One of the last things that I did before we closed for the Christmas break was phone around our service agents to enquire if they would be operating over the holiday period and asking them if I could put their details on the blog for emergency cover. Amongst those I phoned was our old favourite Hans Kleiner of Apolon Services of Coventry and Hans was pleased to confirm that yes, he would be available and was happy to go on the list.
Tragically this was to be my last ever conversation with him as Mrs Judith Kleiner telephoned Instanta upon our return to advise us that, less than twenty four hours after we chatted about our Christmas plans, poor Hans suffered a fatal stroke.
Hans was 69 but was still working and very active - retirement was something we never discussed. At well over six feet tall, he was a gentle giant of a man. We could always rely upon him to carry out service work for Instanta in a quick, courteous and efficient manner and there are very few engineers in the country with Hans' knowledge of Instanta boilers.
Hans' birth place was Reichenbach Falls, where Arthur Conan Doyle had decided to give Sherlock Holmes his final resting place in the adventure “The Final Problem” in 1891. Hans moved to Wales when he was just five and grew up there. At thirty he moved to Coventry and after a period working as an engineer for Hobart started Apolon Services. My brother Peter always spoke very highly of Mr Kleiner and when Peter retired and I had more contact with our service agents, I shared Peter's opinion. Hans was someone that we could ask a favour of and know that he would react positively. He always put Instanta first and would drop everything to carry out work for us. He was totally competent and we will find him very very hard to replace as agents like him are few and far between.
We once wrote this feature in our newsletter highlighting some of our favourite engineers and Hans, of course was amongst them.
He is survived by sons Dieter and Aaron, daughters Kate and Joanne and two grandchildren Herbert and Mila. He will be sorely missed by them, by Judith and by all of us at Instanta. We hope that somewhere up there he finds one of those wonderful German bierfests that were his lasting passion.
If you do Hans, have a stein on us.
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