In World War II Sonthofen was bombed twice because Adolf Hitler had built the Ordensburg Sonthofen where young boys were trained for service in Nazi Party organizations.
Up to 1938 he designed the "Ordensburg" in Sonthofen, planned Gau Forums in Weimar and Augsburg, and the "university" for the NSDAP at Chiemsee.
He was born 1961 in Sonthofen in the Oberallgäu region of the Bavarian Alps and studied with Klaus Schilde and Karl Hermann Mrongovius in Munich, then with Jacob Lateiner at the Juilliard School New York, where he received his Masters Degree - and later with Peter Feuchtwanger in London.