His Story

Hans B. Grueber was two years old when his hometown of Wuppertal was bombed by Allied forces, unleashing a firestorm that incinerated much of the city centre. Years later, in a high school history lesson, he sat through a documentary on the liberation of the concentration camps. 'Some of us fainted, some vomited, some walked out - but we never forgot.'

As a university student, Hans smuggled banned books across the Berlin Wall to friends trapped in communist East Berlin. In Paris during the student revolts, he fled down Boulevard Saint-Michel as police truncheoned protesters. He was studying at UC Berkeley when a National Guard helicopter tear-gassed anti-Vietnam War demonstrators on campus. As a young lawyer, he stood in the Hamburg High Court as defence counsel for a fringe member of the Baader-Meinhof gang.

When acid rain and fears of nuclear war weighed heavily in Germany, Hans's dream of a South Seas paradise grew stronger. He 'retired' and emigrated to New Zealand with his young family, pursuing another dream - devoting time to his children.

Arriving in 1984, he stepped into the upheaval unleashed by Roger Douglas's neoliberal reforms. Many New Zealanders have benefited from his inability to walk past injustice, and he writes perceptively about the country's fraying social equity following the rise of neoliberalism. His conviction that government exists to serve all people - not merely the wealthy and powerful - made it impossible for Hans to stand by while big business and career politicians sought to defeat the country's MMP referendum.

After more than eighty years lived with eyes wide open, this is his story.