Hansjürgen Köhler has been a volunteer UFO hunter for more than 50 years. He sees his work as scientific investigation, but sometimes also as caring for others.
Anyone in Germany who thinks they have seen an unidentified flying object, or UFO, can notify the Central Research Network for Anomalous Phenomena, better known as CENAP — a UFO research network. One of CENAP's hotlines, run by Hansjürgen Köhler and a five-person team of volunteers, is based in Germany's southwestern Odenwald region.
Köhler is friendly and chatty man in his late 60s. He became a salesman early in life because he was not allowed to become an astronomer. At the time, his father advised him to "do something respectable." That meant that Köhler's love of space would have to remain a hobby — albeit one he still takes very seriously. In 2023, NASA appointed its first ever director of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) — as UFOs are now more frequently called — while in Germany, Hansjürgen Köhler has been investigating UFO reports for more than 50 years.
Köhler says CENAP has processed 13,621 reported UFO sightings since it was founded in 1976 and has been able to explain almost all of them — with only 89 cases unresolved. Reported sightings have increased annually over the past five years, he says, with 1,348 sightings registered in 2025 alone.
