About me

I was born in 1970 in Münster, grew up in Bremen, and have lived in Berlin since 1999.

I always loved playing games. Mostly it was less about winning (unless I played my sisters) and more about understanding and learning which I loved and love doing. By the way, is there anybody out there who thought that Jakutien and Kamschatka were actual states in Asia and that Canada did not exist (where should it be, anyway, as the Risk!-board showed the North-West-Territories)?

From gaming I soon turned to changing and/or improving rules. Unfortunately the rules of our legendary "fan game", which my sister Martina and I designed on the Risk!-board in the early 1980s, have not survived.

Soon I started documenting the rules of the games I designed, even if I never showed a prototype to anybody.  Some of them actually still exist.

In 1994 I attended a gaming weekend at Tagungshaus Drübberholz - Spielezentrum Niedersachsen for the first time - an eye opener. I had already joined the Bremen based games club "Spielrausch e.V." earlier, but in Drübberholz I not only met gamers but also game designers, especially Friedemann Friese and Wolfgang Panning.

In 1998 Wolfgang, Friedemann and I organised a first seminar for (wannabe) game designers. A "by-product" of this first seminar was my game  "Stimmvieh" which I self-published in May 1998. At the games' fair in Essen 2000 I published my second game "Hossa!", so far my biggest success sales-wise.

I was Alan R. Moon's co-chair at the game designers' association SAZ, was a founder and member of  Fachtagung Spieleautoren GbR, who organized the German Game Designer Days, and am a co-founder of Spiel Direkt, a co-operative selling games to retailers.

The more I understand about politics, the more I see parallels to game rules systems. Sometimes I know how to use this knowledge in my main job in the area of Cllimate Action.  

I do not have one favourite game. I like intelligent deduction games, I like "Ticket 2 Ride", "Modern Art", "Ave Caesar", "Frischfisch", "Funkenschlag", and of course I will always play "Hossa" happily.