Claus "HoloClaus" Cohnen

How did I get into holography? I was born in Hamburg in 1959 and early developed an interest in any kind of machines, electricity and technology as you can see on the first photo of mine, 16 months or so old already fighting with a screwdriver and plug ... ;-) DJ-ing at the age of 12 I became one of the youngest Hippies in Hamburg in the early 70ies and soon had many friends who were artists, musicians and technological freaks like myself. Around 1978 Klaus Maeck a good old friend of mine who did "Rip Off", the first Punk record shop in Germany, visited the first hologram gallery in the world, the Holos Gallery in San Francisco. He brought several different holograms and they fascinated me immediately. Later, in the eighties the German pioneer of holography, Johannes "Hanno" Matthiesen, returned from the US and started the first hologram company in Germany, the Holocom GmbH in Kakenstorf near Hamburg. We met and soon started our cooperation, e.g. in 1986 we produced life size portrait pulse laser holograms of another friend of mine, the singer Nina Hagen. At that time the first hologram mass runs were produced in Germany, most of them at the Holocom. After staying a year in Ibiza and doing a restaurant and hologram gallery there for a while I returned to Germany and started my close cooperation with Hanno Matthiesen. After having made several jobs like the first pulse hologram magazine title of GEO Special, the Zander´s calendar Natura ´88, titles of "Deutscher Drucker" and many others, I had the idea to sell holograms to clients like Nutella and Kellogg´s. In the early nineties we got and produced these jobs and parallel continued doing R&D and machine construction of hologram machines and new technologies. Today I am managing director of 3D-Lab GmbH in Hamburg, which is the distribution company of holograms, 3D products and technologies. Since I´ve been working with computers early, we had the first computer activists group in Hamburg @ Schwarzmarkt, an anarchistic book shop in 1976. I was early involved in the Chaos Computer Club since the first congresses. Today our new generation is closely related to and active in the CCC too, therefore ´d like to say thanks to Wetterfrosch who is quiet responsible for the final 3D layout of the 25c3 space lenticular cards "nothing to hide". We hope you enjoy and spread them all over the planet!