Thorsten Schmidt

I was born in 1970 and grew up in the Westerwald as the only child of an electrician and a doctor's assistant. My hobbies as a child were mainly martial arts and reading. After graduating from high school, I joined the Rhineland-Palatinate police force in 1991 and now work as a detective.

Having been interested in snakes as a child, I started keeping them in 1993 and acquired a lot of specialist knowledge. Over time, other keepers asked me for advice more and more often and so I began to write up my notes in specialist articles. I realized that I also enjoyed writing and so it was only a matter of time before I published my first book.

I also continued to pursue my hobby of self-defense and now work as a trainer, course instructor and speaker in this field. In June 2017, my first book on the theoretical foundations of self-defense was published, which will be followed by further works.