Julien’s Auctions is auctioning off over 450 items that belonged to the late Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider. Among the recording equipment and memorabilia available to bid on are Schneider’s 1964 Volkswagen van, the Panasonic bicycle he rode in the 1984 music video for a remix of “Tour De France,” a number of woodwind and brass instruments—including the 1960s Orsi alto flute that appeared on the back cover of Kraftwerk’s 1970 self-titled debut—and a rack case of Votrax speech synthesizer units, which the band used to create the robot voices that opened all of their concerts between 1981 and 2002. The auction takes place on Wednesday, November 18, in Nashville, Tennessee, and online at the Julien’s Auctions website.
Schneider died in 2020 at the age of 73. A classically trained flautist, he met Ralf Hütter at the Düsseldorf Conservator and the duo founded Kraftwerk in 1970. Schneider was fascinated by technology—particularly in the field of speech synthesis—and extremely protective of his innovations; he held several patents during his lifetime, including for a synth-vocal processor known as Robovox. David Bowie titled “V-2 Schneider,” from 1977’s Heroes, after him. Schneider left Kraftwerk in 2008 and did not return for any the group’s reunion shows.
Revisit Ben Cardew’s essay “Remembering Florian Schneider, Who Brought Sonic Perfectionism and Humor to Kraftwerk.”
