A playchild to the end: The “Settlers of Catan” inventor Klaus Teuber is dead. He died on April 1 at the age of 70 “after a short and serious illness,” as Catan GmbH and Kosmos-Verlag announced on Tuesday . Until the very end, he worked on the third volume of his trilogy of novels that went with the game, as Kosmos-Verlag wrote. Teuber developed the classic game “Settlers of Catan” in 1995.
“With his many award-winning games, he has inspired millions of people around the world,” said Kosmos-Verlag. With “Catan” he created a unique game universe that has become one of the most successful board games in well over 40 countries. It is one of the most successful board games from Germany. In 2002, Teuber founded Catan GmbH together with his wife and sons, with which he marketed the games he had developed.
World board game championships also take place regularly – people from dozens of countries travel to compete in the classic game. Teuber himself competed at one of these events. In 2010 he lost against the former handball player Stefan Kretzschmar – albeit out of competition.
“Board games didn’t play a major role in his childhood until he was given the game Romans vs. Carthaginians at the age of 11,” says the company’s website about the game father. Teuber’s career start was anything but playful: after graduating from high school and doing military service, he first studied chemistry and then joined his father’s dental laboratory. To compensate for the stress of everyday work, he began developing games in the early 1980s.
“First I wanted to create the financial security to be able to continue playing the games I enjoy,” he said more than 20 years ago. In 1988 he had a great success with his first game: “Barbarossa and the Riddle Masters” was awarded Game of the Year. He later won this award several times, including in 1995 with “Settlers of Catan”. According to Catan GmbH, after the great success, Teuber then concentrated entirely on the game world.
Together with his wife and “most important game partner”, he used to organize game nights with friends, the company writes. At some point it seems that just playing was no longer enough for him. “I only had the feeling of creating something when I was making games,” said Teuber more than 20 years ago. “It’s like a pull, always great, always further.”
Additional source: Message on “catan.de”
