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I first met Wolfgang in 1985 after I had arrived in Sydney in an ill-fated attempt to make it my home - click here. He'd already by then become an institution in the Blues Point Hotel with other patrons simply walking around him as though he was just a piece of furniture. On the few occasions when I dropped in, I tried to get there early so as have a word or two in German with him before the alcohol completely clouded his brain.
I returned to the hotel more than twenty years later in 2006. The hotel had a new owner by then and also a new interior but Wolfgang was still sitting there, like a relic from another age, quaffing his drinks although by this time he had strategically moved next to the Men's Room so as not to waste too much time between drinks. He was living testimony to what the human liver can endure!
Now, in 2013, sitting in the outside beer garden so I could enjoy the glorious sunshine while quenching my thirst with a shandy, the place seemed strangely empty to me. So I asked the assorted smokers who had escaped the inside 'no smoking' ban (see note below) the awkward question (although I could already guess the answer), "Where's Wolfgang?" The heads of those at the bar turned towards me in unison, as if following the flight of a tennis ball at Wimbledon, "Wolfgang? Wolfgang is dead! Died of lung cancer couple of years ago." Of course, I remembered that he smoked as much as he drank. Still, I believe cirrhosis of the liver must've been his Plan B.
"Any man's death diminishes me", wrote John Donne. I wonder how diminished the publican's takings were following Wolfgang's demise. Mind you, I could already spot several promising replacements breasting his bar.
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The first government to have a smoking ban were the Nazis. In 1941 Hitler created the Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research, and forbade smoking in any German university, post office, military hospital or Nazi party office. Trivia that makes a point.
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