Opel Descendant And Playboy Ends His Life
His mother’s father was Wilhelm von Opel, son of the Opel founder Adam Opel. His father’s father was the enemy of the fixies: He invented the freehub. His company was a major supplier of auto parts. But that’s not how the world remembers Gunther Sachs, who shot himself on Saturday in his house in Gstaad, Switzerland.
Gunther Sachs became known and notorious as Germany’s first playboy. After an affair with Persia’s ex-empress Soraya, he married Brigitte Bardot. He proposed in style: A few hours after meeting her for the first time, a helicopter showered Bardot’s villa on the French Riviera with red roses. “It’s not every day that a man drops a ton of roses in your yard,” said Brigitte, and said “Yes, I will” a few weeks later in Las Vegas. The marriage lasted three years. Sachs married the Swedish blond bombshell Mirja Larsson, who survives him. According to Swiss media, he had suffered from Alzheimer, and would “rather die than forget.” Suicide runs in the family. Sachs’ father Willy shot himself in his hunting lodge.
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I think he did the rational thing when faced with Alzheimer's. I'm likely to do the same thing, if I contract the illness.
There are very few things in this world I can accept as justification for suicide - but the onset of Alzheimers is one. My best wishes to the family of a man who lived life to the fullest, and choose to go out while he was still himself.
"He invented the freehub" Who invented it? Gunther Sachs or his father? Despite the fact that Freehub is a tradename of Shimano, Gunther would have been six when he invented it. not only that he would have been working for an English company Bayliss-Wiley when he did so. Sachs have have little or anything to do with the development of the cassette-freehub. Sachs did however commercialise the FREEWHEEL using the patent designs of American William Van Anden. A Freewheel is a completely different animal than a freehub.
And of course you mustn't forget the nice company Willy Sachs used to keep building a legacy for his kids: http://forum.axishistory.com/download/file.php?id=126800&sid=8c3dbd619bacdac0e91be814cc337fc2