On September 21st 2022 our esteem colleague and academic teacher, Prof. Dr.med. Dr.med.dent. Franz Hermann Härle has peacefully passed away at the age of 86 years in Kiel.

Franz Härle was born July 17th, 1937 in Berlin as the son of a gynecologist, Dr. Franz Härle, and dentist, Dr. Mrs. Liesel Härle. His father unfortunately died very early due to an infection in the preanitbiotic era, which he had acquired during surgical drainage of a Douglas abscess. Härle was influenced more by his beloved mother, who inspired him to seek a career in dentistry. „Being dentist is no profession, its a character“ Härle used to say. He would operate on a small apicectomy with the same sensitiveness as on a large neck dissection. He grew up in Tübingen, Swabia, and graduated first in Dentistry 1964 and then in General Medicine 1966. He had received undergraduate education at the Universities of Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Tübingen and finally Freiburg. Lifelong, he kept a close relation to the medical faculty of Freiburg. In the university clinic of Freiburg with Profs. Eschler and Schilli, he received his postgraduate training in 1969 and appointed as a double qualified specialist in Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery. Coming from Freiburg in 1980, he was appointed full professor at the Christian Albrechst University of Kiel, Schleswig Holstein, and also director of the Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery at the University Hospital of Kiel. Franz Härle was married to Mrs. Lieselotte („Liesel“) Härle von Werder, a respected artist and painter of colourful expressionistic landscape pieces between Holstein and Hellas. The family had three successful children. They lived in a fine family home in the first row at the firth of Kiel. This home has often received international colleagues and guests professors like Prof. Bill Terry, Chapel Hill, and many others, also during the interanational congress of the IAOFR group in 2001 in Kiel. Hellas is a good key word for the private person Franz Härle, who loved to spend his summer vacations enjoying beachlife and sailing at their holiday home in Greece. In private life, Härle loved antiques and old things. At every birhtday or special occasions, we as staff members usually received a liitle gift out of his fondness, for instance a framed illustration from an antique surgical textbook. A special gift was a ship in a bottle, a model of his sailing boat in Greece, the Aglaia, which can now be found in a number of showcases of maxillofacial colleagues worldwide. By appreciating these antiques, Härle wanted to teach us respect for the achievements of mothers and fathers of maxillofacial surgery. His often quoted, humorous remark was „Nachlesen hilft gegen Erfinden“ [Reading protects against inventions].