Born 1963 in Salzburg (Austria) he did study history and archaeology in Innsbruck (Austria) and Southampton (UK). He worked as city archaeologist and museum curator in Aschaffenburg (Germany) since 1991 and left the civil service to fully commit himself to an association he had founded in 1998 to research and communicate the landscape of the Spessart region with civil engagement, which is now also an institute at the University of Würzburg. He has been working with the Council of Europe on the European Landscape Convention since 2001 and is a founding member of Civilscape, the umbrella organization for NGOs dealing with landscape, which he represents at the Conference of iNGOs.