Bruno Kramm

Bruno Gert Kramm was a German musician, producer and political activist best known as the synthesizer player, composer and co-founder of the electro-industrial duo Das Ich. With vocalist Stefan Ackermann he helped define the early 1990s Neue Deutsche Todeskunst scene, the dark, theatrical German goth and industrial current that fused cabaret, electronics and mortality themes. Away from the stage he founded the Danse Macabre label, produced dozens of underground acts, and later became a visible face of copyright and digital-rights campaigning in Germany.

Born in Munich on 13 October 1967 and raised in part around Bayreuth, Kramm formed his first band, Fahrenheit 451 (later Alva Novalis), while still at school. In 1989 he and Ackermann launched Das Ich. The group broke through in the alternative circuit around 1991 and became known for intense live shows in which Kramm, often heavily made up and wearing his signature devil-horn hairstyle, programmed sequencers, played keyboards and supplied deep backing vocals against Ackermann's sharper lead. He also ran the solo-leaning project Kramm, releasing the album Coeur in 2001, and from 2017 rejoined the revived Dorsetshire project.

As a producer and label head he worked with Atrocity, Illuminate, Saviour Machine, In Strict Confidence, Placebo Effect, Relatives Menschsein, Ghosting, Collide and many others, shaping the Danse Macabre roster that became a hub for German darkwave and industrial artists. He wrote the regular Krimskram(m)s column for the magazine Zillo until 2006 and later a fortnightly music column, Kramms Hits, for FAZ.NET. In later years he moved into technology entrepreneurship, co-founding Infinite Devices in Magdeburg with former Google engineer Alexander Alten to build the infinimesh AIoT platform, which took third place in a 2021 Hugo Junkers Prize category for innovative products and business models in Saxony-Anhalt. From 2020 he also spoke for the KI Verband Deutschland and advised Germany's federal AI observatory at the labour ministry.

Kramm's politics tracked his work on copyright and civil liberties. A former Bavarian Green, he joined the Pirate Party Germany in 2011 after translating and dubbing Anonymous's ACTA protest video, served as the party's federal commissioner on copyright, and from November 2014 to September 2016 chaired the Berlin state party, leading its unsuccessful 2016 Abgeordnetenhaus campaign before resigning. He briefly returned to Alliance 90/The Greens, then announced at the end of 2016 that he was leaving active politics to concentrate on music again. He settled in Werder an der Havel with a home studio.

On the night of 25 to 26 September 2026, after Das Ich's first concert in southern Spain at the Planta Baja venue in Granada, Kramm collapsed in the dressing room. Emergency services confirmed he was already dead when medics arrived around midnight. Spanish police treated the death as natural causes; he was 58. Ideal and other Spanish outlets, citing Andalucia's 112 emergency service, reported that witnesses had called for help after he collapsed and did not respond. English and German Wikipedia list his death date as 25 September; contemporary Spanish reporting places it in the early hours of 26 September.