Ceramic materials play an important role in several fields of application. For instance, they are employed in areas that demand for workpieces with a strong persistency against temperature and deformation. In this research project multinuclear solid state NMR techniques are employed in order to study the preparation of new ceramic materials. The studies thus cover the whole ceramization process, i.e. from the polymeric precursors via to the amorphous preceramic samples to the final crystalline ceramic materials. Explicitely, ¹³C, ²⁹Si, ¹H, ¹¹B, ¹⁵N as well as ²⁷Al NMR techniques are used which can be analysed to yield the various structural components and their alterations during ceramization. Complementary investigations covering the (bulk) material properties (e.g. tensile strength, temperature stability, etc.) of these samples are performed by other research groups. From this it is possible to sort out the relationship between the molecular behaviour and the bulk appearance of such materials. In this connection, the influence of the molecular composition on the structural and bulk properties is probed by using different polymeric precursors. With the knowledge of the structural intermediates, in addition, reaction pathways can be proposed that occur during the ceramization process.