Paul Friedrich Ernst Ehrlich

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Paul Ehrlich

Paul Friedrich Ernst Ehrlich (born March 21, 1849 in Reudnitz near Leipzig, † January 17, 1925 in Leipzig ) was a German piano maker and designer of mechanical musical instruments in Leipzig.

Life

Paul Ehrlich was the son of the baker Friedrich August Ehrlich (1824–1866) and his wife Auguste Pauline, née Gentzsch (1828–1895). He spent a few childhood years in Chub . Back in Leipzig, he learned the trade of piano maker and worked for the Morgenstern & Kotrade and Julius Blüthner companies . After participating in the Franco-German War in 1870/71, he worked for the piano manufacturer Irmler.

From a young age he was fond of technology and especially the mechanics - which is also the basis of piano construction - he soon turned to independently playing musical instruments. Based on the perforated tape control of looms invented by Joseph-Marie Jacquard in 1802 , a patent for a perforated tape-controlled musical instrument was granted in 1847. Using this patent, Ehrlich started his own business and began building the so-called organette in 1876 together with an assistant . Scanned by an endless perforated belt, steel tongues controlled by a mechanism were blown on by means of compressed air from a bellows, which was operated by a hand crank.

The high demand that began at this time for simple jukeboxes that could be acquired by a wide range of people brought him rapid economic success. In 1877 he founded the company Paul Ehrlich & Co. , which was transferred to the Aktiengesellschaft Fabrik Leipziger Musikwerke, formerly Paul Ehrlich & Co. AG, in 1880 . If the company employed 65 workers in 1879, there were already 500 in 1885 with a corresponding expansion of the production facilities. Ehrlich set up several foundations for his employees and workers and also organized homework opportunities for widows, orphans and the physically handicapped.

Ariston
Ehrlich music record

Of his 37 patents on mechanical musical instruments, the first is likely to have been the most important. In 1882 he replaced the paper tape with a round, perforated disc made of cardboard, which was easier to replace than the perforated tape. He named the instruments built according to this principle Ariston .

On the occasion of the participation in the international music and theater exhibition in Vienna in 1892 , the magazine for instrument making wrote about the Ehrlich company:

“This important and outstanding company, which is rightly considered to be the first and oldest in Germany in the field of modern mechanical musical works, has exhibited extremely richly and variedly as proof of the versatility of its activities. The technical director of the factory and founder of the same, Mr. Paul Ehrlich, can in a certain sense be described as the laying of the foundation stone of the German music industry, because it was only after his invention of the perforated music disc that this industry began to revive in Germany and develop into unimagined prosperity. "

In 1894 the production of the three hundred thousandth Aristons could be celebrated and more than six million sheet music disks sold.

The Leipzig musical works produced other jukebox as Aristonette, Daimonoin, Helikon, mechanical pianos and Vorsetzer to automatically play normal pianos. From 1886 instruments without self-playing equipment were also added: organs, keyboard dulcimer , pianos, keyboard zithers and harmoniums .

The company of Matthäus Grob had the successful sole representation in the distribution of the products of the Leipziger Musikwerke until there was a rift about the copyright for a push-up player in 1887, because the initial trading company Grob had meanwhile also started its own production. Ehrlich held up despite improvements in the competition - the Lochmann company used z. B. more durable sheet metal instead of cardboard discs - stuck to his products, and after 1895 there were practically no new developments.

The competition was broad, including the later industry giant, Ludwig Hupfeld AG , which emerged from the Grob company . In 1904 the Leipziger Musikwerke were liquidated . Attempts to merge with other companies were unsuccessful. The former production facilities of the Leipziger Musikwerke in Möckernschen Strasse 29-33 in Leipzig- Gohlis were destroyed in the Second World War and some apartment blocks were built on during the GDR era.

family

Paul Ehrlich married Amalie Auguste Gümpel, who was also born in 1849, in 1873. The couple had seven daughters and a son, Curt, who died in 1888. After the company was ruined and his wife died in 1908, Ehrlich was lonely and impoverished. He died of pneumonia in 1925. Friends and former colleagues had to pay his medical bill and his funeral.

Paul Ehrlich had a brother Emil, who initially worked as a works guide in the Leipzig music works. Shortly before Musikwerke went bankrupt, he founded Ehrlichs Musikwerke Emil Ehrlich in 1904 . He made push-ups and instruments that were similar to his brother's Ariston. Bankruptcy proceedings were opened as early as 1909. He then ran a repair shop for mechanical musical instruments.

Awards

  • 1881 "Honorable Mention" at the trade and industry exhibition in 1881, in Halle a / S.
  • 1883 “Silver” for orchestrionettes at the Colonial Exhibition in Amsterdam
  • 1897 "Royal Saxon State Medal" at the Saxon-Thuringian industrial and commercial exhibition "for the establishment of a new and important industry, the production of musical works with exchangeable notes"

literature

Paul Ehrlich † . Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau , Vol. 45 (1925), p. 515 (digitized version )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Herbert Pönicke:  Ehrlich, Paul Friedrich Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 364 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau, Vol. 12 (1892), p. 703 (digitized version )
  3. ↑ Ehrlich's musical works EMIL EHRLICH. Retrieved August 10, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Honestly, Paul Friedrich Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Honest Paul (common name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German piano maker and designer of mechanical musical instruments
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Reudnitz
DATE OF DEATH January 17, 1925
Place of death Leipzig