Fritz Hilpert

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Fritz Hilpert" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (May 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Fritz Hilpert (Musiker)]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Fritz Hilpert (Musiker)}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Fritz Hilpert
Background information
Born	(1956-05-31) 31 May 1956 (age 68) Amberg, West Germany
Origin	Germany
Occupation	Audio engineering
Instrument	Electronic percussion
Years active	1989–2022 (on stage)
Website	www.kraftwerk.com

Friedrich "Fritz" Hilpert (born 31 May 1956) is a German musician who is best known for his work as a member of the electropop group Kraftwerk.

Fritz Hilpert studied trumpet and percussion at the Musisches Max-Reger-Gymnasium, Germany, until 1976. He also played drums in several live bands at that time.

From 1978 he studied sound engineering at the Musikhochschule Rheinland and the FH Düsseldorf. In 1986 he received his Diplom-Ingenieur qualification (the German equivalent of a Master of Science degree) in sound and image technology.^{[citation needed]}

He worked as freelance sound engineer with several German acts as the new wave-band Din A Testbild^[1] before becoming associated with Kraftwerk in 1989.^[2]

In addition to studio work, he replaced Wolfgang Flür in concert when Kraftwerk resumed their touring activities in 1990, and engineered the album The Mix, released in 1991.^[3]

He has made musical contributions to Kraftwerk's compositions since "Expo 2000" in 1999. He is credited as a co-composer on most of the tracks on the album Tour de France Soundtracks. Along with Henning Schmitz, he works as sound programmer and engineer at Kling Klang studio and is administrator of the Kraftwerk.com and Klingklang.com websites.

While on tour with Kraftwerk in Australia, where the band were to be Global Gathering headliners, Fritz Hilpert fell ill and was believed to have suffered some sort of heart failure. This forced Kraftwerk to cancel the Melbourne show on 22 November 2008, but Hilpert was cleared to fly and continue the tour the next day.^{[citation needed]}

It is thought that Hilpert's last appearance on stage with Kraftwerk was at the Cala Mijas music festival, in Malaga, Spain, on 2 September 2022.^[4]

Hilpert has not yet appeared onstage with Kraftwerk for its 2023 concert series, fueling fan speculation of his departure from the band. His status as a current or ex-band member has not yet been officially disclosed.

This article about a German musician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e