Hugo Popper
Hugo Popper (born April 21, 1857 in Prague , † November 14, 1910 in Leipzig ) was a music lover and industrialist.
Life
Popper was the son of an Austrian officer. Actually, his military career was already sealed, but early on he recognized his love for music, especially for marching music . He resigned from the army and became a businessman. In 1891 Popper met the businessman Hugo Spangenberg . The two became partners and the joint company Popper & Co exported goods of all kinds to the Orient.
On his business trips he also visited Leipzig and recognized the great possibilities that mechanical musical instruments offered him. So he left Prague in 1897 and moved to Leipzig, a metropolis of music.
He took over the product sales of the instruments of H. Peters & Co and Etzold & Popitz , later also the sales of the Racca company , a manufacturer of mechanical musical instruments from Bologna .
The Freiburg company M. Welte & Sons signed a contract with Popper in 1905, which gave him the general agency for Welte Mignon instruments in the German Empire. Since Leipzig was the music metropolis of the German Empire at the time, they set up a recording salon for Welte Mignon recordings in Popper's company, so that a second studio was now available in addition to the Freiburg recording studio. Indeed, Popper succeeded in engaging a large number of famous musicians to recordings, which took place under the technical direction of Karl Bockisch or Edwin Welte . In 1909 the Leipzig studio was closed and Popper's general agency was withdrawn.
Later he also produced self-playing pianos with the name Stella and world concertist as well as orchestras with names such as Eroica , Gladiator and Mystikon in his own factory .
When he died in 1910, he called many artists and industrialists from the music world in Germany his friends, including Julius Feurich , Karl Bockisch and the Welte family.
literature
- Obituary by Paul Dachne in the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau, Vol. 31, Leipzig, 1910-11, pp. 196–198.
- Birgit Heise: The manufacturers of self-playing musical instruments from Leipzig with their products and patents from the period from 1876 to 1930 , entry on Hugo Popper, database of the Museum for Musical Instruments at the University of Leipzig
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Popper, Hugo |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Leipzig industrialist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 21, 1857 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Prague |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 14, 1910 |
| Place of death | Leipzig |