Now for something entirely different. I want to say something about, a little bit about science and society, and in particular I want to mention the value of tools. I mean, it's often said that, say, the computer or the development of nuclear science, that it's value-free, and whether it's good or bad depends on how it's used, who uses it. And that isn't true. The value of it all is inherited from the society in which it exists. So that for example in the United States, a highly militarized society, although only in the last seventy-five years or so I might say, a highly militarized society, the computer is invented, is built, is improved and so on, mainly as an instrument that makes mass murder, more efficient for us that is, and we see that. Best example perhaps in the Gulf war, many, many thousands of Iraqis died and very few of, I'll say, us, Americans. And then most especially in Kosovo where we suffered not a single causality, although many, many other people were killed by what we were doing. So, clearly, if that's the thing to do, the important thing to work on is to change society .

Now who is to do that, to change society? And I think many of you may agree, that's the important thing to do. But it is a big thing, it is certainly too big for anyone, and it's too big even for a mass organization, to change society. And the answer is, I think, to that dilemma, is that this change has to be worked in small steps. To challenge somebody to change society, is to make him impotent I think. But small steps are possible. And what we have in these two good people is an example - an example I think to all of us - of the taking of a small step , not accidentally, not by-the-way, but quite deliberately. And the small step they took, I think is the consequence of still another idea that I think we should all have in our hearts and minds, and this is that the impossible is possible. And I mean that in two ways: One way is that, for example, the task of changing the society or the task of ridding the world of nuclear bombs for example, which many people would say, well that's impossible, just technologically we will never forget how to build a nuclear bomb, and so we have to believe that it's possible to make a world that has no nuclear bombs.

And I think the other thing, the other way, in which the - what should I call it? - the dictum that the impossible is possible, that we have to believe that, is that we also have to think about the horrors that we have visited upon the world, I think particularly, for example of Auschwitz . It may be that had we believed, say in 1935, just to name a date before Auschwitz , had we believed that such a thing as Auschwitz were possible, it might not have happened.

So I think in these two ways, we have to believe the impossible is possible and I think this is exactly what is sort of a fundamental question, and the fundamental motivation, that led you to begin and to persevere in your work. To challenge the entire electricity industry in Germany, and any other part of the world, but in this case especially in Germany, there are many people who must have said to you, oh that is crazy, you are wasting your time , you know, you can't beat this big people, and so on . But you believed, it was possible, and it wasn't easy to do in one step. It involved not only engineering to make it possible to find out just how to use solar cells to feed a network that could be used in a town. But it also involved political steps and I think in the context in which you worked, the political steps took more courage, I think, more courage to take, than did the technical steps of actually getting it going.

So I think that you are for all of us an example, and I think that here the German word serves much better than the English word "example" -- a Vorbild for us all, and in that sense you deserve to be recognized and to be honored by this testament.

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