Mathias Martin (organ builder)

Mathias Martin (born April 20, 1765 in Ettenheimmünster , † October 8, 1825 in Waldkirch ) was an organ builder from Baden .

Life

M. Martin organ, St. Romanus (Schweighausen) , 1809

Mathias Martin was born the son of a monastery brick maker in Ettenheimmünster. After finishing school he did an organ maker apprenticeship with his uncle Anton Ohnemus in Mainz . In 1781 he worked for two years as a journeyman in the organ workshop of the court organ maker Johann Ferdinand Balthasar Stieffell in Rastatt . Then he went to Strasbourg , where he worked as an organ builder for Conrad Sauter, Andreas Silbermann's successor , and then founded an organ workshop in the Ettenheim area in his home country. In 1787 he married Scholastica Moritz von Achern, with whom he had three sons. All of them became organ builders and later continued his organ workshop.

In 1799 he moved his workshop to Waldkirch (Breisgau), which at that time belonged to the region of Upper Austria . In 1800 he bought Waldkirch citizenship for 100 guilders . Throughout his life, Mathias Martin and his sons built 45 new organs, including in Schmieheim , Neuershausen (municipality of March (Breisgau) ), Altdorf (town of Ettenheim ) and Vörstetten , and was famous among organ experts for his high level of organ building skills.

His two younger sons, Franz Josef (1803–1837) and Martin Martin (1805–1837), however, went into debt and put an end to their own lives before they had finished the organ in the church in Ehaben .

Mathias Martin established an organ building tradition in Waldkirch, which continues to this day with the Waldkircher Orgelbau Jäger & Brommer company .

Web links

• Waldkirch organ builder on the website of the "Waldkircher Orgelstiftung"

Individual evidence

1. Jumpy history - the organ in the parish church of St. Gallus Ehaben. In: Badische Zeitung , February 4, 2015, accessed on October 20, 2017.