Plaque on the Führer building at Arcisstraße 12 in Munich on the destruction of Czechoslovakia by Hitler in 1938
Führer building in Munich at Arcisstrasse 12
To the right of the Führer building is the NS Documentation Center in Munich. No Czech information could be found here either.
The idea came while visiting the town hall tower in Munich
to the QR translator based on artificial intelligence.
It all started in 1992 – that was the year when the family wanted to visit the Czechoslovak homeland of Klaus Hamal’s father after the abolition of forced exchange and the fresh opening of the borders after 1989. As Sudeten Germans,
they had to leave their homeland of Moravia in what is now the Czech Republic, were completely expropriated with the company, house and property and found accommodation in Altötting in Upper Bavaria as so-called “backpack Germans”
– as the refugees from the Sudeten regions were called at the time.
As a 27-year-old Klaus Hamal visited his father’s home town of Hohenstadt (Zabreh) in 1992 and noticed the many pretty Czech girls with whom one could have a funny conversation with the help of dictionaries.
Back in Germany, he decided to place a personal ad in Czechoslovakia through the then newspaper “Kurz & Fündig”. At that time, you could have advertisements published in partner newspapers worldwide via the newspaper network. After
a few weeks, stacks of letters actually began to arrive. At a meeting on April 4, 1993 at Wenceslas Square in Prague, Klaus Hamal actually met his future wife.
The two got along so well on the first day, as if they had known each other for years. After 3 weeks she moved into his one-room apartment in Munich and after 7 months they got married on November 11th, 1993.
However, his wife was already taking private German lessons in the Czech Republic, so Klaus Hamal did not have to learn Czech himself (apart from a few hundred words). In return, his wife studied Bavarian diligently…
In the summer of 2022, his wife’s Czech relatives came to visit. The nephew from the Czech Republic wanted to visit the Führer building in Munich at Arcisstraße 12, where Hitler had decided on September 29, 1938 to break up Czechoslovakia.
Apart from a note on a plaque, however, no further information was found on the historical reference to this place. Next door, one hoped for more information, since the Nazi documentation center is located there near Königsplatz. But
here too, nothing – no Czech information to be found. Unfortunately, the very interesting exhibition was only written in German and English, so that the Czech visitors understood little.
On the same day we went to visit the tower of Munich City Hall. Same as before, there was no information to be found in the Czech language.
At the top of the town hall tower, a customer from Düsseldorf coincidentally called Klaus Hamal, who wanted to order the digital menu. Its also based on QR codes and has been in the program with his company Alpha11 as a distributor
since 2018. Since the customer was an important hotel, they wanted the dishes to be displayed in other languages on the QR code. After consultation with the chief developer, this was confirmed and at the same time it clicked in Klaus
Hamal’s head.
Why not have the part of the QR code automatically translated using the AI tools that are now available? …and not translate food using the same function, but rather visitor and tourism information or descriptions of exhibits in museums
or applications in immigration offices, product packaging, etc. as a versatile tool.
Since Alpha11 has had many years of experience with QR codes and their possibilities, he decided to develop the tool. The fact that the QR translator then worked so well surprised everyone. The quality of the artificial intelligence is very impressive and can already be used for an enormous number of applications. Nevertheless, there is the possibility to manually check the finished AI translations and change them afterwards.
Now that you know the whole story behind the QR translator, it is an interesting coincidence that the visit to Hitler’s Führer-Haus, which led to the crushing of the CSSR and the expropriation of Klaus Hamal’s family, was the reason for the intelligent QR code of the QR translator is. History is always something exciting.
About Klaus Hamal:
Klaus Hamal, born in 1965, married, one daughter, is the founder and managing director of Alpha11 GmbH, which was founded in 1999. He completed his training as an office machine mechanic, further training as a master information electronics
technician, business economist (HWK) and is an honorary examiner for IT professions at the IHK for Munich and Upper Bavaria.
With his company, he and his team and partner companies develop solutions for the gastronomy, hotel, logistics, retail and medical sectors. With the QR translator, a tool for museums and authorities for the first time.