Jurgen Haible Memorial Fund

[Harry_W]

Dear all,

Christmas time was quite busy also for me. Sorry that this post is only coming to you now.

As I learned, some more sad news have hit the e-m.com community recently; I hope Jurgen will not get forgotten in all these troubles.

Since so many of you expressed their will to support the family, I had asked Jurgen Haible's wife Birgit to open an account of her own as a target for support payments. You know, money is something which is needed very much in Birgit's situation. She works part-time to have a living and to feed her kids, besides the troubles she is going through with all the legal issues resulting from the divorce process she was in.

The next days, I will try to inform everybody in private messages who asked for information about the memorial fund. So far, here are the account dates:

Donations from within Germany:

Kontoinhaber: Birgit Haible
Konto-Nr.: 5514401
BLZ: 52060410
Bank: Ev. Kreditgenossenschaft eG, Kassel
Verwendungszweck: "In Memorial Juergen Haible Fund"

International:

Holder of the account: Birgit Haible, Nuremberg, Germany
IBAN (International Bank Account Number): DE03520604100005514401
Bank: Ev. Kreditgenossenschaft eG, Kassel
SWIFT (also Bank Identifier Code, BIC): GENODEF1EK1 (the "O" is a letter as in "Oscar", not the digit "Zero")
Reason for payment: "In Memorial Juergen Haible Fund"

Please, help the Haible family to have a - possibly - good start into the New Year. Every donation, may it be big or small, is greatly appreciated!

The bank "Ev. Kreditgenossenschaft" was chosen because Birgit's usual bank didn't offer her an account for the fund purpose free of charge, but this bank did...

Best regards and a Happy New Year to everybody,
Harry

[haima]

Hi Harry,

Thanks for doing this.

I wonder if there is a way this could be done through paypal? I realise that could be difficult to organise, but I feel like people will find that easier to donate (obviously)...

But regardless - I'll try and figure out how to do a transfer soon!

Haima

[haima]

Just looked into doing a transfer via my internet banking here in Australia... ran into a few hitches...

My bank needs:

"Beneficiary Address: Full address must be provided. Post Office Box number is insufficient."

I'm assuming "90427 Nürnberg" isn't Brigit's full address, and I would understand she might not want to publish her full address online. Could be a spanner in the works.

They also want to know the full address of the bank, but this wouldn't be so hard to find out.

They also want to charge $22 in fees... sigh...

Maybe I'll just chuck some euro notes in an envelope! I guess we'd still need an address for that... and it's probably not advisable to be sending cash in the post...

[Harry_W]

Hello Haima and all,

thank you for your "experience report".

If a fee of 22 bucks is what you usually have to pay for transfers from abroad (I have no idea, just did it within Europe up to now, which is not such a big issue), it is certainly NOT a good idea to use the memorial fund.

Unfortunately, we still have no access to Jurgen's PayPal account (password is missing), and even if so, Birgit would probably not be entitled to make drawings from there.

As an alternative, I could offer you to use my own PayPal account (I set up one for ebay recently, but am not experienced in using it, or what else can be done with it apart from ebay), and to transfer all your donations on to Birgits memorial fund. This wouldn't cost me anything except time.

But this is something I would have liked to avoid, because I do not want to be involved in any financial issues of the Haible family (you do not know me so well, do you, and I cannot expect you to trust me completely).

I could also ask Birgit to open a PayPal account on her own; I will talk to her this evening.

For all people who are not discouraged by Haimas experience, here are - at least some - more complete address data:

For the bank:

Evangelische Kreditgenossenschaft eG
Seidlerstr. 6
34117 Kassel
Germany

Phone: +49 (0)561 7887 01
Telefax: +49 (0)561 7887 260
E-Mail: ekk@ekk.de
Web: http://www.ekk.de/

For the holder of account ("Beneficiary Address"):

Please ask me for Birgit's full postal address via PM - I talked to Birgit again and she told me that she would not feel so comfortable seeing her address here in the public. Those of you who knew Jurgen a bit closer will know her address anyway - it is the same as his former residence (he had moved away from their comon home a year ago - so Birgit's address is not the one you can find at the bottom of Jurgen's home page).

Other suggestions for solving the issue of transfers from abroad are welcome.

Best regards,
Harry

[haima]

Thanks Harry,

If Birgit isn't able to open a Paypal account then I might take you up on the generous offer of using yours - but obviously it's easier for all if she has her own...

Thanks again,
Haima

[Mongo1]

If Birgit can open a Paypal account it would definitely be better. I called my bank, and they wanted $20.00 to do the transfer. Ridiculous, but exactly what I've come to expect from our friends on Wall Street.

One thing I worry about on Harry's behalf is the tax ramifications. I wouldn't want him to get into any sort of bind paying taxes on money he's not getting. That wouldn't be fair at all.

Gary

[Harry_W]

[Mongo1]

[Harry_W]

To all of you who would like to donate to the Haible family from abroad:

Because of the high taxes/fees for donations by bank transfer from abroad, I asked Birgit Haible to set up another account on PayPal. Maybe this will help to reduce the high fee load. I just ask for some patience until Birgit managed to do this. Thank you!

Best regards,
Harry

PS.: For Germans or people within the EU, it is still cheaper to donate to the Memorial Fund, since there are no or only marginal fees for traditional bank transfers, and PayPal always asks for fees, no matter if the donator is from Germany or abroad...

[haima]

Hey Harry,

Just wanted to bump this in case there has been any developments for international donations - perhaps not... ? I know things move slowly, this is not the #1 priority.

Anyway just letting you know i'm still keen to send a little money to JH's family when that becomes possible...

Regards,
Haima

[Harry_W]

Hi Haima,

thanks for bumpin'...

Nothing new up to now, but maybe I'm just not up to date. I haven't talked with Birgit for some time - maybe something has changed already.

Got the slight feeling that there aren't so many people interested in this topic anymore - there had been virtually no new posts regarding Jurgen's passing.

I'll keep you (and all other faithful ones) informed.

Regards,
Harry

[Mongo1]

I think people are interested - we just don't know what to do at this point...

[diablojoy]

yeah cant do much without a paypal account. so i wait.

[v8pete]

Hi Harry,
thanks for your continued work on this, I think that the main issue is that people want as much cash as possible to go to the family, and not the greedy banks, so I guess that people are holding off until the Paypal route is in place. Also, maybe it would be better to have this thread - or the one with the Paypal info - in Juergen's forum area, so it is easy to find, as the Miscellaneous News area is a little bit less visible and would potentially get missed very easily.

Pete

[Harry_W]

Hello everybody,

Jurgen's wife Birgit has set up a PayPal account for donations from abroad. This is to avoid the huge transfer fees usually taken by banks (for the Memorial Fund):

The e-mail address for the account is: birgit.haible@web.de


Needless to say that our officials didn't do much yet about a relief for the family (there is not much to expect), nor did they clear anything about the heritage. I will keep you informed, as usual...

Best regards,
Harry