Klaus Teuber

Klaus Wilhelm Heinrich Teuber The latter sold over 40 million copies, was translated into 40 languages and spawned a family of expansions and versions. Teuber founded the games company Catan GmbH in 2002, and his sons now direct the family business.

Teuber was inducted into the Origin Awards Hall of Fame by the AAGAD (Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design) in 2004. In 2010, he received a special As d'Or in recognition of his lifetime achievement at the Festival International des Jeux in France.

Early life

Teuber was born in 1952 in the village of Rai-Breitenbach, West Germany, under the Breuberg castle. As a child, he played games with model soldiers. He later wrote that his favourite subject in school was geography – he enjoyed making maps – followed by history and chemistry. Teuber returned to gaming as a young husband and father during his military service.

At the age of 11, Teuber was given the board game Romans vs. Carthaginians. Teuber graduated from high school and did military service, then studied chemistry, then completed his intermediate diploma (receiving a degree in chemistry

Barbarossa "When I had trouble in my former profession and needed a mental vacation, I read a book about witches and decided to make a game that follows the story first. Each development of game, I wanted to experience the world of the novel."

Teuber worked as a dental technician for the business Teuber Dental-Labor near Darmstadt, but he was not happy in this work. In the 1980s, he designed his first game, Barbarossa, inspired by the fantasy trilogy, The Riddle-Master, by Patricia A. McKillip. In the game, players make sculptures out of modelling clay, and try to guess what the objects represent. After working on the game for seven years, Teuber finally showed Barbarossa to a publisher.

The Settlers of Catan

In 1991, Teuber started designing The Settlers of Catan, inspired by the history of Viking settlers in Iceland. He took four years to develop the island-settling game; his major breakthrough was when he introduced hexagonal tiles instead of using squares to represent wood, ore, brick, wool, and wheat.

In 2020, sales of Catan surged during the first five months of the global COVID-19 pandemic, as board games became popular during the worldwide lockdown.

Games (selection) For a more complete list, see catan.com's ludography 1988–2024

Barbarossa (1988) Adel Verpflichtet (1990) (Fair Means or Foul, Hoity Toity, Hook or Crook). It was published in the American market by Avalon Hill in 1991, making it an early German-style board game import. Drunter und Drüber (1991) (reworked as Wacky Wacky West in 2010). Catan (1995) (Die Siedler von Catan, The Settlers of Catan) and its many expansions and versions such as the 2007 video game. Löwenherz or Domaine (1997) Pop Belly (1999)

Game of the Year Teuber won the award Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) a total of four times: for Barbarossa in 1988, Adel Verpflichtet (Hoity Toity) in 1990, Drunter und Drüber (Wacky Wacky West) in 1991, and Die Siedler von Catan (The Settlers of Catan) in 1995.