Most people in the amusement industry today won’t know Hans Rosenzweig. He rode off into the sunset in the mid-1990s to retirement and many happy hours on the Marbella golf course.
Hans died on March 21 and, to my sadness, I didn’t find out about it until April 9, so have not been able to pay tribute to a very notable character in the industry’s history until now.
Rosenzweig, for perhaps a decade, controlled much of the movement of video games and pinballs in Europe, as the main European importer of games from the US market. He handled Williams, Bally, Atari and many other makes, bringing them into Europe and setting up their distribution via country distributors all over the continent.
He was what we all call, simply, “a character”; a stocky, bearded, formidable businessman with short-cropped hair that gave him a Prussian appearance. He was also very gruff so to newcomers seemed a little fearsome. In fact, he was immensely likeable and had a keen sense of humour and, once he got to know you, was an unshakeable friend.
He ensured that his company, Nova Apparate (initially independent, latterly part of the Gauselmann Group) was one of the first advertisers in the new international publication that was InterGame in 1994. For that initial trust, we are in his debt.
But I knew him for years before that, as he held regular distributor meetings to which the trade press were invited, often at the IMA show, and usually in some typically German half-timbered beer hall which were great occasions. I well remember one during the show in Frankfurt in the 1980s when he held such a reception and told me laughing that it was “the only old-fashioned beer hall that the RAF missed!”
We had a great personal relationship and he would delight in referring to InterGame as “your English magazine”, and enjoying the fruits of his wind-up as I became indignant because not only was it a British (rather than English) publication in terms of where it was produced, we were at great pains to make it an international publication and UK news was kept to a minimum.
Rosenzweig had a considerable reputation among the major machine producers of the day – and those days included some of the great periods of the video-game boom – and was hugely respected by the principals of all of the companies; and that wasn’t simply because he was key to importing thousands of the games into the European market. It was much more of a personal respect than that.
The last time I saw Hans was on a very humble occasion: a visit to a supermarket in Marbella. Pushing my trolley through the door I heard from behind me: “’Allo Snooky, how’s your English magazine?” and it was Hans, sitting in the coffee shop at the entrance to the store while his wife was shopping. I joined him and we chin-wagged as old fogies from the industry tend to do, talking about old times.
Hans and his charming wife, Ute, subsequently joined us for dinner at a typical Spanish chiringuito on the Marbella beach that evening and he related all of his string of operations to various joints. I asked him how that had affected his golf. “It has helped. I have so many artificial joints now, I am a bionic man…”
There are some people in this industry that cannot be replaced.
