Johannes Kewitsch

Johannes Kewitsch (* 1847 in West Prussia ; † December 31, 1909 in Berlin ) was a German harmonium and piano maker in Berlin.

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The father was a country school teacher and organist in West Prussia and had 24 children. Johannes Kewitsch learned instrument making in Gdansk and in 1868 went to Berlin to work for organ builder Carl August Buchholz . He then worked for the piano manufacturer Wilhelm Biese in Berlin.

In 1878 Johannes Kewitsch founded his own company for harmonium and piano building in Berlin. It was located at Wilhelmstrasse 2 in 1883/86 , at the latest in 1896 at Potsdamer Strasse 27 B. Kewitsch was soon appointed the sole piano tuner of the Royal Academic University of Music in Berlin.

He built a tuned Enharmonicum ( Enharmonium ) according to the plans of the Japanese physicist Shōhei Tanaka with 20 keys and 26 pitches per octave. This aroused great interest, including from Kaiser Wilhelm II, to whom he presented one in 1891, and the composer Anton Bruckner . From this he developed his own tuned harmonium with 24 keys per octave, which he presented in 1892 at the International Exhibition for Music and Theater in Vienna. In 1906 Kewitsch moved an organ from the church in Arzberg near Torgau to Möthlow near Rathenow (this was removed in 1948).

The son Hans Kewitsch continued the J. Kewitsch harmonium and piano factory at Potsdamer Straße 27b until at least 1930. The piano and harmonium maker Alois Kewitsch in Warsaw was probably a brother.

literature

• Johannes Kewitsch † . In: Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau . XXX. Tape. 1909/10. P. 414f. with photo
• Uwe Pape : Johannes Kewitsch . In: Uwe Pape, Wolfram Hackel, Christhard Kirchner (Eds.): Lexicon of North German Organ Builders. Volume 4. Berlin, Brandenburg and the surrounding area. Pape Verlag 2017. p. 281, especially after the instrument building article