His research in inorganic chemistry and crystal chemistry was and remains groundbreaking.
He was born on July 6, 1931 in Ranis/Thuringia as the son of a medical doctor. Until the end of the war he went to school in Messow and Crossen, places in present-day Poland, as well as at the boarding school of the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde in Niesky/Oberlausitz. With, in his words, the total loss of scholastic knowledge, he learnt to become a baker during the chaos of the post-war years before the family came together again in 1946 near Münster in Westphalia. After his Abitur in Münster, he enrolled in chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the university in 1951, thereby abandoning his original aim of medicine. He concluded his studies with a Diplom in 1958 working with Wilhelm Klemm and a doctorate in 1960 with Rudolf Hoppe. In the year prior to completing his doctorate, he married Christa Schulze-Rhonhoff; together they had daughters Christine, Renata, and Daniela. Chemistry also belonged to the family: the reverse of a surviving wedding card is filled with formulae. Enthusiasm for chemistry and highperformance sport characterized his student years. He achieved many victories, crowned by winning repeatedly the title of Westphalian Champion, West German Champion, and German University Champion in international pentathlon.
Even as graduate student he took a deep interest in crystal-structure determination as guest researcher with Zemann in Göttingen, and after gaining his doctorate he systematically built up modern structural analysis in Münster. With a program system developed by him and mathematicians at the university he created an instrument that not only served the solution of problems of crystal structures from his own research but benefited different work groups in the institute and other universities. Thus his Habilitation in 1964 with the title "Beiträge zur Chemie binärer und ternärer Halogeno-und Oxoverbindungen der Metalle" also contained pioneering structural investigations on cluster compounds of the transition metals synthesized by Harald Schäfer.