Christian was much more than just a programmer. For him, Smalltalk was not just a language - it was a tool for thinking, understanding and creating. His love of object orientation was not a technical whim, but an expression of his desire to find elegant and understandable solutions for complex situations.
After studying computer science at the TU Berlin, Christian got a grant from the University of Tokyo to work on programming the game GO. In Japan he met his Canadian wife, Libby.
Back in Germany, he contributed to software development at Deutsche Bahn before founding Smalltalked Visuals GmbH in 2002.
His best-known project: smallCharts - an impressive example of what is possible with Smalltalk. Precise, well thought-out, sustainable - all components of his style. smallCharts was a graphics tool developed by Christian which created premium financial performance charts for the financial print media.
In the last 10 years of his life in L��beck, Christian became more and more interested in simplifying existing digital information for the common good through transparency, open data and comprehensive visualizations. PDFtalk, CoVid-19 charts and the budget data portal unsere-gelder.de, all developed to explain and simplify and improve the world using Smalltalk.
Those who knew him remember his clarity, his passion and the conviction that code was only ���good��� when it functioned and looked great.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus era, we had been meeting regularly in a small online group. These meetings - originally born out of the situation - quickly became a fixed anchor point where we exchanged technical ideas and personal matters. Through these conversations we really got to know Christian: as an attentive listener, clever thinker and warm-hearted person.
It was particularly impressive that Christian also supervised and trained two apprentices during this time - with the same patience, passion and care that characterized him as a person and developer. His presence in our group enriched us - and we will miss him very much.
Christian so enjoyed being part of our community - keep sharing!
And with every object, with every clean method, we send him a silent greeting: Thank you, Christian
Marten Feldtman, Thomas Brodt, Peter Ursprung, Joachim Tuchel, Michal Balda, Stephan Eggermont, Sabine Manaa
