Christof Straub

Christof Straub was an Austrian guitarist, songwriter, composer and music entrepreneur best known as co-founder of the Vienna folk-pop duo Papermoon. With singer Edina Thalhammer he shaped a soft-edged Austropop sound that filled radio playlists in the 1990s, then later reinvented himself as a mentor, label founder and close collaborator of his daughter, the singer and actress Zoë Straub.

Born in Vienna on 27 August 1969, Straub finished secondary school and studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Music pulled harder than drafting tables. In 1991 he and Thalhammer formed Papermoon as a guitar-and-voice partnership: he wrote the songs and provided the acoustic backbone, she carried the melodies. Their breakthrough came when Night After Night won heavy rotation on Hitradio Ö3. A recording contract followed, and the 1993 debut album Tell Me a Poem sold more than 100,000 copies in Austria, earning double platinum. The title track and later Lucy's Eyes became signature songs that still define the duo for many listeners.

The early Papermoon years were marked by disciplined songcraft rather than stadium excess. Straub's guitar parts were spare and melodic; Thalhammer's voice floated above them. Follow-up albums The World in Lucy's Eyes (1994) and Papermoon (1996) both went gold, confirming that the debut was not a one-album flash. In 1996 Thalhammer left for nearly seven years. Straub kept the name alive with Roumina Straub, his then partner, and for a short stretch Barbara Pichler, releasing a maxi-single and a best-of with new material while Thalhammer tried a solo project under the name Tau. The original pair reunited in 2004.

The reunion years brought Come Closer, the Amadeus Austrian Music Award-winning True Love (2006), Christmas Unplugged, Verzaubert, When the Lights Go Down and the anniversary album Wake! (2011). True Love's Amadeus win placed Papermoon among the recognised national pop acts of the mid-2000s. Straub left Papermoon in December 2014; Thalhammer later continued the name with new musical partners, while Straub concentrated on writing, producing and entrepreneurship.

Beyond the duo, Straub chased larger-scale projects. From 2000 he developed the musical Kill And Win, once eyed for the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien but never staged. In 2009 he founded Teenage Rockstar Entertainment GmbH and, with Super RTL and Disney support, organised a Teenage Rockstar Summercamp on the island of Rügen in 2010, aiming to coach young performers in a structured environment. In 2014 he launched Global Rockstar GmbH, a digital music platform and label that attracted venture funding and later worked with San Marino's public broadcaster on Eurovision selection. He was also among those who helped choose Nathan Trent as Austria's 2017 Eurovision entrant, and he backed younger Austrian acts including Chris Steger.

Family and creative partnership intertwined. With Roumina Wilfling, whom he married in 2002 and divorced a year later, he had three children: Zoë (born 1996), Aimée and Zenon. He co-wrote and co-composed Zoë's Loin d'ici, Austria's 2016 Eurovision entry, released through Global Rockstar channels, and remained a visible presence beside her through later projects, including work around the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 in Vienna and the August 2026 presentation of the rock opera EPOS for Steyr 2027. At his death he was mourned by his children and grandson Victor, his parents Ilse and Richard, his sister Isabella, his nephew Tobias, and his partner Karin Hoffmann.

Straub died unexpectedly on 9 September 2026, less than two weeks after his 57th birthday. His family announced the news in a Parte published days later, calling him a splendid person and a great artist whose music would continue to accompany them. Austrian outlets from ORF and Kurier to Krone and Heute marked the loss of one of the country's distinctive songwriter-guitarists of the 1990s and a quiet force behind a new generation of Austrian pop. Colleagues and fans recirculated Tell Me a Poem and other Papermoon tracks as farewell listening, a reminder that his most durable monument remains the songs themselves.