Helmut Finke

Helmut Finke (born April 7, 1923 in Herford ; † October 30, 2009 in Vlotho ) was a German musician , instrument maker and entrepreneur .

Life and work

Finke's father was the social democratic politician Julius Finke . Finke received his first trumpet lessons at the age of twelve from a military musician. In 1942 Helmut Finke was drafted as a soldier in the Wehrmacht, in 1943 he was seriously wounded while serving in the front in Russia and was released from further military service. He continued his engineering studies until 1945. At the same time, he intensified his trumpet studies with an orchestral musician in Bielefeld. Since after the end of the war, the mechanical engineering profession offered only an uncertain future due to the destruction and dismantling of industrial plants, he decided on music. In 1945, Finke became the 2nd trumpeter in the rebuilt Herford City Orchestra (1st trumpeter: Walter Holy).

In 1950 Helmut Finke began producing individual mouthpieces. Repair orders for brass instruments were also carried out. From 1951 he built his first trumpet from old parts and began building a workshop for the production of high-quality brass instruments.

Replica of historical instruments

In 1954 Finke already had a name for the reproduction of historical instruments, e.g. B. the Renaissance tenor trombones or the narrowly scaled Bb trumpets. Between 1955 and 1956, the first high D and high F trumpets and the set of historical trombones, for example the marriage trombones ( baroque trombones ) from the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg. The first French horns and other large brass instruments were made during this period. In 1959, Helmut Finke and Otto Steinkopf jointly constructed the round clarin trumpet based on the famous clarin trumpet, which is shown in the portrait of the Leipzig council musician Gottfried Reiche by Elias Gottlob Haußmann from 1727. Reiche was Johann Sebastian Bach's favorite trumpeter. The Finke production program also included high-flat trumpets in different designs. As an instrument maker and musician, Helmut Finke became one of the pioneers of the " early music " scene.

Innovator

The increasing demand for his instruments and the constant improvement in production techniques were the reasons for the new construction of a spacious workshop in 1964 and the move to Vlotho-Exter .

It is a particular merit of Helmut Finke that instrument making is increasingly based on objective physical knowledge in addition to traditional and often mystified craftsmanship. The reason for this is the long-term cooperation with the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, which maintained an institute for basic musical research. From 1970 the research results flowed into the production of new instrument models. In 1973 and 1974 the first treble double and triple horns were developed and manufactured. By implementing the physical and musical requirements in new manufacturing processes, Finke was able to apply for patents for instrument components and machines.

Since the seventies, French horns have been the main product alongside trumpets and trombones, whereby the construction of special instruments (horns with Wieners valves, Wagner tubas etc.) with particularly masterful instruments has always been part of his work.

For many years Finke GmbH & Co was one of the only companies in the world in which all components of the instruments (valves, pipes, bells, etc.) were made from the raw material.

The musician

In the founding years, Finke was still active as a professional musician. He had now specialized in high trumpet parts. With his friend Walter Holy and later Ingus Schmidt he formed the first trumpet trumpet of the " Cappella Coloniensis ". It is reported from Finke that he played the trumpet until he was seventy and tested trumpets with high orchestral solos early in the morning without blowing them in. His last public appearance as a soloist occurred between 1985 and 1987.

instructor

Finke also made a special contribution to the training of apprentices to become brass instrument makers and precision mechanics. Several generations went through the strict, but always technically outstanding school of the "master". Many of them were recognized as the best of their year and in the German craft performance competition.

Continuation of the company

After his retirement from active work, the company is continued by Johannes Finke, his youngest son from his second marriage. His son Christian Finke also worked for the company; he died on June 4, 2017.

Web links

• Homepage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Schnabel: The evangelical trombone choir work. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993, ISBN 978-3-525-57188-0 , p. 108 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
2. ^ History of the Finke company. (No longer available online.) Finkehorns.de, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved December 3, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ ^{a b c} History of the Finke company. (No longer available online.) Finkehorns.de, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved December 3, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ 1954-2004, 50 Years of Early Music on WDR , PDF pages 15 & 155, HG: Thomas Synofzik, Barbara Schwendowius and Richard Lorber, Concerto Verlag 2005, Cologne (PDF 6.74 MB)
5. ↑ 1954-2004, 50 years of early music in the WDR , PDF pages 15 & 17, HG: Thomas Synofzik, Barbara Schwendowius and Richard Lorber, Concerto Verlag 2005, Cologne (PDF 6.74 MB)
6. ^ Chamber of Crafts in Bielefeld, list of the best of the year in musical instrument making 1987 and 1988
7. ↑ finkehorns.de: Company ( Memento of the original from December 17, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.