Born in one of numerous agglomerations of New Berlin, with caring but poor proletarian parents, Eckhart grew up under the constant influence of street gangs, their showdowns, quick scheme earnings. The Feuderal Goverment provided young man only with hatred to corrupted police and his pathetic education which was incomplete College. One could consider that existence quite dire, but Eckhart never actually cared - diverse club rhythms, good friends from his bloc and accessible drugs were enough to carry away any thoughts about that.

So he would have burned his life away, if not the constant cash needs which led him finding his niche of butchering and tuning different landcrafts - wheeled ones, hooverbikes, racing shuttles. Even with somewhat piloting skills, Eckhart always left the pleasure of testing his creations to customers and never admitted failures. Even if there were, no signs of landings from which someone could walk away from were left... As soon as the name of a trusted mechanic was part of the punks' language around the planet, Alster Union reached him for the sake of accommodating such a handy frame. Eckhart already have heard about the Unioners. With both the praise from youngsters and controversial deeds spread by Colony News weighed, his decide was to join.

Soon enough the guy found himself delving the guts of different spacecrafts which had a little difference(thanks to sheer Rheinland standardization), earning the name yet again, but now among the new comrades from Alster. Laconic, with the Innate wit, decisive because of youth well spent in slums and lacking any embarrassment from getting his hands dirty with blood - all this made him a perfect candidate for earning Syndicates trust. Though there of course were problems on the beginning - Eckhart may have left the block, but the bloc didn't leave him: Appearance was odd even for motley Unioner society. There was a hothead behavior to be fixed, as well as no one had achieved getting him to change his tracksuits, originating from his birthplace, where it played a huge role in an obscure band fashion. But as time have passed and cold ones were cracked onboard with more and more Alster members, enough confidence in him was earned even for running a personal chop-shop on Pacifica, similar to one in New Berlin. Hopf also had a say on any constructions or repairs that Syndicate required, though his heart yet belonged to single-person crafts.

With the coup mutilated the entire House, Eckhart found himself on the Imperial side, tirelessly leading repairs for both new Rheinwehr and Union snubcrafts and making up for the lack of command: most of the oberarbeiters were pretty busy on the frontline, which only raised his respect. Decisions made were the shortest and pragmatic - that puzzled more idealistic members, but was even welcomed among the "plain" ones, most of which shared quite common cultural background with their informal leader.

As the war reached its cold state, Hopf poked his head out the garage to find himself as one of a handful chiefs - many Syndicate cells and its leaders have met their fate from federal hands, before Imperialists took planets and stations back. Other remnants were too busy licking wounds to consider gathering all together for avenging fallen sisters and brothers in one last strike. Realization of that soon led to the largest Union installation delving into turmoil. It was suppressed almost after it started by Eckhart who nevertheless decided to come out of the shadows and lead the people who were already supporting him. Goals for this moment were obvious - to bring order(in his meaning) and restore Union, along with making bonds within freshly formed Kaiserreich - the cornerstone of the whole Union ideology.