ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger, referred to here simply as Lichtinger, was born on 21 July 1961 in Stuttgart, West Germany, the fifth of six sons. His father was a paediatrician and his mother a nurse. His family home was strict, and life became serious at an early age. Ten different schools meant constantly encountering new faces, new teachers and new friends, and learning from an early age that he had to prove himself time and again.
Lichtinger worked in many different jobs, including at a brewery, as a parcel delivery driver and in a photographic laboratory. He later completed vocational training in mechanical engineering and toolmaking. Those years shaped his understanding of practical connections, responsibility and the often invisible work behind systems that function properly.
After completing his training, Lichtinger travelled around the world and eventually found himself imprisoned in the GDR. Because he refused to perform forced labour and would not cooperate with the State Security Service, he repeatedly spent weeks in solitary confinement in complete darkness. On Friday, 13 November 1987, two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was deported from the GDR to West Germany. The experience permanently changed his relationship with freedom, dignity and inner independence.
After his imprisonment, Lichtinger began bringing his own inventions to life, including the idea of a horizontal, sarcophagus-like vibrating sauna for the home, designed to regenerate the body and nervous system. He later developed a special thermometer for green tea that emitted a short signal when the optimum brewing temperature was reached. He also conceived a warning system for people wearing headphones in traffic, designed to alert them acoustically to approaching trams or electric vehicles before it was too late. But financial constraints, high protection costs and dominant suppliers imposed clear limits.
From 1988 onwards, Lichtinger worked as a self-taught freelance assistant for a successful architect until founding his own property development company in 1995. Over the following years, he gained extensive practical experience as a property developer, overseeing projects and dealing with planning, construction, financing and sales. The company grew for many years until the 2008 financial crisis took its toll. In the years that followed, he lost almost everything: flats, savings and financial security. Through a clever ruse, he managed to save his villa from the bank. Because the bank required him to complete two construction projects already under way without pay, he also worked as a lifeguard and, for a time, as a taxi driver to support his family.
Lichtinger was subsequently employed by the Stuttgart estate agent Steffen W., who specifically wanted to benefit from Lichtinger’s many years of experience as a property developer. However, when Lichtinger succeeded in finding an investor for a large building plot, Steffen W. had the lock cylinder on the office door replaced and took over the project himself in order to deprive him of his commission.
Confronted once again with the darker side of financial dependence, the experience deepened Lichtinger’s understanding of power relationships, loyalty and the fine lines between trust and exploitation.
After renovating and selling his villa, Lichtinger paid his former wife her share and eventually followed his first great love to New Zealand, ready to start all over again. There, he found stillness, vastness and a new inner rhythm.
Today, after spending the previous two years on New Zealand’s North Island, Lichtinger is once again living on the South Island with his dog Rosie. More than a decade after first coming to New Zealand, they are preparing for their next great departure: a new life in the Philippines.
Lichtinger’s books draw on experiences, observations, setbacks, new beginnings and encounters that continue to shape his view of people, freedom and the world.