das ist eine story aus der zeitung The Star über einen deutschen - der berühmt (kann man so sagen) wurde, weil er die "freiheit" vorzog
seine tochter sucht ihn nun - ist eine lange story
Zitat
Toronto’s 'coffin guy' vanishes from sight
A fixture for years in his self-built contraption under the Gardiner, Hans Scholze has disappeared
Feb 17, 2008 04:30 AM Dale Brazao Staff reporter
If a homeless man falls off the face of the Earth, does anybody care?
One day, a long time ago, Hans Scholze drove home from his job at an asbestos factory and immediately ushered his wife and young daughter out of their Beach home.
Martians, Scholze told his befuddled family, had chosen him as their representative on Earth, and the house was urgently needed for a high-level meeting of extraterrestrials.
That bizarre act some 30 years ago signalled the beginning of Scholze's downward spiral, which would eventually see him move into a mobile plywood box he parked for years under the Gardiner Expressway.
But now he has gone missing entirely.
"I want to find my father," Monika Scholze said in an email to this newspaper. "He's just disappeared and no one seems to know what's become of him."
Concerned for his well-being, Monika and her mother, Ursula Schandor, have recently been scouring his former haunts along Lake Shore Blvd. and in the port lands, but their detective work turned up nary a clue as to his whereabouts.
"One of his sisters was so concerned that she came from Germany to look for him, but went home without finding him either," Schandor told the Star. "It appears he's just vanished."
For years, Scholze parked what he called his "coffin-on-wheels" under the Gardiner Expressway E. near Leslie St. If cops, hobos or drunken teenagers harassed him, he simply pulled his home a few blocks and resettled.
When the Gardiner extension started coming down in 2000, Scholze pulled up stakes and moved to the port lands near Commissioners St., where his homestead became a highly visible testament to the ugly reality of homelessness.
Those who keep tabs on the homeless say there haven't been any confirmed sightings of the man, known on the streets as "Scholzie" or "the coffin guy," for at least two years.
"The word on the street is that Hans may have left the city or the province," said Iain de Jong, who runs the city's Streets to Homes program. Scholze is not among the 1,500 homeless people his organization has found residences for since the program started in 2005.
The Seaton House hostel does not have any record of Scholze ever staying there. No one at All Saints Church Community Centre on Dundas St. E. can recall ever breaking bread with him.
The provincial coroner's office has not toe-tagged anyone named Hans Scholze, and his photo is not among those of the two dozen unidentified dead posted on the Ontario Provincial Police's website.
It's possible he moved to another town, died an indigent, and was given a pauper's funeral by the local municipality.
Cathy Crowe, a nurse who has dedicated her life to helping Toronto's homeless, says more than 550 have died on the streets of Toronto in the past 23 years, but Scholze's name is not among them.
"I am regularly contacted by people trying to find a relative, as they have no central body to turn to," Crowe laments. "There is no official body in Toronto that takes responsibility for documenting, tracking or doing research into homeless deaths."
Monika Scholze says her father "might be walking to Vancouver, as he always said he'd do." But since he's 72, that scenario is unlikely.
The one certainty is that Hans the Hermit, who used to quote Shakespeare, the Bible and Greek mythology, is nowhere to be found.
Interviewed in 1999 for an article profiling his renegade lifestyle, Scholze told this reporter: "Freedom is everything in America. It can't be described. It must be experienced."
His "freedom" came with a heavy price – his wife and daughter, his safety and well-being, and all the worldly possessions and comforts valued by society.
Monika Scholze has had very little contact with her father since he crawled into his plywood box more than 20 years ago to begin a life of exile, steadfastly refusing all charity or a warm place to live. "It's not easy telling people your father lives in a box under the Gardiner," she says.
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17.02.2008 10:48
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