A while ago – I would say about three weeks earlier, around new years eve – we had a phone call about whats going on, he told me a little about his new pacemaker, about the very bad food at the swedish hospital he just came from, about nurses, about that guy called Bill Gates and about the bad world in general, .. but he was kind of positive that we can go ahead with our work in just a few weeks, and .. that was it.

Wowa Cwejman passed away yesterday as even I had to learn from the Facebook-entry of his wife.

When he first popped up on Musikmesse Frankfurt – I guess it was anno 2003 – with his famous Synthesizer S1 he was still married – and present on the show together with his earlier wife. They was showing around that synth he designed for their son, who was interested in musical instruments as he told those days.
Wowa was an engineer for pro audio stuff earlier so quite competent. We got in touch and after no one else went with him and his product for this seemingly far too expensive synth we became partners finally. On the first three units he delivered I sat for at least a year before they finally started to sell a little. We did a lot of action, took it everywhere, had to explain it again and again and finally a few years later we could not even catch up the production with the incoming orders anymore.

Later on he started to make modules and we had very hard discussions asking him to please NOT make them 15V only, but keep them compatible with all the existing Doepfer stuff etc., .. we won him to stay in the club of 12V eurorack in the end, and .. this was a good one. Later on sometimes the more attractive modules ended up on Ebay a day after we had an incoming delivery for the double of the official prices we had to take .. probably because a few of the team liked them so much. All the units was precisely calibrated by Wowa himself, they was quite compact for all their functions and they looked very clear same time. We could never force Wowa to produce as many as the incoming orders we had; the prices always stayed high, this was his will, he defined the calculations and he forced us to follow.

There was always also personal things about people he liked and those who were totally inacceptable, where products went to and where not: In the end he always came back to most of his friends – in business at least. Having had plenty of children and have been married several times, I can just hope that he found his way to make peace with all of them in the end, too.

Even if this was not his very best passion, I wish him a lot to rest in Peace… ar at least on a good spot in cosmos. Good by, Wowa.