21 years ago it was a joint idea with Hans Rottenkolber to organize a workshop dedicated to the discussion of the latest results in the automatic processing of fringe patterns. This idea was promoted by the insight that automatic and high precision phase measurement techniques will play a key role in all future industrial and scientific applications of optical metrology. A couple of months later more than 50 specialists from East and West met in East Berlin, the capital of the former GDR, to spend 3 days with the discussion of new principles of fringe processing. In the stimulating atmoshere...