An unconventional path. A lifelong quest.

You may know my books. But you probably don't know the path that led to them. I'd like to tell you something about it that I rarely share.

I studied economics and psychology and worked for many years as a manager in an international company. From the outside, my path seemed clearly mapped out.

Then I left it all behind and travelled, for years and through more than 40 countries. Most of these journeys had the same aim. I wanted to go to the places where people have been searching for thousands of years for something greater than themselves. Reading about it was not enough for me. I wanted to experience what really happens there.

I lived with the Fulni-ô, an indigenous people in north-eastern Brazil, and shared their daily life and their rituals. In Mexico I explored the culture of the Maya and visited their pyramids. In Australia I sought contact with Aboriginal people and studied their culture, one of the oldest of humankind. In India, Nepal and Indonesia I immersed myself in Buddhism and the roots of Hinduism.

Along the way I understood something that has stayed with me ever since: the great questions are the same everywhere. They are only told differently.

I sought out many of the most famous healers of our time. Some of what I saw was less than the legends promised. Some of it was more than I had ever thought possible. This line between myth and reality has never let go of me.

For fifteen years I immersed myself in the worlds of the gods of Egypt, Greece and Rome. I wanted to understand what people felt back then when they prayed to their gods. I also traced how Christianity succeeded these worlds and how much of them lives on within it. In doing so, I delved deep into symbology and mythology, into the language of images and signs that has been passed down for thousands of years.

Just as intensively, I studied the Greek philosophers, above all Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Their questions are still my questions today.

Life is made up of events, encounters and experiences. Put simply: of stories. That is why, at heart, I am a storyteller.

My non-fiction is about clarity. I write about the patterns that steer us and about ways to recognise them. Das Geheimnis des Herzmagneten became an international bestseller and was also published in English under the title Your Magnetic Heart.

My novels are about the same thing, only by a different route. A story can let you experience something that a non-fiction book can only explain. They range from the business thriller Das Sydney System to the journey to Sweetwater and Winston Flash.

For more than 25 years I have been passing on what I found, in seminars, coaching sessions and training programmes. Together with Nicole Diana, I built a centre for coaching, further education and natural healing south of Munich. My books have been published in 26 languages, several of them as SPIEGEL bestsellers.

So when you read one of my books, you now know something that isn't on the cover: what I write, I have not only thought. I have lived it.