The Messenger from Afar

Why the New Often Must Come from Outside

The Archetype

In the old stories, there is a recurring figure: the messenger from afar. He comes from far away, from another country, another culture, another world. He brings news that no one wants to hear. He sees things that the natives cannot see — or do not want to see.

Sometimes he is a prophet. Sometimes a fool. Sometimes both at once. He is mistrusted, ridiculed, ignored. He speaks a different language — not only literally, but also figuratively. His categories are different, his questions are different, his answers are different.

The natives have their way of seeing things. They have their traditions, their certainties, their routines. The messenger disturbs. He brings unrest to a system that considers itself stable. He points out possibilities that no one considered — because no one thought to consider them.

That is his strength. And his curse.

The Concrete Case

In Zwickau, at the University of Applied Sciences of Western Saxony, there works a professor of machine elements. His name is Masoud Ziaei, and he comes from Iran. He earned his doctorate in Darmstadt, stayed to research, became a professor.

His field: polygon shaft-hub connections. Non-round profiles for mechanical connections. Trochoid geometry. Positive-locking power transmission. A niche topic, one might think — until one understands what it's about.

It's about the question of how to transmit torque from a shaft to a hub. The old answer: keys, splines, serrations — solutions from the 19th century that are still standard today. The new answer: polygon profiles. Continuous curves instead of corners and edges. Mathematically elegant, technically superior.

Professor Ziaei has dedicated his academic life to this question. His doctoral thesis in 1997 at Darmstadt: FEM analysis of P4C polygon connections. His habilitation in 2002 at Chemnitz: Analytical investigations and numerical optimization of polygon profiles. Decades of research, dozens of publications, international recognition.

A messenger from afar who brought the new — to a country that didn't want the new.

The Irony of the Situation

Polygon shaft-hub connections were invented in Austria. By Krause in Vienna and Musyl in Graz — decades ago. In Germany, Fortuna tried to introduce the technology — with moderate success. The fundamentals were known, the advantages documented, the patents filed. The German-speaking world had everything to become the world market leader in this technology.

It didn't become it. Industry showed no interest. The machine builders stuck with their keys. The standardization committees ignored the topic. The inventors — they exist, they still live, they still fight — were rejected, put off, forgotten. And this despite the fact that they had shown decades ago that polygon shaft-hub connections made with their invention are not just better, but can be manufactured at one-tenth the cost of conventional methods.

At least: A German professor published an article in 2006 titled "In 8 Seconds to the Polygon." The technology was finally being academically recognized — one might think. But the real inventors do not appear in it — although the professor knew them personally. Coincidence? I consider it telling: the academic world adopted the idea, but not the acknowledgment. The inventors remained invisible.

And then comes a young man from Iran. He sees this technology and recognizes its potential. He dedicates his life to it. He achieves what the native inventors couldn't achieve: academic recognition. A chair. A research group. Publications in journals. A place in the system.

Professor Ziaei even manages to establish the simple polygon form — the one that can be manufactured with "half the invention" and was already propagated by the inventor since 1985 — finally in 2021 as the H-profile with the standard DIN 3689. A triumph, one might think. The academic crowning achievement after decades.

But what has actually happened since then? Almost nothing. Same procedure as in past. Business as usual. The standard exists, but industry ignores it. The research is available, but no one applies it. The H-profile is in the rulebook, but the machine builders continue manufacturing with keys.

Why the Stranger Sees What the Native Does Not See

The native knows how things are. He knows the rules, the hierarchies, the unwritten laws. He knows what is possible and what is not. He knows which questions one asks and which one does not.

This knowledge is valuable. It enables efficiency, orientation, capacity for action. But it has a price: blindness. The blindness of someone so deep in the system that he can no longer see the system itself.

The stranger doesn't have this blindness. He doesn't know the rules — so he breaks them without realizing it. He doesn't know the hierarchies — so he speaks to the wrong people, asks the wrong questions, enters the wrong rooms. He doesn't know what "one" doesn't do — so he does it.

Sometimes he fails because of this. Usually, even. The rules exist for reasons; those who don't know them stumble over them. But sometimes — in rare, precious moments — the stranger sees something that the natives overlooked. A possibility that was obvious but no one saw. A door that stood open but no one walked through.

The Treatment of the Messenger

How does a society treat the messenger from afar? Much can be read from this.

An open society listens. It takes the foreign perspective seriously. It asks: "What do you see that we do not see?" It is willing to question its own certainties. It uses the stranger as a mirror.

A closed society deflects. It says: "You don't understand us." It explains to the stranger why his ideas don't work here. It has a thousand reasons why the new is impossible — and not a single one to try it.

Germany is — in this respect — a closed society. Not in the political sense, not in the cultural. But in the technical, the industrial, the innovative sense. Germany knows how things are done. Germany needs no instruction from outside.

The result: The messenger finds refuge in academia. There he can research, publish, teach. There he is respected — as a scientist, not as a practitioner. Industry continues to ignore him. His findings remain theoretical. His optimizations remain on paper.

The Two Systems

In Germany, two systems exist side by side that barely speak to each other: academia and industry.

Academia is international. It accepts researchers from all over the world. It evaluates by publications, not by origin. It is — relatively speaking — open to new ideas, as long as they can be published in journals.

Industry is national. It is shaped by traditions, supply chains, relationship networks. It evaluates by the proven, not by the new. It is — structurally — closed to ideas from outside.

The messenger from afar can land in academia. There he can become a professor, lead research groups, supervise doctoral students. But he cannot reach industry. The wall between the systems is too high. His research remains research — without application, without impact, without change.

The German Inventor and the Foreign Professor

There is another dimension to this story. Besides the professor from Iran, there are the German inventors. Those who invented polygon turning decades ago. Those who filed patents and built machines. Those who ran against the wall of industry — for decades, without success.

They didn't get chairs. They didn't lead research groups. They didn't publish in journals — because they were practitioners, not academics. They worked in workshops, not in laboratories.

The foreign professor and the native inventor: They work on the same topic. They share the same passion. But they live in different worlds. One in academia, the other in practice. One with recognition, the other without.

This is not the professor's fault. He did what he could, in the system available to him. He advanced the topic — in his way, with his means. That these means are academic and not industrial is not his choice. It is the structure of the system.

What the Messenger Teaches Us

The messenger from afar teaches us something about ourselves. About our blindnesses, our certainties, our limits.

He teaches us that foreignness is a value. That the view from outside sees things that the view from inside does not see. That "we've always done it this way" is not an answer, but a question suppressed.

He teaches us that our systems have walls. Between academia and industry, between theory and practice, between recognition and impact. Walls that include people like him — and exclude people like the native inventors.

He teaches us that we could listen — but don't listen. That we could see — but don't look. That we could learn — but don't want to learn.

The Question

The question is not whether we need messengers from afar. We have them — in our universities, in our research institutes, in our companies. People from all over the world who came here to work, to research, to invent.

The question is whether we listen to them. Whether we understand their foreignness as an opportunity, not an obstacle. Whether we are willing to question our own certainties — to see through their eyes, to ask their questions, to consider their possibilities.

So far the answer is: No. We bring them into the country, but we don't listen to them. We give them positions, but no impact. We respect their research, but we don't change our actions.

The messenger stands before us. The message lies on the table. The only question is: Do we hear it?