| 1955 | Born in Herford / Westfalen, Germany |
| 1974-1980 | Diplom-Chemie at the Universities of Bielefeld and Münster / Germany |
| 1980 | Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton NY (T.F. Koetzle) |
| 1980-1984 | Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry (B. Krebs/G. Henkel), University of Münster "Synthesis, Structure and Properties of Novel Metal-Sulfide-Thiolate Compounds of the Iron Group Metals and Zink and the Electron Density Distribution of the [Fe4S4(SCH3)4]2- Clusteranion" |
| 1984 | Post-doc (EXAFS), DESY/HASYLAB, Hamburg |
| 1984-1986 | Post-Doc (Applied theoretical Chemistry), Cornell-University, Ithaca, NY, USA (R. Hoffmann) |
| 1987-1991 | Habilitation in Inorganic Chemistry (University of Münster) "Early transition metal tellurides" |
| 1989 | Visiting Scientist (Solid State Chemistry), University of Iowa and Ames Laboratory, Ames, IA, USA (H.F. Franzen) |
| 1991-1995 | Associate Professor / Inorganic Chemistry (C3) University of Mainz |
| 1994 | Offer Full Professorship / Chemical Physics (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) |
| 1995 | Offer Full Professorship / Inorganic Chemistry (Free University of Berlin) |
| since 1996 | Full Professor / Inorganic Chemistry (C4) University of Mainz |
| 2002 | Offer Full Professorship / Inorganic Chemistry (University of Essen) |
| since 4/2021 | Senior Research Professorship (University of Mainz) |
| since 4/2024 | Retired professor |