The journalist, author, publisher, film director, and cofounder of Sleep and Breathing, Norbert Netzer, born on 3 February 1931 in Pfaffenhofen/Ilm, Bavaria, died on 8 November 2005 in Munich.

Norbert Netzer, beloved spouse, father, and grandfather, died unexpectedly due to a sudden cardiac infarction in his apartment in Munich.

He was born in the little town of Pfaffenhofen, 25 miles north of Munich, as the second son of the veterinarian, Dr. Franz Netzer, and his wife Berta. Due to the war, he and his two brothers were sent to an elementary school in Bad Reichenhall. They also visited the local Karlsgymnasium. He had made close friendship with his classmate Helmut Herkommer, and Norbert stayed in Bad Reichenhall after the war was over to finish his 9 years of high school and college. He proved to be a pretty intelligent young man and belonged to the best 100 college graduates in the whole of Bavaria, earning him a place and stipend in the Maximilianeum (a special college, with free housing and meals during the University visit, built by the great Bavarian King Maximilian II; today it also hosts the Bavarian state parliament), which he, for unclear reasons, never took.

Staying at his parents’ house he studied geology at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and wrote his diploma work about geologic specialties of the Karwendel, a part of the Bavarian and Austrian Alps north of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. During this time, he also worked at the mines as a part of his residency.

After university, he turned to be a photographer and also started to make little documentary films. His great plan was to have his own film studio for documentary and animated films in Zusmarshausen near Augsburg. He received a contract from Chancellor Adenauer in the newly founded German Federal TV and took greater loans. He was supported by his wife Waltraud, who he had married in 1960 and with whom he had two sons, Nikolaus and Gregor, in 1961 and 1965.

The German Supreme Court turned down the plans for a Federal TV due to inconsistency with the German media laws introduced by the Allied Nations. These circumstances ended this business, wherein he never completely recovered financially.

The Netzer family moved to Unterföhring near Munich where Norbert started to work as a film director for the public Bavarian Radio and TV (Bayerischer Rundfunk) and the newly started education channel (Drittes Programm). With this TV channel, students had the possibility to finish their college degree by learning in the TV classes and visiting regular classes in the evening once a week.

In the later sixties and early seventies, he made several documentaries for the German public TV (BR and WDR). One of his major works was a 90-min documentary about the fauna and the natives in the Polar Region north of Spitzbergen, running twice at prime time in the German TV (ARD). Also, during these years, he made longer documentaries for IBM and Johnson and Johnson Inc..

Due to his experience in education TV, he was asked to become the vice chairman of the Learning Channel of the Singapore Public TV. He held this position until the end of the 70s.

After his return from Singapore, his professional life took another turn, when his friend, Gernot Schmidt, offered him the position as editor-in-chief of the journal, Der Zahnarzt (The Dentist), the official organ of the Bavarian Dental Medicine Association. Since this time, he became a highly regarded publicist and author in dental medicine. He held another editor-in-chief position with the journal, Proctology, published in English by Thieme Publishers. In the later 1980s, he founded his own publishing company, “Helix Publishers”. Out of this publishing company, he had published several nonmedical and medical books including such German Dental Medicine standards as “Prophylaxe” (Prophylaxis in Dental Medicine), the logopaedic learning book for children, “Vom Zungenkämpfer zum Schluckmeister” (Your way from the tongue fighter to the master of swallowing) and just this year, “Gerontoodontologie” (Dental Medicine for the elder patient). Also, in 1996 and 1997 together with his son Nikolaus Netzer, Robert Bublak, M.D., Ph.D., and Kingman Strohl, M.D., he started Sleep and Breathing out of Helix Publishers after a first issue was published by Dustri Publishers. At this time the manuscripts in the journal had been published bilingual, in German and English (before, it was only in German as in the journal, “Atmung und Schlaf” 1994 and 1995), and Norbert Netzer had translated the manuscripts in both directions.

History, art, music and politics were his greater interests. He was an avid adventurer, hiker, and piano player. In 1993, at the age of 62, he accompanied us to the Aconcagua base camp on the Polish route side at 4,600-m altitude (including a farther hike to 5,200 m), and gave geology lessons about the volcanic area to the rest of his mountaineering companions.

In the last years, he was especially interested in social and medical problems of the elderly and published and gave several presentations about this topic. Recently, he was back to his roots as film director for an international learning TV production with a Chinese language class in TV. He died in the middle of his work, writing the scripts for this TV production.

Since 1972, Norbert was accompanied by his spouse Elisabeth, an art goldsmith from Munich.

We, the family, and all friends and colleagues will miss this charming gentleman and his genius ideas. Without him, this journal probably would never exist.