Nikolaus Schuble

Nikolaus Schuble (born September 10, 1770 in Pfaffenweiler ; † November 24, 1816 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a southwest German organ builder who was active in the transition from Baroque to Classicism .

Life

The organ expert Bernd Sulzmann (1940–1999) researched Schuble's life and work and dealt with them comprehensively in an article.

Anna Bernauer, born on February 18, 1731 in Todtnau, married the carpenter Josef Schuble, born on July 2, 1733, in Pfaffenweiler on November 22, 1762 . Best man was her brother, the organ builder Blasius Bernauer , who was also living in Breisgau at that time. The couple had five children; the son Nikolaus was the last born. Nikolaus Schuble and his cousin Xaver Bernauer trained as an organ builder from his uncle . Blasius Bernauer led an unsteady life, had hardly any assignments and from 1790 had to let his son run the business. Nikolaus Schuble was no better afterwards; During the French Revolution, churches could hardly think of building organs. He therefore went to Villingen in 1802 , but returned to Pfaffenweiler the following year. From there he applied for naturalization in Freiburg , the city had to offer him "sufficient food forever". To support his request, he built a choir organ for the Freiburg Minster for little money . However, the properly organized instrument makers managed to thwart naturalization. It therefore took five years until Nikolaus Schuble was finally accepted on August 11, 1809 not as a citizen, but only as a protective relative .

Signature of Nikolaus Schuble

Due to his early death, Nikolaus Schuble was left with little artistically. Due to poisoning he was "deprived of his sanity for a long time and finally of his life", namely on November 24th, 1816. According to family tradition, the cause of death was a sausage poisoned by the competition in Waldkirch , which cannot be true because other people were eating the same meal Symptoms of poisoning were brought to the hospital. Although the corpse ended up in the anatomy department in Freiburg , this happened to all the deceased who had received alms from the poor institution. At that time, Nikolaus Schuble was in Gant (bankruptcy) and left a needy widow in Freiburg , Johanna Blank, who came from Günzburg , with two children. The burial of the poor hospital in the old cemetery in Freiburg cost 30 kreuzers.

Works

Little of Schuble's works has survived in our time that can be listed here in full:

Opfingen

The organ in the Protestant parish church was built in 1781 by Georg Marcus Stein (1738–1794). In 1805 Nikolaus Schuble added a trumpet bass 8 ′ - worth mentioning because it is one of the few registers that he has preserved .

Prospectus of the organ in Lehen

Fiefdom

Of the organ that Nikolaus Schuble built for St. Cyriak in 1808 , only the case remains, in which Wilhelm Schwarz & Sohn built a new instrument with 18 stops and two manuals in 1965. The gaming table was also moved away from the main plant. At least the disposition of the old organ is known.

Manual C – f 3 Bourdon 8th' Viol de gambe 8th' Cornet V from c 1 ′ Principal 4 ′ flute 4 ′ Nazart 3 ′ Doublet 2 ′ mixture 1 1 / 2 '

Pedal C – d 0 Sub bass 16 ′ Octave bass 8th' Trombet bass 8th'

• Tremulant
• Pairing : I / P

Kirchhofen organ prospectus

Kirchhofen

In 1761 Adrien Joseph Pottier expanded the existing organ in Ehrenkirchen to 18 registers and provided it with a new case. Apparently they were not satisfied with that. After the Silbermann organ from Arlesheim was initially to be taken over, a new building was planned using the existing case, for which a contract was signed on August 12, 1809 with Nikolaus Schuble, who came from the neighboring village of Pfaffenweiler. Before the start of the work, however, differences of opinion arose, so that the organ builder Xaver Bernauer was also involved, also from a neighboring town, Staufen im Breisgau . Ultimately, it was agreed to change Schuble's disposition in the spirit of Bernauer. But now it turned out that the old Pottier case was too small. Schuble therefore received the order to manufacture a new organ case. It is possible that the upper case of the Pottier organ found a second use in the Rückpositiv of the organ. Today only the case of the Schuble organ remains; In 1977, Fischer & Krämer Orgelbau built a new organ in the historic, partially supplemented case, but restored to the original dimensions. It has 31 registers, with a Vox humana 8 ′ and a few pedal registers being added, but the rest of the arrangement was reconstructed by Schuble / Bernauer. "Due to its classic layout and disposition, the work finds both happy approval and cold rejection from organ lovers." In 2014, on the occasion of the organ anniversary, the community began collecting donations for a new restoration.

Horben

In the church of St. Agatha in 1812 there was an "organ very small and very old", which "does not even deserve the name of an organ because it has no pedal and only 3 octaves in the claveature". A wealthy farmer therefore donated a new organ, the intended disposition of which is known from Nikolaus Schuble's cost estimate. Unfortunately, the pastor at the time, whose memoirs have been preserved, only reported a lot about the turmoil until the building of the organ was approved, and little about Nikolaus Schuble. The calculated for the new instrument 700 guilders; A painter who “gave the organ a pearly paint and gilded the decorations on it” received another 50 florins. In 1899, some of the organ's registers were renewed. In 1951 it was completely redesigned and brought to two manuals and 13 stops. How little interest was in the preservation of the old organ at that time can be seen from the fact that the slide box, "the thing with the many holes", was simply hacked up in the parish barn. In 1981, Fischer and Krämer Orgelbau were able to save some of Schuble's registers and rows of pipes when installing a new two-manual slider organ in Nikolaus Schuble's old case: Bourdon 8 ′, Principal 4 ′ (f ′ - f ′ ′ ′), Flute 4 ′ ( to f ′ ′ ′), octave bass 8 ′ C - d ⁰ . Today it is the most complete Schuble organ that has come down to us. For the organist, the 2014 organ is a "sensitive and charming, if sometimes moody girl."

Manual C – f 3 Bourdon 8th' Viol de gambe 8th' Cornet V from c 1 ′ Principal 4 ′ flute 4 ′ Nazart 3 ′ Doublet 2 ′ mixture 1 1 / 2 '

Pedal C – d 0 Octave bass 8th' Trombone bass 8th'

• Tremulant
• Pairing : I / P

List of works

In addition to repair work and new construction projects that did not result in orders, Bernd Sulzmann lists the organs newly built by Nikolaus Schuble. The gap before 1803 may be explained by the fact that Sulzmann's own research was limited to Baden .

year	place	church	image	Manuals	register	Remarks
1797	Weir	St. Martin				1807/1813 sold to the Diaspora Church in Höllstein . According to Sulzmann, the organ does not come from Nikolaus Schuble, but from Xaver Bernauer . Not received
1803	Pfaffenweiler	St. Columba		I / P	11	Not received
1807/1813	Freiburg	Muenster				Choir organ; not received
1808	Fiefdom	St. Cyriak		I / P	11	Just received the case
1809	Ottmarsheim	Abbey church				Remodeling (positive); Burned in 1991, if still present
1810/1815	Kirchhofen	St. Mary's Assumption (Kirchhofen)				Just received the case
1812	Horben	St. Agatha		I / P	10	Housing and 4 registers preserved

literature

• Bernd Sulzmann : Sources and documents about the life and work of the organ maker family Bernauer-Schuble in the Markgräflerland. In: Acta Organologica Volume 13, 1979, pp. 124-192.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bernd Sulzmann: Sources and documents about the life and work of the organ maker family Bernauer-Schuble in the Markgräflerland. In: Acta Organologica Volume 13, 1979, pp. 124-192.
2. ↑ Sulzmann, 1979, p. 134.
3. ^ Edmund Weeger: Nikolaus Schuble, organ builder , in: Pfaffenweiler a local history , Freiburg 1997, p. 183.
4. ↑ Sulzmann, 1979, p. 137 ff.
5. ^ Organ Kirchhofen 100 | 200 years. Ehrenkirchen 2014, p. 4, according to Bernd Sulzmann: Festschrift on the occasion of the organ inauguration, 1977, and on the history of the organ in the Ehrenkirchen community. In: On the 400th anniversary of the death of Lazarus von Schwendi and on the 350th anniversary of the death of the 300 farmers from Kirchhofen, Ehrenstetten and Pfaffenweiler. 1983.
6. ^ Claus Dotter Weich: Parish and pilgrimage church Kirchhofen im Breisgau. Regensburg 1995, p. 21.
7. ^ Bernd Sulzmann: Historical organs in Baden 1690 - 1890 , Munich / Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-7954-0421-5 , p. 150
8. ^ Anton Merkle: Early organs in Horben. In: Schau-ins-Land. 101, 1982, pp. 251-261. (on-line)
9. ^ Anne Freyer: An organ is capricious , in: Badische Zeitung , December 9, 2014. (online)
10. ↑ The cornet is not listed in Schuble's cost estimate. In 1834 the organ is also only described with 9 registers.
11. ↑ organ collection Gabriel Isenberg. (on-line)