SHERPA 1.alpha, a proof-of-concept version

The new multipurpose event-generation framework SHERPA, acronym for Simulation for High-Energy Reactions of PArticles, is presented. It is entirely written in the object-oriented programming language C++. In its current form, it is able to completely simulate electron--positron and unresolved photon--photon collisions at high energies. Also, fully hadronic collisions, such as, e.g., proton--anti-proton, proton--proton, or resolved photon--photon reactions, can be described on the signal level.