The Landshut newspaper It could be seen that the city’s oldest citizen was buried a few days ago. The man’s name was Karlheinz Stauber and he was 109 years old. Relevant sources on the Internet suggest that Stauber was the oldest man in Germany until his death. He was born in the fall of 1914. Stauber was one of the last contemporary witnesses who had experienced the First World War – at least as small children.
Time rushes by unbridled. A few decades ago you could still find men in almost every community who could talk about the War of 14 and even show off the wounds they had suffered. It’s amazing that people who have been through terrible things often live to be very old. This also included Stauber from Landshut, who was very lucky to have survived the Second World War as a soldier. Nevertheless, he was in perfect health later on and happily drove around in his car until he was 104 years old.
The number of centenarians is increasing rapidly. According to statistics, there were more than 20,000 in Germany alone in 2020. If you leaf through the newspaper volumes from a hundred years ago, you will constantly come across people who, even in their 60s, are described as emaciated old people with snow-white hair and sunken faces. The writer Erich Maria Remarque (“Nothing New in the West”) also said at 50: “I’m actually far too tired for my age.”
Back then, many people aged early. But not Ms. Anna Heilmeier from Esterndorf in Upper Bavaria, who said on her 90th birthday a quarter of a century ago that she knew good recipes for defying age. At least they would have worked for her. She was never married. “I didn’t want to put the cross on myself, it’s much nicer that way,” she said. And after all, you live longer if you don’t always have to deal with a man. Her second recipe: “I rarely ate fruit, salad and vegetables.” Fatty meat, on the other hand, was always her favorite.
The director and Oscar winner Billy Wilder (“Some Like It Hot”), who lived in Austria and Germany until the Nazi era, was also a connoisseur. Reaching a ripe old age like Karlheinz Stauber was still a utopia in his time. After all, he was 95 years old. According to his calculations, death came far too quickly. He envisioned dying at the age of 104 – in the bed of a much younger woman, shot by her jealous husband.