HandOfBlood, or Hänno for short, (born 1 August 1992 in Salzgitter, Germany; real name Maxmilian Knabe) is a German web video producer, livestreamer, e-sports host, cosplayer, and entrepreneur. On his YouTube channel HandOfBlood he mainly publishes let’s play videos and is among the most well-known German YouTubers in this genre. He lives in the Berlin district of Spandau.
Life
editHandOfBlood has three older siblings, his parents are separated. Until his graduation he went to a Waldorf school in Braunschweig, Germany. During that time he learned to play the piano, the clarinet as well as eurythmy. Until 2014, he lived inBraunschweig, where he went to the University of Technology Braunschweig to study business informatics; he dropped out of university beause he didn’t have time for his studies, mainly due to his activitiy on YouTube and his part-time job at McDonald’s. He tried later to do an apprenticeship as a marketing communications assistant at Freaks 4U Gaming, which he also quit because of time management issues. He also wanted to focus on his carrier on YouTube.
Internet appearance
editHis main channel HandOfBlood exists since 2010. The channel’s name comes from a song by the band Bullet for My Valetine of the same title; he has liked metal music since he was 12 years old. On October 24, 2012, he joined TGN network. Until July 2016, his channel consisted of normal let’s play videos and the format LOL Facts about the video game League of Legends. In January 2016, he explained in a video that he wanted to re-organise his channel. The amount of uploads would go down noticeably but the overall quality of the videos would increase. Today, his videos are mostly known for the visual effects, Easter Eggs, Running Gags and high variety of costumes. Knabe moderates events, commentates German E-Sports and was a member of the E-Sport teams Spandauer Inferno and Battleground Allstars (BAAL).
Knabe participated in the show Last Man Standing 3, which took place live at Gamescom 2015. He was part of a team of young, aspiring YouTubers, who had to compete in multiple different tournaments against YouTubers of the previous Last Man Standing shows, like Sarazar and SgtRumpel. The show was moderated by Fabian Siegismund and David Hain. Including a studio audience was one of the differences to the previous shows. The livestream was broadcasted on the German video website MyVideo.de. Together with SgtRumpel (Manuel Schmitt), Knabe recorded 12 videos about the video game League of Legends.
In 2016, Knabe won the Webvideopreis Deutschland (Online Video Awards Germany) in the category “Gaming”. One year later he was nominated again alongside David Hain, but because of severe criticism, both of the YouTubers called on their viewers not to vote for them.
In 2017, Knabe was featured in the music video for the song MC Thunder by the German Metalcore/Trancecore band Eskimo Callboy. He is an avowed fan and friend of the group.
In 2018, he founded the influencer agency INSTINCT3 together with Henning Semrau and manager Hendrik Ruhe. Prior to that, the three of them had already founded the internet portal Summoners Inn, which deals with League of Legends. After the foundation of INSTINCT3, Knabe left Freaks 4U Gaming, with which he still in contact. Furthermore, he published videos on his Youtube-channel, in which he presented facts about the game League of Legends. On Summoners Inn he also hosted e-sports-games of League of Legends. Since 2019 he has a merchandising deal with Bravado, a subsidiary of the Universal Music Group, through which HandOfBlood merchandising articles can be purchased.
Miscellaneous
editAt the Fornite world cup in 2019, a international Fortine-tournament, Knabe's team won a joint prize money of 250,000 US dollars. He donated all of his his share (62,500 US dollars) to the animal shelter Berlin, from which he also adopted a mixed-breed puppy. At the end of 2020, Knabe supported the preservation of forests around the world by participating in the WWF-donation-livestream Save the Jungle. In total 22,500.25 Euros were donated during this stream organized by WWF.
At the beginning of 2021, there was an incident between male streamer Daannyy and female streamer Tinkerleo that provoked a debate about sexism in the gaming scene. Knabe used this incident to raise his viewer’s awareness for this issue. As one of Germany’s most popular streamers with a clear focus on the gaming area, he stated on Twitter: “Discussing publicly about something improves society. In our case this society is on Twitch, YouTube, or generally in the gaming area. Sexual Harassment is common among gamers, and that has to stop.
Synchronization
edit- 2020: Cyberpunk 2077 as Fredrik
Awards
edit- 2016: Webvideopreis Deutschland: Gaming
- 2017: Webvideopreis Deutschland: Gaming (nominated)
- 2017: Youtube: Golden Play Button