A chronicle written only by someone for whom the present important. Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen The second volume of our company's history differs from the first in several ways. With a great appreciation of history, Heinz Sarkowski has impressively reconstructed the company cor- spondence, which is fortunately almost completely preserved, and made it speak. * There is an inexhaustible amount of c- respondence pertaining to the period I have taken it upon myself to cover, and working through it properly not only would have required many years, but also would have detracted from the immediacy of the account. Thus, I decided to proceed from personal experience, to describe what has happened and to provide details gleaned from the correspondence. I have - counted here by no means only my own, but rather the personal experiences of the many company members and employees who are mentioned below. With the founding of the New York firm, developments branch out, becoming parallel but separate, and the change from one scene to another repeatedly interrupts the continuing course of events and the chronological flow of the report. In this connection, the occasional repetition of certain facts was - avoidable. In some places, however, it seemed more appropriate not to interrupt particular lines of development, but to describe them in continuity without regard to specific periods of time.