I grew up in Leipzig, East-Germany. When I was 14, a friend of mine gave me a non-working but fascinating old tube radio from the early 50s as a present. I thought I could repair it - but that was one big fat false estimation. My parent could not help me. So I went to libraries to find help in books. I was lucky that by living in Leipzig, I had access to the Deutsche Bücherei which collected all (!) books written in our language starting in 1913. Of course, I discovered terribly interesting books from the early tube days as well as from the modern 'Funktechnik' - even West-German books and magazines were on hand. Alas, only inside the library. Nothing could be taken out and there were no copy or fax machines at all. I had to copy everything with pen and paper. Now remember that in the eastern part of Germany, it was very difficult to buy electronic parts. The needed ones were always back-ordered. If available, they cost a fortune. So I plundered certain refuse places where the bigger unwanted pieces were discarded.


It was a nightmare for my mother when I came home with three dirty broken TV sets or radios decades older. I dismantled everything and soon had enough resistors, capacitors, tubes, sockets and transformers to conduct experiments. During that period, I learned a lot of theory and practice. When I was 16, I sold my first tube-based home brew guitar amp. It was a standard PP amp with 2 x EL84s, with the pick-up amp built around a rather noisy EF12...



But I am not only addicted to tubes, old radios or vintage amps. All of that is nothing without music. Thanks to my parents who took me to the famous Gewandhaus Orchester under Kurt  Masure when I was 9 -- and especially because of my father who spent every spare East-German mark for a new LP with classical music or jazz -- our flat was always flooded by music. Later as a student (I studied electronics and semiconductor physics at the university in Ilmenau), I travelled to Hungary each summer mainly for buying LPs. One should know that Hungary then was the only Iron Curtain country where it was possible to buy Western LPs for Eastern money. But that was rather limited. The maximum annual amount of money allowed to be exchanged for Hungarian Forints during vacations equalled exactly 5 LPS - so I came home ever year with five new records. Don't ask me where I spent the nights and what we ate.


During my studies, I was part of a subculture which organized concerts and discos. The playback equipment was poor so I built everything, several amps and speakers for home and PA use. I financed my studies by converting Russian monophonic tape recorders to stereo use based on my own electornics. Tape recording was very important then to save valuable Western LPs and to hunt musical treasures for friends.


In the summer of 1989, I escaped from East Germany via Hungary and Austria through the Iron Curtain together with my girlfriend who would become my wife. We made a new life in Munich where I worked as a design engineer in the aerospace sector. Soon I was responsible for an experiment of the first West-German mission to the Soviet space station Mir. In 1992 I moved to Freiburg near the borders of France and Switzerland. Since then I have enjoyed the open-minded culture of the people in this corner of the country and I of course like the climate as well as the good wine (probably the best in Germany).


I built several amps and loudspeakers and always have more ideas than time to realize them. But one unfinished idea stuck in my head for years - how to combine the advantages of tubes and transistors in a new way. During the summer of 1998, I began with the first simulations of my new hybrid power amp topology. Today's Thorens TEM 3200 is its realization...