EN 
DE 
Ulrich Milde
Leipzig. The offices are modern, bright and friendly. There is a kitchen and a room with a pool table and small bar. Outside, there is a beach volleyball court. "We sometimes play there in summer and also fire up the barbecue," reports Martin Flechsig. He is the head of mitteldeutsche IT GmbH, which moved into its new, 5.3 million euro headquarters in the north of Leipzig a year ago, relocating from Grimma to the trade fair metropolis.
It is remarkable that Flechsig is clearly on a successful course as an entrepreneur. The 44-year-old has had, shall we say, an eventful past. The fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification threw him off course. He used his new-found freedom to frequently intervene and disrupt school lessons. As a result, he spent many hours outside the classroom as punishment.
Bad certificate
"I was the rebellious type and didn't let anyone tell me what to do," he remembers. So he went from being the model boy to the worst pupil in Grimma, stayed behind in seventh grade and switched to a secondary school.
"Freedom was too much for me," he looks back. "I didn't care about a lot of things back then." As a result, he managed to pass his secondary school leaving certificate by the skin of his teeth and probably only because the teachers turned a blind eye. "I probably had the worst report card."
His father got him an apprenticeship as a roofer, but he completed his training more badly than well and didn't really enjoy the job. Instead, he enjoyed throwing lots of parties. "I had reached the lowest point of my life." But at some point he told himself that he couldn't go on like this.
Time in the army brings a turnaround
His personal turning point came during his time in the German army. Flechsig was stationed with the mountain troops in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and therefore frequently commuted by train between Saxony and Bavaria. He discovered "huge differences" between the two Free States. "There was a lot of gray here, that touched me."
During one of the train journeys, he came across a business magazine. It said that only a few of the companies in the new federal states were owned by East Germans. "That's when it clicked for me, I wanted to do something for my homeland and not go to the West, like many of my friends, but bring the prosperity there here."
After his military service, he returned home and began retraining as an IT systems electronics technician at Robotron. He was lucky that nobody really paid attention to the fact that he didn't have the required school-leaving certificate after the tenth grade. "I slipped into it." He had a great affinity for information technology. He had already started writing his first programs on a Commodore C 64 as a child.
Best in class
Flechsig was seized by ambition and worked for twelve hours almost every day. With success. After graduating at the top of his class, he quickly found a job as a system administrator at an Opel car dealership. He also continued his education at night school, including English. He later modernized the IT programs for other car dealerships, writing applications himself. "I already had expertise in software development."
The next turning point in his life came when a business partner of his employer asked him to take care of his poor Internet connection. Flechsig went to the Cebit computer show in Hanover, looked at radio relay equipment from Israel, ordered it and modified the software. He managed to install an Internet connection with ISDN speed.
Flechsig was 27 years old when he started his own business in a friend's basement in Krostitz. He connected more than 100 subscribers to the Internet via radio relay.
Many western customers
Flechsig and his company specialized in IT services and fibre optic expansion and founded a civil engineering company for this purpose. The entrepreneur is now active throughout Saxony and supports numerous medium-sized companies, mainly in the former West Germany.
In recent years, he has developed a cloud solution "that previously only existed in the USA". Today, Flechsig employs 65 people in IT alone and has a turnover of more than 20 million euros.
In times of a shortage of skilled workers, students who are not so good are also becoming increasingly important. "The rate of early school leavers must be reduced," said Andreas Brzezinski, Managing Director of the Dresden Chamber of Skilled Crafts, some time ago.
In fact, there are 50,000 young people nationwide who leave school without a qualification every year. In 2022, this figure was 8.5 percent of the 33,000 school leavers in Saxony. There is talk in business circles of an "unacceptable waste of resources".
"Believe in yourself, don't let yourself down," Flechsig appeals to young people who have little fun and success at school. As a rule, there are always goals that can be achieved. Especially "if you are really interested in something". The Managing Director called on parents to teach their children values. After all: "You reap what you sow."
