Jan Elwart died (*7.10.1948 †27.7.2021)

During my professional career, I met many people from our field, but Jan Elwart was, unlike others, my boss since we became part of the global company Bodycote. This was the year 1999. At that time, we knew him only by hearsay, as one of the authors of the large plasma nitriding machines Klockner, which we operated in our plant in Pilsen.

I remember communicating with each other in our first meetings in Ebersbach in such a way that I spoke French (at that time I spoke very little English and not German at all) and Hans Veltrop then translated it from French into German or English. A seemingly funny situation, which resulted in my increased efforts to learn English.

Then we met for another 19 years. But we always had correct relationships and dealing with Jan was very constructive. After all, as with everyone from the former Bodycote CEG Group. It was a great time, a time to build and learn big business, and for me personally, this time was a great school that I benefit from to this day. Jan gave us a lot of freedom in decision-making, and that was a great motivation for us as well.

On July 27, John died. When I projected the past we had together, I hesitated for a moment. And since there are practically no flights from Prague or Dresden to Cologne today, I got in the car and set off for more than 700 km just to thank him for the last time for his significant contribution to me, but also for the fact that maybe one day we’ll meet together in that heat treaters sky.

R.I.P Jan

Fig. 1 – Jan at the legendary annual meeting in Los Angeles in 2007

Fig. 2 – Jan presents the award for the best plant manager of 2012 within the CEG Group to Vladimír Procházka, Director of Operations in Liberec

Fig. 3 – Florian Elwart a Hans Veltrop at the funeral

Fig. 4 – Karol Forycki a Hans Veltrop

Fig. 5 a 6  – Last farewell to Jan

6^th of September 2021

Jiří Stanislav