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How it started. At the age of 8 or 9 I learned the rules of chess from my father. In 1977 I joined our local chess club in Nordhausen. But it was not before 1982 that I came across MANFRED ZUCKER's excellent problem chess column in Schach. Immediately I started solving and composing chess problems. My first problem was published the following year. Thanks to the help of UDO DEGENER, who was then living in the same town, the results of my composing efforts got better and better. In 1996 I was awarded the title of a FIDE master of chess composition and in 2004 that of an International master.
Fairy chess and chess. In 1984 I subscribed to feenschach and got instantly addicted to fairy chess. Nowadays I do not draw a distinction between orthodox or fairy problems when composing. I think this classification is void, or can anybody explain why a direct stalemate is a fairy problem? But I cannot change the (problem) world... I prefer to divide problems into good and bad ones - a questionable and subjective classification, I have to admit. But it prevents me from wasting too much time on too small ideas. If you are browsing through my problems you will find all kinds of problems - even some retro problems, but in recent years I have mainly focused on direct twomovers with complex modern themes and white line combinations and logical moremovers.
Publishing activities. In 1987 I started my own problem chess magazine called harmonie and edited it for almost 10 years. In 1996 Frank Richter has taken over the editorship. From 1992 to June 1998 I edited the fairy chess column in Die Schwalbe. From 1997 to June 1998 I was also in charge of the helpmate column of that periodical. Apart from this I have published a number of articles on different problem chess subjects.
Computers. For many years I was involved in improving Popeye, probably the most flexible of all testing programs for fairy chess problems. Unfortunately it certainly is also the slowest. Furthermore I have written a program for stereo and space chess - two 3-dimentional chess variants. I have named it Snoopy... About a 5th of my problems were composed with the help of a special program which I initially wrote to verify certain length records given in a feenschach-article on selfmate-maximummer-minimanner-length-records. For some years I have been working on selfmates with 5-8 pieces, which turned out to be quite successfull...
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