The ceremony awarding the Friendship Order to Professor Klaus Krickeberg at the Ministry of Health on February 25, 2019, also marked Professor Klaus Krickeberg's 90th birthday - Photo: provided by the author.
Klaus Krickeberg was a man who deeply loved Vietnam, a great friend of Vietnam, and tirelessly accompanied and assisted Vietnam for nearly half a century. I would like to share a few stories from my perspective as one of his students.
In recognition of the contributions to Vietnam's development over the past 50 years, particularly to research, training, and application of statistical sciences, and to strengthening Vietnam's public health sector and developing friendly relations between the people of Germany, France, and Vietnam.
Opinions from the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City on the occasion of awarding honorary doctorate to Professor Klaus Krickeberg.
Outstanding mathematician
In 1967, I arrived at Heidelberg University from Bonn, still wet behind the ears, to "seek guidance" and coincidentally met him, unaware that he was already a more patriotic Vietnamese than I was, and had a very early awareness of the need to commit himself to the cause.
In 1964-1965, he sent money to Vietnam Hilfsaktion, a humanitarian organization in the Federal Republic of Germany that assisted Vietnam. Klaus Krickeberg, a member of the German post-war elite, was a mathematician working on probability who helped rebuild the field of probability from scratch after the Nazis destroyed Germany's cutting-edge science .
He was invited to give lectures almost everywhere: the United States, Denmark, France, the Soviet Union, and more. He received many honors, such as being elected president of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability (1977-1979) and in 1983 being elected a member of the Leopoldina Academy of Sciences, where Albert Einstein and David Hilbert were also members.
During my years in Heidelberg, I often listened to him lecture, and I must say it was an art form, and he was an artist. He would come to class with only a small piece of paper with an outline in his pocket for when he needed it, otherwise he lectured like a speech, rambling on and on, charming and so captivating; each lecture was a masterpiece.
A special connection with Vietnam
In the summer of 1974, a major turning point occurred in his life. Accepting an invitation from the Vietnam Institute of Mathematics (Hanoi), Klaus Krickeberg traveled by train from Bielefeld, where he was a professor of probability and statistics, through West Asia to Beijing and then down to Hanoi, a journey that took about fifteen days. It marked an "adventure," a call from the heart, on his career path.
Along the way, he took the opportunity to prepare math textbooks – in Vietnamese, a language he had taught himself, a language he was determined to learn, without knowing the exact language of the year – in preparation for presentations in Hanoi. He was only 45 years old at the time.
In Hanoi, he met leading intellectuals of the time, including the Minister of Education Ta Quang Buu, Professor Le Van Thiem, Ton That Tung, and others. These leading intellectuals were very welcoming and eager to learn. Vietnam (Hanoi) was isolated at the time, so meeting a mathematician from Germany was a very interesting experience. They commissioned him to conduct numerous research projects using mathematics as a tool for application.
Also in early 1978, another leader of the Vietnamese health sector contacted me. This was virologist Hoang Thuy Nguyen, who had conducted research in East Germany and later became the director of the "Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology," abbreviated as "Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology," formerly the Pasteur Institute of Hanoi, which was responsible for the prevention and control of infectious diseases.
Mr. Nguyen inquired about mathematical methods in epidemiology. This was the topic of the talk on infectious diseases. His seemingly innocent question became the source of a collaboration that has continued positively for the next 35 years.
Professor Klaus Krickeberg enjoys eating "street food" in Vietnam - Photo: NXX
Learn Vietnamese language and culture.
Returning to Bielefeld from his historic trip to Hanoi, he launched a series of activities to support Vietnam, such as organizing "Vietnam Week" with the student association there, screening the film "The Ho Chi Minh Trail," organizing the sending of scientific books from Germany to Vietnam, and giving presentations on Vietnamese mathematics in Germany and France.
After his trip to Vietnam, he moved on to Paris, where he was appointed "exceptional professor" (classe exceptionnelle) at the University of Paris V. He held dual citizenship. From a young age, he attended a French high school in Berlin until he received his baccalaureate in 1946.
In Paris, he enrolled in Vietnamese language and culture courses, earning a bachelor's degree—a remarkable achievement. He is fluent in several languages, including French, English, Russian, Danish, Spanish, and modern Greek. He previously taught at the University of Chile in Spanish. This time, he decided to pursue his studies in Vietnamese.
In 1978, after extensive preparation, Klaus Krickeberg returned to Vietnam three times in a row to lecture and conduct workshops in various locations, including Ho Chi Minh City. He worked with numerous universities, research institutes, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and the General Statistics Office, proposing a more experimental approach to teaching mathematics in schools.
He continued to teach, conduct seminars, care for students and doctoral candidates, and send researchers abroad to improve quality. He traveled to many rural villages to learn about the Vietnamese healthcare system.
He wrote memos and sent proposals to the Ministry of Health. He received support from several foreign organizations such as the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs' 10-year program for training health system personnel; the UNICEF program on diarrhea control, immunization expansion and maternal and child health, malaria and tuberculosis control, and epidemiology in village systems; the GTZ (German Technical Cooperation Organization) program on family planning; and the European Community's "Health Systems Development Program".
From 1980 onwards, in Paris, he studied, researched, and taught for 12 years, applying ideas from "epidemiology" and public health, along with applied mathematics—things he would later apply in Vietnam. Those Vietnamese who worked with him held him in high regard, considering him a great friend of Vietnam.
Since 1978, Klaus Krickeberg has supervised scientific research for many young scientists up to the doctoral level, facilitating the participation of many Vietnamese scientists in international conferences in their fields.
He retired in France in 1998, and his "Health Systems Program" concluded in 2004 with a 45-page report, but he did not retire from Vietnam. He launched a ten-year project, 2006-2016, funded by the German Foundation "Else Kröner-Stiftung," to develop public health, starting at Thai Binh University, introduced by Professor Hoang Thuy Nguyen. This project was later expanded on a large scale to other provinces.
After 10 years of hard work in all three regions of Vietnam, he concluded that reforms were necessary to improve Vietnam's public health sector and raise its standing and quality to international standards. Over 600 scientists participated in the workshops he organized. He has many students and colleagues across the country.
In 2014, the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City awarded him the honoris causa, a prestigious honorary doctorate, for his significant and meaningful contributions to Vietnam.
I visited him in Paris once. His apartment (and that of Angela Zassenhaus, his girlfriend) was decorated with rattan furniture imported from Vietnam.
He greatly appreciated and was proud to possess those handcrafted products from Vietnam. These were perhaps not ordinary bamboo products, but rather symbolic items representing a small nation with an indomitable culture, currently struggling for independence and freedom to build a new future, a future he was committed to supporting.
The State of Vietnam awarded the Friendship Order.
In 2019, Klaus Krickeberg turned 90 years old. The Vietnamese government decided to award him the Friendship Order to express gratitude for his valuable and persistent contributions. His trip to Vietnam in February 2019 to receive the order was his 33rd visit, averaging one visit per 1.36 years.
With the support of the German Foundation "Else Kröner-Stiftung," he worked with numerous institutes, universities, and faculties from the North, Central, South, and highlands of Vietnam. He didn't just lecture; he also went "into the field," visiting community health centers to see how they operated. He visited over 50 such centers.
Dr. Nguyen Xuan Xanh
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/giao-su-klaus-krickeberg-hanh-trinh-50-nam-voi-viet-nam-20251204110354267.htm
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