Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider-Esleben dies at 73

BERLIN» Florian Schneider-Esleben, a co-founder of German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk, has died, record label Sony said Wednesday. He was 73.

Citing fellow group founder Ralf Huetter, Sony said that Schneider-Esleben had been suffering from cancer, German news agency dpa reported.

Schneider-Esleben and Huetter started working together in 1968. In 1970, they founded the Kling-KlangStudio in Duesseldorf and launched Kraftwerk.

Schneider-Esleben was involved in Kraftwerk albums spanning three decades, including Autobahn, Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine and Tour de France. He left Kraftwerk at the end of 2008.

Kraftwerk won a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 2014.

Schneider-Esleben was the son of modernist architect Paul Schneider-Esleben.

In 1998, he was appointed as a professor at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, where he was to teach “media art and performance.” But the university said Wednesday that, as far as it knows, he never took up the professorship, dpa reported.