Author: Dipl.-Ing. Detlef Frank
Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Braess passed away shortly before his 88th birthday. An obituary.
Hans-Hermann Braess
Uli Regenscheit | ATZlive
Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Braess should hardly have come up with the fashionable topic of "work-life balance". For him, there was simply no such con[1]structed opposition between work and life. For him, work was an extremely important part of life and therefore always in the right balance with his life. Braess was a committed researcher in industry who not only shared his experience and scientific vision with his employees and students, but also passed it on through publications, his involvement in associations and at national and international events.
On October 4, 2024, the former Head of Science and Research at BMW, honorary professor in Munich and Dresden (Germany) and lecturer at the Bavarian Elite Academy passed away shortly before his 88th birthday.
Braess studied mechanical engineering in Hanover, obtained his doctorate in engineering in 1971 and worked at Porsche from 1970, becoming head of research in 1977. One of his most important projects there was the long-life car. From 1980 until his retirement in 1996, he was Head of Science and Research at BMW. His most important projects included alternative drive systems with hydrogen, as plug-in hybrids or fully electric, driver assistance and traffic management as well as knowledge management. It was thanks to his tireless commitment that BMW was able to hand over twenty fully functional hydrogen vehicles to the German government in 2000.
However, Braess was not a scientist who saw his work exclusively at his desk or in the laboratory. He quickly realized that scientific and technical solo efforts only lead to limited success when it comes to implementing future-oriented topics such as alternative drive systems or traffic management. From 1986 to 1994, BMW was one of the project-leading partners in the European Prometheus research program under the leadership of Braess. This laid the foundations for the driver assistance and traffic management systems that are commonplace today.
In addition to such supra-regional tasks, Braess was also interested in improving the local traffic situation in and around Munich. The first scientifically developed traffic project in Munich (the Munich Cooperative Traffic Management, KVM) bears the signature of the deceased. Through his personal commitment, the so-called Inzell Initiative was founded in 1995, a cooperation between the City of Munich and BMW with the guiding principle of "solving traffic problems together". In addition to experts from the city and BMW as well as specialists from the political parties, colleagues from the ADAC and manufacturers of traffic guidance systems etc. also worked together. The fact that the Inzell initiative was integrated into a traffic project coordinated by BMW led, among other things, to this project being awarded funding from the Federal Ministry of Research – such comprehensive cooperation between public administration, politics, universities and industry had never existed before.
Another external area in which Braess was active – "extra muros", as he liked to say – was association work, both to pass on knowledge and to intensify cooperation between researchers and developers both nationally and internationally. He was a member of various committees in the Association of German Engineers (VDI), the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) and the International Federation of Automotive Engineers (Fisita). And he was always a source of ideas. At the end of the 1980s, when the car was being discussed as the "number one enemy of the environment", he initiated the first memorandum on traffic from the VDI Society for Automotive and Traffic Engineering.
The scientific posterity of the deceased will be left with a large number of specialist publications and, particularly worthy of mention, the Vieweg Handbook of Automotive Engineering. Braess was honored for his achievements with an honorary doctorate from the TU Darmstadt (Germany) (1988), the Benz-Daimler-Maybach Medal of the VDI (1992) and the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon (1999).
The fact that – as already mentioned – work and life were not contradictory for Braess is also evidenced by his favorite "leisure activity", namely an incredibly large private library. In his own estimation, this was probably the largest privately owned specialist vehicle technology library in Germany. But what use is material if you can’t manage it properly? Braess did not need a sophisticated computer program to do this. An extremely large and lightning-fast memory made this library “fit for purpose”. It often happened that Braess would say in a technical discussion: "Wait a minute Mr. XY! Dr. AB wrote his doctoral thesis on this topic at Daimler in 1967. Wait until tomorrow." And the next day, the scientist’s dissertation was on the table.
In addition to comments on Braess’s scientific work and achievements, it may be also permissible – no, it must be permissible – to say something about him personally. In conversation with him, it quickly became apparent that he could be very insistent on the topic under discussion, but that he put his personal vanity to one side. It was not uncommon for him to say: "Leave out the doctor, we have more important things to deal with". Meetings with Braess were often lively, but never became loud or unobjective, even when opinions differed. And if things got stuck until a result was reached, one of his excellent sayings would occasionally help: "Not only do you have to have no idea, you also have to be incapable of expressing it!"
Hans-Hermann Braess was definitely a personality to whom this did not apply. He always had interesting thoughts and ideas, and he knew how to express them in conversation, in his lectures and publications. He will be greatly missed by those who knew him.
