Ward is on the left and I am on the right It is the crew that provides a ship with its true identity and image. We wish to illuminate this aspect of the Battleship Bismarck in this area. In this past it was virtually neglected. We will attempt to portray the lives of the sailors aboard the Bismarck, what they experienced, where they came from, and what life on board was really like. First of all, I wish to tell you how this project came about and, in particular, about my fascination with the Bismarck: I was not even born until several decades after the Bismarck sank. As a child, I was quite interested in the events of the Second World War, especially since my family did not talk about it much at all. I began to develop both a certain fascination for the war and a feeling of horror about its unimaginable atrocities. It was during my research that I came into contact with the Bismarck. As I grew a bit older I became interested in other things; but then, I remembered the Bismarck, and I began to study her history with increasing intensity. I read all the testimonies of the survivors which I found even more fascinating because I had never read original reports, perhaps because my grandparents had avoided talking about those times. I immersed myself more and more intensively in the Bismarck story, bought book after book, until I could not find no more books which presented new facts that I had not read in some form or another. Therefore, I decided to start my own research and began working on the Internet, where I hit pay-dirt immediately. Enthused by the wealth of information and surprised by the lack of a German-language homepage, I decided to construct my own homepage. My research about and search for the survivors was successful. First the late Bruno Rzonca, who lived in the USA, sent me a long letter about himself. At that time I also had some initial ideas regarding the presentation on my homepage with biographical portraits of the individuals of the Bismarck's crew. This basic idea developed further and further until the premier publication of the book. On my research excursions in the Internet, I ran into Ward Carr who was enthusiastic about this idea. Since then, he has been a key contributor to this work. With the support of Baron von Müllenheim-Rechberg, I ultimately made contact with the Bismarck-Kameradschaft, the organization of survivors of the Bismarck. This encounter changed the entire perspective of my work considerably . It provided me with an exquisite fresh and novel perspective of these men. Ward Carr established contact with many relatives of the fallen Bismarck crew from the State of Hesse. This has presented an entirely new and unexpected, but highly desirable option for the my original portrait project. Furthermore, we decided that the complete portrait project should be published as a book because most of the target group do not have access to the Internet. There are a number of other factors that modified my original ideas and made it into what you have before you here. The further possible forms and possibilities of this project are extremely exciting. Now I wish to cordially invite each and every one of you to support this project, and to thank those who have already done so.