open for a few days if you want to send a sympathy message to Manuel & family.

eckhard dot etzold at gmx dot de

Eckhard donated his beautiful collection to the Kuba Museum in Germany, his memory will live on here:

http://www.kuba-museum.de/

His personal TV web site:
http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold/archiv/TV/tv.htm

Home page:
http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold/index.htm

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

Aww, man ! Hate to hear that. Eckhard was one of the good ones. But at least he's at peace now, & not suffering anymore.

Found what was to me a fitting tribute to Ehkhard. On his home page, his link to the Pachelbel Canon in D.

http://bs.cyty.com/visitabilis/musik1.mid

This is certainly very sad news. Eckhard was a wonderful man in so many ways and will surely be missed.

Darryl

Thanks for posting that link Pete. It was nice listening to it and thinking about Eckhard.

I had the privilege to stay at Eckhard’s home several times and see his excellent television restorations. I wish that I had the patience for detail and the abilities that he had. The greatest honor was to meet his beautiful family, Almut, Manuel, Lisa and Lena.

Steve

Eckhard will be truely missed. Eckhard will be remembered as a truely serious collector. There are very few people in this hobby that have had the depth of commitment and knowledge that Eckhard had. He will be greatly missed.

I guess many of us are getting to the point where it won't be long before our collections will survive us and be passed on to another generation of collectors. Just a reminder that you cant take it with you so we better enjoy each day that we are given to the fullest.

Rest in Peace, Eckhard.

Eckhard bridged the gap between American collectors and the other collectors around the world. He showed us the other collectors around the world had the same compassion for collecting vintage tv as we do. Also I would say that they have taught us a few things about vintage tv and electronics.
He was a good person and will be missed.
Ed

This is very sad news indeed, I'm very sorry to hear of his passing.

I am saddened and my prayers go out for he and his family.

Very sad news. I never met Eckhard personally, but felt I knew this kind man through the many e-mails we exchanged over the years. A great loss for his family and the TV collector community. Rest in peace Eckhard.

-Steve D.

RIP Eckhard. Closer to home, a buddy of mine was killed on his bike on NYE's eve.

Very unfortunate - my sympathies to his family.

His excellent website was my introduction to foreign-made TVs. I hope someone will
continue to host it for historical purposes.

I'm sorry to hear of Eckhard's passing. He was one of a kind.

John

Same here this side of the Pacific, we will miss him.

RIP

My condolences to him and his family and friends. I enjoyed his posts on TV history from Europe, something we hardly get over here in the U.S.

I am very sorry to hear this sad news, rest in peace Eckhard.

jr

I exchanged a few posts with him, and never got around to posting the pics of old sets I took while in Germany. I'm saddened to hear of his passing.

Someone should forward this thread to his family, so they'll know what a goodwill ambassador he was.

Hi Carmine, to All,

When i sent my condolences to the family, i gave the links both to this post and the same one on UK Vintage TV:

http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/s...ad.php?t=63592

I have not (yet) received the "Message read" acknowledgement from Germany, the family surely has a lot to attend to.

The UK moderators also suggested a hard copy printout should be snail-mailed to the family, but i feel now is too soon, the tributes to Eckhard are still coming in on both threads.

Just a suggestion, could some VK members or perhaps VK Admin save the content of Eckhard's site or at least the very rich TV content (with family approval of course) to avoid a loss such as what Pete D. endured last year when AT&T pulled the plug on his CT-100 site with no prior warning.

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

Great suggestions. For those who don't know, there's a site that archives most websites long after they're gone:

www.archive.org

There are instances where sites (or parts) aren't saved but the majority are available.

Sad day indeed - I came across Eckhard's website in 2004, before I even heard of AK. What a wonderful collection and a rich learning experience.

I grabbed Eckhard's site today using the WinHTTrack Website Mirror Application. It keeps full website/directory/file structure. There were several errors (missing files, mostly external to his site) and it came in at some 1600 files and about 250 Mbytes. I'll certainly be burning it to CD and providing it to Jerome, Eric H and whoever else may want it. PM me - no cost to any of you at all.

Cheers,

Please note that I grabbed only the Vintage TV portion of the website...

Cheers,

My condolences.. Very sorry to hear. But it is good to hear his legend lives on in the hands of a museum.

Eckhard had worldwide impact on the antique TV community, and will truly be missed. Glad to hear that his website content will be preserved. I hope it gets posted somewhere accessible for future reference.

Perhaps the Philco Safari I sold him will end up in the Kuba museum? I'll have to check it out next time I'm in Germany.

One unfortunate thing that can happen when a nice collection like this transfers from a collector to a museum is that the sets might no longer be maintained in operating condition, and enjoyed as functioning sets. That's something unique we have with our own sets while we are alive.

Nonethess, this outcome (preserving the collection in a museum) is one of the best possible outcomes for a collection. We've all seen how things get dispersed and trashed in many cases, with little appreciation for the value of many of the items to the antique TV community.

Tom

To all, and Findm-Keepm,

Many Thanks! for grabbing Eckhard's site.

Just to be sure there are Pre-war TVs, B&W tvs and post-war color sets, got them all ?

I am very grateful for your offer of the DVD compilation, i will give you my address by PM. Will pay for US to France shipping cost if you want me to, (PayPal would be the easiest).

to Heathkit TV:
i followed your suggestion to have http://archive.org save the site - inscribed myself & did the request, however the time quoted is several weeks, possibly a month or more so it's nice to know forums members did it ASAP - Thanks!

I received the "Message read" acknowledgement from Germany, but no message was sent.

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

Awwww man, I really hate to hear news like this. Eckhard was a great guy and a very important part of the tv hobby. I will miss him and his great pre-war projects. Rest in peace, Eckhard. :tears:

In 2006, Eckhard have my museum visited. He was someone who had much interest for TV's from all countries. Eckhard bridged the gap between American collectors and the European collectors.
Eckhard have helped me with finding TV's from Germany
Rest in peace, Eckhard.

Marcel.
The Netherlands.

Jerome,

I mirrored everything linked to/from this page:

http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold/archiv/TV/tv.htm

Looking through the directories, it captured it all - mechanical, B&W tvs, and color sets - even captured all of the CTC5 videos.

WinHTTrack is open source (FREE), and pretty valuable. I once used it to grab websites that I would burn to CD to take to sea with me. Now I use it primarily to grab manuals, datasheets and the like. I've got about a terabyte of manuals alone for TV, audio and test equipment. Once captured, it's quite intuitive - there's an index.html file that links to the mirrored website on the CD. Look and feel is just like the original site. Copying the website to any other media is easy as well.

If you'll PM me your Paris address, I'll get the CD out to you ASAP.

Cheers,

Today was Eckhard's Birthday, I just saw it at the bottom of the home page and it made me sad. Well Eckhard, I hope you're in a much better place and Happy Birthday.

I was never fortunate enough to meet Eckhard, but it was obvious he was one of the good guys. In every sense of the word. R.I.P.

He wrote a lot of stuff. Including this description of his last few weeks, which was pretty moving http://bs.cyty.com/kirche-von-unten/...hrungkrebs.htm

The consummate technology aficionado, in the last couple of paragraphs he describes not his problems but how astounded he was to find himself being treated by one of Tesla's inventions.

Ahhh quite sad :(

I have HT Track Website copier, I can rip websites and archive them. I have to downloading as we speak. I did the same for another site of a friend who passed away.