About myself

I – Herald Gessinger – was born in 1943 and have worked in telecommunication. I have found my way to soaps through the thriftyness of my dear wife.

Thrifty housewives never throw away left-over shortening, but collect it. But when the collecting bin has been filled, there will be no more doughnut, Wiener Schnitzel and pommes frittes. This also happened to us, and since I love these unhealthy dishes I immediately found the right solution: " Let’s make soap from it".

Soap-making has a long tradition in my family. Aunt Mizzi still had a few recipes from the time after the war. They were something like that:

" ½ kg saponite dissolved, 2 kg fat, ½ kg suet to bring to a boil, add 7 litres of water, boil until the mass thickens. If the mass crumbles, add more water and boil again. "

This was not clear enough to me, nowhere a hint about the process of saponification, and there was nowhere access to "saponite" or suet. I decided to give up the idea of soap boiling and bought myself a Wiener Schnitzel in a restaurant.

But why does one work in telecommunication and does know about Internet ? This is where I found help. My first hit was in 1997 in USENET. I have kept the print-out to the very day. It was a contribution by Aviva Garrett from California. This made many things clearer to me , and I dared to begin with the first experiment.

The experiment succeeded immediately and I was gripped by soap delusion. A wild time of experimentation followed, and soon the collected shortening had been used up. I had to buy more, and I learned about the properties of pure and unused fats and oils. I therefore could make an attempt to go public with my soaps. Today no visitor leaves my home without a handful of soap (there are still more visitors). I can turn each conversation into a direction such that I will be asked about my soaps. I still receive invitations and can bring soaps as a gift to hosts.

By the way: doughnuts, Wiener Schnitzel and pommes frittes have become rare in spite of my soap-making. My house doctor has banned them…

Here are a few pictures:

My wife as a successful sales person of soaps (dressed warmly at Christmas fair)

My wife Edda and my niece Gerda presenting soaps in 3 languages (German, Czech and Slovak).