  The GENIUS (Germanium in Liquid Nitrogen Underground Setup) project has been
proposed in 1997 [KK-BEY97] as first third generation double beta decay
project, with a sensitivity aiming down to a level of an effective neutrino
mass of <m_{\nu}> < 0.01eV or less. Such sensitivity is important to fix the
structure of the neutrino mass matrix with high accuracy, which cannot be done
by neutrino oscillation experiments alone. GENIUS will allow broad access also
to many other topics of physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics
at the multi-TeV scale. For search of cold dark matter GENIUS will cover a
large part of the parameter space of predictions of SUSY for neutralinos as
dark matter [Bed-KK2,Ell,KK-LowNu2]. Finally, GENIUS has the potential to be a
real-time detector for low-energy (pp and 7{Be}) solar neutrinos
[Bau-KK,KK-LowNu2]. A GENIUS-Test Facility has just been funded and will come
into operation by end of 2002.
