A personal perspective of high energy accelerators

At the beginning of this year I retired from the position of Head of the Accelerator Department at `Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron-DESY´, which I had held for the last 22 years. I want to thank the organizers of this conference for the invitation to give a talk on `A personal perspective of high energy accelerators´. This gives me a chance to thank my teachers, my colleagues and friends, whom I have found during the 37 years in which I have been working in the field of accelerators and who have helped to make my life so exciting and wonderful