12 Facts About Klaus Teuber

Klaus Wilhelm Heinrich Teuber was a German board game designer best known as the creator of Catan.

Klaus Teuber was inducted into the Origin Awards Hall of Fame by the AAGAD in 2004.

Klaus Teuber was born in 1952 in the village of Rai-Breitenbach, West Germany, under the Breuberg castle.

Klaus Teuber returned to gaming as a young husband and father during his military service.

At the age of 11, Klaus Teuber was given the board game Romans vs Carthaginians.

Klaus Teuber graduated from high school and did military service, then studied chemistry, then completed his intermediate diploma, then joined his father's 65-employee dental laboratory business which fell into large problems, and his father fell ill.

Klaus Teuber worked as a dental technician for the business Klaus Teuber Dental-Labor near Darmstadt, but he was not happy in this work.

In 1991, Klaus Teuber started designing The Settlers of Catan, inspired by the history of Viking settlers in Iceland.

Klaus Teuber 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.

The commercial success of Catan allowed Klaus Teuber to become a full-time game designer in 1998.

Klaus Teuber died on 1 April 2023 at age 70, after a brief illness.

Klaus Teuber won the award, Spiel des Jahres, for Barbarossa in 1988, Adel Verpflichtet in 1990, Drunter und Druber in 1991, and Die Siedler von Catan in 1995, winning the award four times.