Ekkehard König was born in Jäschkittel in the Province of Lower Silesia (now Poland) and grew up in Bavaria.
Other prominent members of this project were Simon Dik, Giuliano Bernini, Östen Dahl, Gilbert Lazard, Frans Plank, Anna Siewierska, Johan van der Auwera, Harry van der Hulst, Henk van Riemsdijk, Nigel Vincent, as well as König's junior collaborator (and doctoral student) Martin Haspelmath.
The project results were published in nine volumes by De Gruyter, and one of the consequences of this coordination programme was the founding of the Association for Linguistic Typology, with its journal Linguistic Typology.
König investigated a wide range of grammatical phenomena, especially from a semantic-pragmatic, typological, and diachronic perspective.
[6] König has coedited a large number of books, including an important handbook on linguistic typology and universals, and he served as a panel member for the European Science Foundation and the European Research Council.