Instruments owned by the late Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider are going up for auction.
The electronic music pioneer died of cancer, aged 73, in 2020.
Now, the equipment and instruments he used to create some of the group’s biggest songs are up for auction, in a sale of almost 500 of his personal possessions by his estate.
The collection includes his suitcase synthesiser, his flute and his vocoders, as well as more than 100 brass and woodwind instruments.
Alongside musical equipment, also included in the sale are a collection of Polaroid photographs – on sale for $100 to $200 – which Schneider took of his woodwind and brass instruments.
Other objects include Schneider’s gold-framed green-lens sunglasses (and Polaroids of him wearing them), the passport he used while touring until 1978, his VW panel van, which he custom-painted grey, and his Panasonic Panaracer bicycle, which can be seen in Kraftwerk’s ‘Tour de France’ music video and single artwork.
The total estimated value of the sale, which will be held by Julien’s Auctions at the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee on November 19, is $450,000 to $650,000 (£335,000 to £485,000).
It includes a selection of instruments used on Kraftwerk albums, including a vocoder likely to have been featured on 1978’s ‘The Man Machine’ and 1981’s ‘Computer World’, and an EMS Synthi AKS suitcase synthesiser, thought to be the one used on the 1974 album ‘Autobahn’.
Also up for auction is a transparent, bright yellow acrylic guitar and a 16-inch model of a fly, which was mounted on Schneider’s studio wall.
A spokesperson for Schneider’s estate said the auction would fulfil the late musician’s desire for his instruments and personal collection to “continue living beyond him”. “He always believed that they are meant to be played and shared – not left unused or gathering dust in storage,” she said. “He wanted his equipment to find their way to people who would truly value them: musicians, collectors and those inspired by the art of sound,” per the Guardian.
Following Schneider’s death, Peter Hook spoke to NME about Kraftwerk’s influence on Joy Division, saying of the group: “They were streets ahead of anybody else, even from an electronic point of view. They were making their own sequencers years before anyone else.
“I remember seeing them at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on the tour where they didn’t appear on stage. It was amazing to sit in a sold-out venue, watching four mannequins and have them get away with it because the music was so wonderful. They had a quadraphonic P.A. in the Free Trade Hall, and that was something else that we ripped off in New Order as soon as we were able.”
Kraftwerk are set to take their ‘Multimedia’ tour to the UK & Ireland next year – their first in the region since 2017.
It follows the them already performing across North America earlier this year, as well as playing a set at Coachella.