We propose the development of modern wet chemical concepts for the mass production and chemical modification of graphene - a rapidly rising star on the horizon of materials science - opening the door for superior but still elusive applications such as transparent electrodes, field effect transistors, solar cells, gas sensors and polymer enforcement. Owing to its spectacular electronic properties graphene is expected to be the most promising candidate to replace classical Si-technology and no longer requires any further proof of its importance in terms of fundamental physics. However, fully exploiting the proposed applications requires the availability of processable graphene in large quantities, which generally has been considered to be an insurmountable challenge. This is where the GRAPHENOCHEM project sets in. Our laboratory has been pioneering and is at the forefront of carbon allotrope chemistry. After having investigated basic principles for the functionalization of the 0-dimensional fullerenes and the 1-dimensional carbon nanotubes, which lead to synthesis of numerous examples of derivatives with tailor made properties, we recently started successfully with the investigation of wet chemical approaches for the efficient production of graphene sheets using graphite as an inexpensive starting material. The strategy of GRAPHENOCHEM is to combine chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science to establish highly efficient protocols for the mass production of soluble graphene and the subsequent processing to a whole variety of thins films, composites and devices with outstanding properties. To our knowledge we are the first synthetic organic chemists facing this challenge. We propose to go through the following sequential key objectives, namely: Development of efficient protocols for the mass production of soluble single layer graphene, cloning of graphene, chemical functionalization and doping of graphene, and engineering of graphene based materials and devices.