With the imminent start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva (Switzerland) high energy
particle physics is about to enter a new and exciting era. The LHC is a proton-proton collider with an
unprecedented center-of-mass energy and design luminosity up to 14 TeV and 1034 cm-2s-1 respectively. It is
expected that this machine will lead to discoveries of new particles such as the Brout-Englert-Higgs boson and
to first experimental evidence of new physics beyond the Standard Model in particle physics, like
supersymmetry (SUSY). With its hadronic probe the LHC offers a very broad discovery potential. However, for
a detailed investigation of such new discoveries as e.g. measuring the detailed properties of the Brout-Englert-
Higgs boson, a determination of the full spectrum of SUSY particles, precision measurements of coupling
constants, masses and spins of the newly discovered particles, the LHC physics capabilities will not be
sufficient and future high precision facilities complementary to the LHC will be essential to study all the
different aspects of new physics and to test the vast variety of corresponding theoretical models. The primary
candidate for a new facility complementary to the LHC is the so-called International Linear Collider (ILC), a
recently proposed electron-positron linear collider operating at tunable center-of-mass energies between about
the mass of the Z-boson (90 GeV) up to a maximum of 0,5 to 1 TeV, with a luminosity reaching a few times
1034 cm-2s-1.