Klaus Teuber

Teuber was born in 1952 in the village of Rai-Breitenbach, West Germany, under the Breuberg castle.{{r|NY}} As a child, he played games with model soldiers.{{r|NY}} He later wrote that his favourite subject in school was geography – he enjoyed making maps – followed by history and chemistry.{{Cite news |last=Zak |first=Dan |date=7 April 2023 |title=In a world of Monopoly and Risk, the maker of Catan settled for more: Klaus Teuber’s basement creation brought peace to game night |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/04/07/catan-inventor-klaus-teuber/ |access-date=11 April 2023 }} Teuber returned to gaming as a young husband and father during his military service.{{r|NY}}

At the age of 11, Teuber was given the board game Romans vs. Carthaginians.{{cite web |title=About Us |url=https://www.catan.com/about-us |website=CATAN .com |access-date=19 August 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210919135734/https://www.catan.com/about-us |archive-date=19 September 2021 |language=en}} Teuber graduated from high school and did military service, then studied chemistry, then completed his intermediate diploma (receiving a degree in chemistry), then joined his father's 65-employee dental laboratory business which fell into large problems, and his father fell ill.{{cite news |last1=Wüllner |first1=Daniel |title="Die Siedler von Catan": Erfinder Klaus Teuber ist tot |url=https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/spiele-klaus-teuber-siedler-von-catan-tot-1.5781391 |access-date=19 August 2024 |work=Süddeutsche.de |date=4 April 2023 |language=de}}

"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."{{cite news |last1=Hirano |first1=Mariko |title=Catan inventor Klaus Teuber: Board games make us laugh together |url=https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Catan-inventor-Klaus-Teuber-Board-games-make-us-laugh-together |access-date=18 August 2024 |work=Nikkei Asia |date=January 3, 2022 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20240818222948/https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Catan-inventor-Klaus-Teuber-Board-games-make-us-laugh-together |archive-date=18 August 2024}}

Teuber worked as a dental technician for the business Teuber Dental-Labor{{cite news |title=Klaus Teuber, 70 - Nachruf |url=https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/klaus-teuber-70-nachruf-a-484f93c1-e8bd-4560-adbd-17c341704747 |access-date=18 August 2024 |work=Der Spiegel |date=7 April 2023 |language=de}} near Darmstadt, but he was not happy in this work.{{r|NY}}{{Cite news |date=5 April 2023 |title=Klaus Teuber, the former dental technician who created the Catan board game phenomenon in his basement, dies at 70 |work=Fortune |agency=Associated Press |url=https://fortune.com/2023/04/04/klaus-teuber-obituary-dead-70-settlers-of-catan-board-game-creator/ |access-date=11 April 2023 }} In the 1980s, he designed his first game, Barbarossa, inspired by the fantasy trilogy, The Riddle-Master, by Patricia A. McKillip.{{r|NY}}{{r|NYT}} In the game, players make sculptures out of modelling clay, and try to guess what the objects represent.{{r|NY}} After working on the game for seven years, Teuber finally showed Barbarossa to a publisher.{{r|NY}}{{cite web |title=ludography 1988 - 1990 |url=https://www.catan.com/explore-catan/ludography/1988-1990 |website=CATAN .com |access-date=19 August 2024 |language=en}}

{{Main|Catan}}

In 1991, Teuber started designing The Settlers of Catan, inspired by the history of Viking settlers in Iceland.{{Cite journal |last1=Seaman |first1=C. B. |last2=Thuan Tran |date=May 2022 |title=Intellectual Property and Tabletop Games |url=https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-107-issue-4/intellectual-property-and-tabletop-games |journal=Iowa Law Review |volume=107 |issue=4 |pages=1615–1683 }}{{r|NYT}} 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.{{r|NY}} Catan has been credited with launching a new more "social" era for board games, introducing bargaining and bartering among players as part of the strategy to win.{{r|NYT}}

In 1999 he sold the dental laboratory, which was taken over by his father.

The commercial success of Catan allowed Teuber to become a full-time game designer in 1998.{{r|NY}} The family game business was incorporated as Catan GmbH in 2002 and his sons Benjamin and Guido are directors while his wife Claudia and his daughter also have roles as bookkeeper and tester.{{r|NY}}

The popularity of Catan continued to grow, eventually translated into 40 languages, with multiple expansions, geographically themed versions, a card game, a version for young children, a video game, and online versions, as well as a novel and other spinoffs.{{r|NYT}} For the development of the video game adaptation of Catan, Teuber created a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with "elaborate logic chains and probability matrices" so that the developers could determine the effects of each action on gameplay.{{cite magazine|url=https://www.wired.com/2009/03/mf-settlers/|title=Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre|magazine=Wired|date=23 March 2009|access-date=9 April 2023}}

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. As of 2023, more than 40 million copies of Catan have been sold worldwide.{{r|BBC}}

Despite the success of Catan, Teuber was described as remaining down to earth. In 2023, Dan Zak wrote in The Washington Post, "Among hobbyists and gamers he was revered like a rock star, but he looked and acted and sounded like a man who tinkered with stuff in his basement...He was, at heart, a hobbyist." When Teuber was asked why he thought Catan was so popular, he said it may have been due to a "good balance between strategy and luck".

Teuber died on 1 April 2023 at age 70, after a brief illness.{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Andy |date=4 April 2023 |title='Catan' creator Klaus Teuber has died |url=https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/catan-creator-klaus-teuber-has-died-3425774 |access-date=4 April 2023 |website=NME |language=en-GB}}

For a more complete list see catan.com's ludography 1988-2024

File:A game of Settlers of Catan.jpg

{{anchor|Timberland (board game)}}

• Barbarossa (1988)
• Timberland (1989), a German-style board game based on woodland management that came in ninth in the Deutscher Spiele Preis (German Game Prize).{{Cite web | url=http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4957/timberland| title=Timberland| website=BoardGameGeek| access-date=17 September 2018}}{{cite web |title=Ludography: 1988–1990 |url=https://www.catan.com/explore-catan/ludography/1988-1990 |website=catan.com}}
• Adel Verpflichtet (1990) (Fair Means or Foul, Hoity Toity, Hook or Crook). Was published in the American market by Avalon Hill in 1991, making it an early German-style board game import.{{Cite book | author=Shannon Appelcline| title=Designers & Dragons| publisher=Mongoose Publishing| year=2011| isbn= 978-1-907702-58-7| pages=179}}
• Drunter und Drüber (1991) (reworked as Wacky Wacky West in 2010).{{cite news|title='Catan' Designer Tackles Wild West|url=http://icv2.com/articles/games/view/16746/catan-designer-tackles-wild-west|accessdate=31 March 2016|work=ICv2|date=28 January 2010}}
• Catan (1995) (Die Siedler von Catan, The Settlers of Catan) and its many expansions and versions such as the 2007 video game.
• Entdecker (1996).{{cite web |title=Entdecker (1996) |url=https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/200/entdecker |website=BoardGameGeek}}
• Löwenherz or Domaine (1997){{cite web |title=Löwenherz (1997) |url=https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5737/domaine |website=BoardGameGeek}}
• Pop Belly (1999){{cite web |title=Pop Belly |url=https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/852/pop-belly |website=BoardGameGeek |access-date=6 April 2023}}

Teuber won the award, Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year), for Barbarossa in 1988,{{r|NY}} 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,{{r|NYT}} winning the award four times.

• Going Cardboard, (documentary; includes an interview with Teuber)

{{reflist |refs=

{{citation |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65194096 |title=Settlers of Catan: Creator of board game dies aged 70 |publisher=BBC |author=Antoinette Radford |date=5 April 2023}}

{{citation |url=https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-man-who-built-catan |title=The Man Who Built Catan |first=Adrienne |last=Raphel |author-link=Adrienne Raphel|date=12 February 2014 |magazine=The New Yorker}}

{{citation |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/business/klaus-teuber-dead.html |newspaper=The New York Times |title=Klaus Teuber, Creator of the Board Game Catan, Dies at 70 |author=Neil Genzlinger |date=5 April 2023}}

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• http://www.catan.de/
• http://www.catan.com/
• {{cite news |last1=Levy |first1=Larry |title=Klaus Teuber: The Special K's of German Game Design (Kramer, Knizia, and Klaus) |url=http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/SpecialK3.shtml |access-date=19 August 2024 |work=The Games Journal - a boardgaming monthly |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010825180338/http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/SpecialK3.shtml |archive-date=25 August 2001 |url-status=usurped |quote=After graduating from college, he followed in his father's footsteps and worked as a dental technician, eventually taking over his father's company. At the rather advanced age of 36 he had his first game published.}}

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Category:1952 births

Category:2023 deaths

Category:Board game designers

Category:Klaus Teuber games

Category:People from Odenwaldkreis