An article published in the October 30th, 1969 edition of the Berchtesgaden Newspaper on his 70th birthday, provides a gentle overview:
Tomorrow, Thursday, October 30, the retired building inspector, Dipl. Ing. Otto Schellhorn (Berchtesgaden and Marktschellenberg), will be 70 years old. The celebrant, whose parents’ house is in Sonneberg in Thuringia, has acquired a large circle of friends and acquaintances in the Berchtesgaden region since he came here after the end of the war, as an excellent specialist, but above all as a valuable person. The celebrant can be justifiably proud of the reputation he enjoys.
Schellhorn’s life took him through all of Germany. At the end of the First World War he was already a soldier. He then studied at the technical universities in Darmstadt and Stuttgart. After graduating with great success as a graduate engineer, he initially worked for a private industrial company in Württemberg. In 1938 he was appointed as a building inspector for the Reich Trade Fair City of Leipzig. During the Second World War, Schellhorn initially worked for the city of Bremen, and in the last years of the war he was senior construction manager for the Todt Organization in Silesia.
After the war, O. Schellhorn turned more and more to his specialty, structural engineering, in Berchtesgaden. Here he earned a reputation as an experienced, thorough and reliable expert. “By God’s goodness, I have recently turned 70,” says the celebrant. “God has put into the hearts of today’s youth, who enjoy Beatle music and other achievements of the modern age, the old longing to become real people one day. But he has given old age the wisdom of years and life experience. May all people truly feel God’s will and come to the realization that all striving for power and prestige, for publicity, is just a mask behind which self-interest is hidden.” These are characteristic words for the celebrant’s solid, serene wisdom.
But just as characteristic of this person is the celebrant’s favourite hobby, because it is based in European history: hardly any other lay historian is as well-versed as he is, namely in the history of the High Middle Ages during the heyday of the Hohenstaufen.
The last bridge to the former homeland, before which the Iron Curtain fell, is also close to the heart of the person celebrating the anniversary: ​​many Thuringians have come together in the Sonneberg Alpine Club section, whose hut representative for the Purtschellerhaus has been Otto Schellhorn since 1960.
