Bruno Kramm

Bruno Gert Kramm was a German musician, producer, label founder and digital-rights activist best known as the synthesizer player, composer, programmer and co-founder of the electro-industrial duo Das Ich. With vocalist and lyricist Stefan Ackermann he helped define Neue Deutsche Todeskunst in the early 1990s, the dark German gothic and industrial current that fused cabaret electronics, theatrical staging and mortality themes. Away from the stage he built Danse Macabre into a hub for underground darkwave and industrial artists, wrote for Zillo and FAZ.NET, and later moved into AI entrepreneurship while remaining a visible voice on copyright and civil liberties.

Born in Munich on 13 October 1967, Kramm attended the municipal Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliches Gymnasium in Bayreuth. At school he founded Fahrenheit 451 (later Alva Novalis). He met Ackermann in 1986 at the Bayreuth disco Crazy Elephant. After the short-lived project Dying Moments they formally founded Das Ich in 1989 in Bayreuth, with Kramm on music, production, keyboards and deep backing vocals against Ackermann's sharper, theatrical lead. The duo broke through around 1991 with material first aired on the Satanische Verse cassette and then on the album Die Propheten. Songs such as Gottes Tod and Kain und Abel became scene standards. Staub (1994) deepened the nihilist classical-electronic blend; Feuer (1995) captured the live assault; Egodram (1998) on Motor Music brought Destillat, still a closing anthem, and a VNV Nation remix; Morgue (1998) set Gottfried Benn poems; Anti'christ (2002), Lava (2004) and Cabaret (2006) kept the catalogue growing. After nearly two decades without a studio album, Das Ich returned with Fanal on 31 October 2025 via Danse Macabre, preceded by the singles Lazarus and Brutus. Kramm described Fanal as a reaction to a post-factual age in which belief counts more than facts, with Nietzsche, Benn and German Expressionism among its stated influences. On stage he was instantly recognisable for devil-horn hair, heavy makeup and a darker outfit that often outdid Ackermann's own theatrical look.

As a producer and label head he worked with Atrocity, Illuminate, Saviour Machine, In Strict Confidence, Placebo Effect, Relatives Menschsein, Ghosting, Collide, Dorsetshire, Felsenreich and many others. His side project Kramm released Coeur in 2001. From 2017 he rejoined the revived Dorsetshire project. He wrote the Krimskram(m)s column for Zillo until 2006 and later the fortnightly Kramms Hits column for FAZ.NET. Around 2020 he co-founded 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 (BMAS). During the pandemic he took up the cello seriously, later recording cello (and some violin) parts himself for Fanal.

Kramm's politics tracked his work on copyright and civil liberties. A former Bavarian Green, he joined Pirate Party Germany in 2011 after translating and dubbing Anonymous's ACTA protest video, served as federal copyright commissioner, and from November 2014 to September 2016 chaired the Berlin state party, leading its unsuccessful 2016 Abgeordnetenhaus campaign before resigning after what he called a disastrous result. He stood for the Bundestag in Kulmbach in 2013 and on the European list in 2014. He campaigned against TTIP and in the Stopp Ramstein anti-drone effort. In April 2016 he was briefly detained during a Pirate protest outside the Turkish embassy in Berlin after quoting a line from Jan Bohmermann's Schmahkritik poem. With Ackermann he sued GEMA over publishers' share of composers' and lyricists' rights; in November 2016 the Berlin Kammergericht ruled in their favour, an episode later joked about online as the GEMA-Hack after Kramm briefly rejoined the Greens. On 31 December 2016 he announced on Facebook that he was leaving active politics to concentrate on music again. He settled in Werder an der Havel with a house and recording studio. Contemporary reporting described his wife as Finnish; later obituaries said he left a wife and two children (names not made public).

On the night of 25 to 26 September 2026, after Das Ich's first concert in southern Spain at Planta Baja in Granada, Kramm collapsed in the dressing room. Fans told Ideal that he had come out to sign vinyl, gone back for a marker, and never returned. Organiser Distortiongirl Eventos wrote that rescue services could do nothing more. Andalucia's 112 and 061 services confirmed he was already dead when medics arrived around midnight. Spanish national police treated the death as natural causes and did not open a criminal investigation. Some Spanish witnesses described choking or airway distress; the detailed medical cause was not made public. He was 58. Label associate Sven Hegewald asked the scene to route practical questions to him and to give the family peace. Bandmate Stefan Ackermann had not issued a public statement in the first wave of German coverage.

Kramm's legacy sits in both the Schwarze Szene and German digital-rights history: Destillat and Gottes Tod still close festival nights; Danse Macabre still carries darkwave catalogues; Fanal closed a nineteen-year studio silence only months before his death; and a generation of ACTA and copyright protesters still remember the musician who also called himself a Green Pirate.