Christian "Flake" Lorenz

Flake Lorenz
Christian Lorenz in 2013
Background information
Birth name	Christian Lorenz
Also known as	Doktor Lorenz, Flake
Born	16 November 1966 (age 50) East Berlin, East Germany
Genres	Neue Deutsche Härte
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instruments	Keyboards
Years active	1983–present
Labels	Motor Music Republic Slash Universal Music Group
Associated acts	Rammstein, Feeling B, Die Magdalene Keibel Kombo

Christian "Flake" Lorenz (born 16 November 1966) is a German musician, notable as the keyboardist for the Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein. He is also known for his role in the band Feeling B.

Christian was brought up and still lives in the former Prenzlauer Berg area of Berlin (now a part of the borough of Pankow), where he still passes his old school building on the way to band rehearsals.

Christian is known to be an educated pianist. Flake says he chose to play the piano because a childhood friend of his played from the age of three. His parents sent him to a music school. Flake "began by painting the keys on a window ledge" and "practiced one-half-year on the window ledge". His parents bought him a piano for one hundred East German marks for his 15th birthday.

Lorenz became "addicted" to rock and roll as a boy. He stopped his lessons in order to play with his father's jazz records. "When I joined my first band", Flake has said, "I noticed that I couldn't play modern music. I still can't!" At the age of sixteen, he apprenticed as a toolmaker, an apparently short-lived career.

He has a brother who is four years older.

In 1983, at age sixteen, he began to play in the band Feeling B with Paul H. Landers and Aljoscha Rompe, a Swiss living in East Berlin. He stayed with the band for about ten years. Feeling B started out firmly grounded in the underground punk scene. Over time, Feeling B's popularity grew greatly and at the end of the German Democratic Republic, it was one of the most respected and influential Eastern German bands despite their underground status.

Flake squatted/lived in an apartment with Paul during their early years. When they weren't playing gigs, Landers and Flake would sell jackets made from cut-up bed sheets and dusters on the black market. Two jackets a month meant as much money as an average salaried worker. "It was quite easy to make a living; not to work and stay out of trouble," says Landers, "You only got problems if you were caught."

The group disbanded in the mid-1990s. On special occasions, the band members would get together for individual concerts at punk festivals, until Rompe died in November 2000 of an asthma attack.