I was born in a village nearby the Lake of Constance. Eight war deaths in my own family aroused my interest in the Second World War early on. Therefore, after graduating from high school, I decided to study modern history and political science at the universities of Freiburg and Salamanca. Here, too, I was particularly interested in contemporary history and the “Age of Extremes”. Parallel to my studies, I was an intern and working student at the Federal Military Archive in Freiburg, where I was able to deepen my knowledge of German military history. I finished my studies with the grade “very good”. In my master thesis, I wrote a biography of the Prussian Field Marhal Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz.

Since December 2008 I have been working as a research service, mainly in the Federal Military Archive in Freiburg. My focus is on the processing of family histories in the Nazi era and research on military-historical topics from 1871 to today. I currently live in Freiburg with my wife and my three children.