Identigram
(issued until October 2010)
The Identigram is a holographic security feature in German ID documents and is used as a trademark of Bundesdruckerei . It comprises technologies that are used in the production of official ID documents in order to make it difficult to forge ID cards . They consist of individual, optically variable and fixed security elements and use both holo- and kinegram structures . The recognizability of the identigram requires a point light source ( halogen spot or direct sunlight).
The security features of the identigram include:
- The federal eagle in three-dimensional representation,
- the passport photo of the document holder as a holographic portrait (Holographic Shadow Picture, HSP) ; the regular photo is holographically repeated in the middle of the document over the printed personal data,
- several small eagles on the left edge of the holographic portrait,
- for ID cards issued since November 1, 2010: the ID number below the printed ID number and the name below the holographic portrait,
- for ID cards issued up to October 2010 and for current passports: the machine-readable lines in staggered form above the machine-readable zone ,
- Different structures on the regular passport photo, which result in a kinematic sequence when the document is rotated (including an eagle on a hexagonal surface, stars and several hexagonal frames),
- a structure in the form of a reddish reflecting point to support the machine-testable authenticity detection (machine -testable feature, MPM) in the lower area of the photo; this does not contain any personal or document-related data.
The technology was developed by the Federal Printing Office in cooperation with the Federal Criminal Police Office .
On November 1, 2001, a first form of identigram was introduced for German ID cards and passports ; In this form, the holographic federal eagle was yellow-reddish, the machine-testable feature reddish and all other elements greenish.
The ID card in chip card format, which has been issued since November 1, 2010, uses an improved identigram: If you look at the document almost vertically, the colors are identical to those of the old identigram. When you change the viewing angle, however, the color of the previously green elements changes: violet-blue-turquoise-green-yellow-orange-red. The holographic federal eagle and the machine-testable feature also change color when viewed from a very flat angle.
Web links
- Federal Ministry of the Interior: The electronic residence permit. Security features. (January 2014; PDF file, 952 kB)
- Patent DE102014110852 : Production of security documents with portrait views . Registered on July 23, 2015 , published on February 4, 2016 , applicant: Bundesdruckerei GmbH, inventor: Steffen Baudach.
- Patent DE102012108200 : Method for producing documents with holograms and documents with holograms such as passports. Registered on September 4, 2012 , published on March 6, 2014 , applicant: Hologram Industries Research GmbH, inventor: Irina Menz, Hugues Souparis.