My first contact with Michael Sperberg-McQueen was through the XML Schema specification. The link between that specification and Michael as its editor cemented my image of him as an XML celebrity for whom I had respect and also felt a kind of "Ehrfurcht". So I was surprised by the detail and seriousness of his response to my email in 2012. I had written to him with a question related to my master thesis. Without having done anything, I felt very honored.

This feeling continued when I met Michael Sperberg-McQueen in person. I felt hounoured by how seriously he took me when he asked for details of my CV in order to introduce me for my second Balisage talk. I was impressed not only by his intelectual abilities but also by the warmth, kindness, courtesy and respect with which he treated me and others.

Over the years I have seen Michael many times at XML conferences. With an open mind and heart he bridged intellectual worlds. He represented something I knew more from books about past centuries than from real life. He had the aura of an "Universalgelehrten", a "genius universalis".

The last time I met Michael in person was some years ago. He had been invited to Munich to give a laudation at an anniversary celebration of my former professor Anne Brüggemann-Klein. During those days, Anne invited a former Ph.d. student of her and me to the Cafe Ruffini to spend an evening with Michael. Ruffini is an unpretentious neighborhood cafe, owned and run by its employees since the late seventies. It is only a ten minute walk from my home. I don't remember exactly what we talked about that evening. But this memory of sitting there with him at the coffee house table stands for me of another aspect of Michael: not only was he a giant, whose size I can only guess at, but he was also as down to earth as the café we were sitting in. This accessibility made and makes it possible to follow his example regardless of one's own abilities: in the the way of exchanging ideas, communicating respectfully with one another and never forgetting the human side.

My deepest condolences to his family and to all his close friends to whom he was like family.