The high flux solar furnace that is operated by the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) at Cologne was inaugurated in June 1994 and we are now able to look back onto one year of successful operation. The solar furnace project was founded by the government of the State Northrhine Westfalia within the Study Group AG Solar. The optical design is a two-stage off-axis configuration which uses a flat 52 m(2) heliostat and a concentrator composed of 147 spherical mirror facets. The heliostat redirects the solar light onto the concentrator which focuses the beam out of the optical axis of the system into the laboratory building. At high insolation levels (>800 W/m(2)) it is possible to collect a total power of 20 kW with peak flux densities of 4 MW/m(2). Sixteen different experiment campaigns were carried out during this first year of operation. The main research fields for these experiments were material science, component development and solar chemistry. The furnace also has its own research program leading to develop sofisticated measurement techniques like remote infrared temperature sensing and flux mapping. Another future goal to be realized within the next five years is the improvement of the performance of the furnace itself.