Tres Noir Blog

The trend continues unbroken: Tattoos are hip and modern like never before. Be it stars or sports pros, there´s noone showing up on the stages without a tattoo.
On TV there a broadcasts from tattoo studios, and each and every motif can be found on hip fashion too. Everything you need to know about tattoos is just a mouse click away on the internet.

Herbert Hoffmann ( 1919 – † 2010 ) was the oldest active tattoo artist worldwide. When he started tattooing it didn´t have today´s popularity and it was very hard to get information on it or to find like-minded people.
Today tattoos and their meanings are interpreted discretionaryly or they mostly have a decorative aim. Traditional motifs by Herbert Hoffmann and his fellows have a clear and definite statement which can be read and interpreted without any doubt or misunderstanding.

His fascination for tattoos started early during his youth growing up in rural Pomerania when he admired day labourers and field hands for their blue coloured tattoos. He would have loved to have one, too, but time wouldn´t allow for this. Tattoos were meant to be degenerate by the Nazis and were forbidden. Tattoo artists went to concentration camps and their studios were closed. After his traineeship as a retail seller in Stettin he was called for forced labour in the Wehrmacht in 1939.
Being caught as a war captive in Riga he got to know a German-Latvian whose tattoos on his forearm with the seafarers´ theme belief-love-hope impressed him much.

In 1949 he returned to Germany and worked as an advertisement canvasser. At the same time he dedicated to his love and passion and had himself tattooed. In memory of the sailor from Riga he had his own forearm tattooed with those motifs of belief-love-hope. For his tattoos he traveled Germany and Europe to visit various tattoo artists like Christian Wahrlich from Hamburg, Taovör Öle in Copenhagen and Albert Conelissen from Rotterdam. Herbert recognized his own talent. He addressed people on the street who wore tattoos and asked them if they´d to be tattooed by him. So he could learn with hundreds of people. His first years as a tattoo artist he practised with self made needles. As he wanted to open an own tattoo studio in Dusseldorf he didn´t get a permission with the justification “tattoo artist” were not a profession.
So his passion brought him to Hamburg in 1961 where he bought Paul Holzhaus´ tattoo store at Hamburger Berg 8 in St. Pauli. When Christian Wahrlich died in 1964 Herbert Hoffmann owned the only professional tattoo studio in Hamburg which later he named oldest tattoo studio in Germany.

His clients were sailors and harbour workers, politicians, musicians and housewives as well as the whole Hamburg Kiez. They were not only tattooed but also photographed. People invited Herbert to their homes and posed naked or in underwear for his camera. This mutual trust let Herbert take really particular photos. He photographed human as a whole and not only those parts with tattoos. In his pictures losers became winners.

Herbert Hoffmann is partly responsible for the roots of modern tattoo culture. He is one of the four biggest names in the international tattoo scene who defined styles and new ways and got tattooing out of its bad image.
One of them is American tattoo artist “Sailor Jerry Collins” who created a new style by combining American and Japanese tattoo traditions. Don Ed Hardy developed tattooing as a kind of art with his characteristic and new style. Horiyoshi III from Yokohama defined a new style and technique which is still unreached today. Each of these big names is respected among the international tattoo scene.

Herbert Hoffmann died on June 30th 2010 at the age of 90 in Heiden / Appenzell, Switzerland.

www.herbert-hoffmann-tattooing.ch/

Tags: Hamburg, Herbert Hoffmann, oldshool tattoo, St.Pauli, tätowierer, Tattoo