With the passing of Hans Georg Borst, we lost one of the great pioneers of cardiovascular surgery in Europe. His unique style, gracious leadership, and restless mentorship helped spread the then new field of cardiac surgery in Germany and later around the world. A true gentleman, devoted to international exchange and collaboration, he became the teacher of several generations of heart surgeons not only in his home country, but around the world.The number of those who spent time in his department is enormous. It can be said that there are pupils of Hans Georg Borst on every continent around the world. Physicians from Asia, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe benefitted from his hospitality and dedicated teaching. In his university, the Hanover Medical School, he created an innovative department of surgery, then split it off in independent subspecialties, allowing growth and innovation to an extent that German medicine had not seen since the First World War.Hans Georg Borst grew up in a typical German "Ordinarien Haushalt," home of a university professor. His father, the worldrenown pathologist Max Borst was one of the leading Professors in German Medicine between 1890 and 1945. 1 At the time of Hans Georg's birth on October 17, 1927, 2 days before father Max Borst's 58th birthday, the father presided for more than a quarter century over the institute of pathology at the Ludwig Maximilan University in Munich. The head of surgery at the Munich University, Ferdinand Sauerbruch, had just left for Berlin. Edward Churchill, visiting from