Klaus Vogel is the founder, with Sophie Beau, of the European sea rescue association SOS MEDITERRANEE based in Marseille and operating the rescue ships “Aquarius” (2015–2018) and “Ocean Viking” (since 2019), and the founder of SOS HUMANITY based in Berlin, which operates the rescue ship “Humanity 1” in the central Mediterranean Sea (since 2022).

Klaus is a merchant marine captain and holds a PhD in history, philosophy, and economics. He has sailed on general cargo ships from 1974 to 1983, studied in Goettingen, Bielefeld, and Paris and was a researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for History of Science in Berlin (in 1995–1996) and at the Max-Planck-Institut for History in Goettingen, where he founded, with Manfred Cierpka, the Goettingen Working Group for Interdisciplinary Research on Violence (1995–2001). 

From 2000, he sailed again on worldwide operating container ships with the shipping companies Claus-Peter Offen and Hapag-Lloyd, which he left in November 2014, after the sudden stop of the Italian humanitarian rescue operation Mare nostrum.

He has published “Tous sont vivants” (Paris, 2017) with Valérie Péronnet, a personal account of his way towards SOS MEDITERRANEE and his first rescue operations with the “Aquarius” in the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Lampedusa. He has received numerous awards for his achievements, including la Médaille Grand Vermeil de la Ville de Paris (2018) and the German Order of Merit (2021).