Ludwig Hupfeld AG
The Ludwig Hupfeld AG had produced a company based in Leipzig company that mechanical and self-playing instruments and sales. Its founder was Ludwig Hupfeld .
history
On July 1, 1892, Ludwig Hupfeld took over the music shop J. M. Grob & Co. in Leipzig- Eutritzsch , founded between 1880 and 1882 by J. M. Grob and two partners , which initially only sold instruments, but from 1886 also built self-playing pianos and orchestras . After the takeover, the company name was changed to "Hupfeld Musikinstrumentenwerke". The company continued to sell auto-playing instruments from other manufacturers such as the Symphonion , the Kalliope and the auto -playing zither chordphone .
In 1902, in competition with the American pianola , Hupfeld brought out the phonola as a so-called art play piano , which was initially sold in large numbers primarily as a so-called push-up player . Like the name pianola in the USA and Great Britain, Phonola has become synonymous in Europe with a self-playing piano. The German surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch was one of the well-known Phonola users . This was followed in 1904 by the Phonoliszt as an electric piano with artificial emphasis, primarily for classical music and more for domestic use, while the clavitist as a restaurant piano had only a modest emphasis device and was primarily designed for dance and entertainment music and the basis for most Hupfeld- Orchestrations formed.
A major challenge arose for Hupfeld in 1904 when the Freiburg company M. Welte & Söhne brought the world's first reproduction piano under the Welte-Mignon brand onto the market. Ludwig Hupfeld needed more capital for the necessary investments to develop and build new instruments, so the company was converted into a stock corporation , Ludwig Hupfeld AG . The Hupfeld Dea , a reproduction system that came onto the market in 1908, was developed in competition with the “Welte-Mignon” . This was later developed into the Tri-Phonola , a combination of art play, electric and reproduction piano. After 1911, Hupfeld then produced instruments whose piano rolls were based on the format of the Buffalo Convention and were then given the addition of Animatic ( Animatic-Clavitist , Animatic-Phonoliszt etc.). Piano rolls were named Animatic (for Phonola), Animatic-S (for Animatic-Clavitist), Animatic-SJ (for Symphony-Jazz-Orchestrion) and Animatic-T (for Tri-Phonola and Animatic Phonoliszt).
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In 1905 or 1906, the Mills Novelty Company in Chicago , USA, introduced the first orchestrion with an integrated violin . This instrument, the Automatic Virtuosa , had a built-in violin in the upper part; the strings were bowed by four rotating celluloid discs. From 1909 there was an improved model, the Violano-Virtuoso .
In 1908 Hupfeld also presented an orchestrion with integrated violins, the Phonoliszt violina designed by Carl Hennig . This was an instrument over two meters high with a self-playing piano in the lower part, but in the upper part of which three violins were pressed against an endless rotating violin bow. The larger instruments and orchestras were called: Symphony Jazz , Pan , Phonoliszt-Violina , Dea-Violina , Clavitist-Violina , Pepita , Violina-Orchestra and Helios .
After the First World War , Hupfeld also produced cinema organs . Over 5 million piano rolls for the Hupfeld music systems were manufactured and sold each year. The company produced a large number of variations, such as a Phonoliszt violina orchestrion with six violins and an automatic roll changer that played up to ten roles in a row. The listener could determine the role of his choice himself at the push of a button on a box on the wall.
After the old production site - Apelstrasse 4 in Leipzig-Eutritzsch - finally became too small , a new large factory building with approx. 100,000 m² of usable space was built in 1910–1911 according to plans by the Leipzig architect Emil Franz Hänsel in Böhlitz-Ehrenberg , which is now a district of Leipzig Established, which initially had 1,200 and a few years later up to 2,000 employees, making Hupfeld the world's largest manufacturer of mechanical musical instruments. In 1910, the Hupfeld house with sales rooms and a concert hall was opened in Leipzig. Ludwig Hupfeld AG took over well-known piano factories - the Carl Rönisch piano factory in Dresden in 1918 , A. H. Grunert in Johanngeorgenstadt in 1920 and Steck in Gotha in 1924 . But the market changed, and the poorer business situation forced Hupfeld to merge in 1926 with the Leipzig pianoforte factory Gebr. Zimmermann , which had settled in Eilenburg in 1904 and had a large and modern production facility there. From then on, the company operated as Leipziger Pianoforte- & Phonola-Fabriken, Hupfeld - Gebr. Zimmermann AG Eilenburg and had locations in Leipzig, Eilenburg, Dresden and Seifhennersdorf. The company was meanwhile the largest piano manufacturer in Europe.
Towards the end of the 1920s, sales collapsed due to the increased use of records and radios . The global economic crisis that began in 1929 exacerbated the problems so much that the Eilenburg plant was closed on June 30, 1931. Production had to be stopped almost completely in 1934, pianos were only produced on a modest scale. The production facilities were used in the Second World War to manufacture military supplies and were badly damaged by bombs. After the Second World War, the company was expropriated and the production facilities were taken over by VEB Deutsche Pianounion in 1949 . However, pianos continued to be produced and sold under the Hupfeld brand .
After the fall of the Wall , the Carl A. Pfeiffer GmbH & Co. KG piano factory in Leonberg acquired the company, which was now called Pianofabrik Leipzig GmbH & Co. KG (Ludwig-Hupfeld-Straße 16) until its bankruptcy on August 13, 2009, instruments under the brands Rönisch and Hupfeld produced. Rönisch was taken over by the Julius Blüthner Pianofortefabrik .
literature
- Hupfeld A.-G. Leipzig (Ed.): Animatic 88 piano rolls , Leipzig 1913
- Hupfeld A.-G. Leipzig (ed.): DEA, Hupfeld Meisterspiel-Instrumente, DEA, DEA grand piano, DEA piano (company brochure n.d.) [Leipzig 1912].
Individual evidence
- ^ Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Hans Rudolf Berndorff : That was my life. Kindler & Schiermeyer, Bad Wörishofen 1951 (used here: license edition for Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1956, p. 159).
- ↑ Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau , 32nd year 1912/1913, p. 19.
- ↑ Traditional company penniless. Pianofortefabrik Leipzig files for bankruptcy. In: Neue Musikzeitung from August 29, 2009 ( online , accessed January 10, 2013)
swell
- Paul Daehne: Celebration at Ludwig Hupfeld AG in Leipzig . In: Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau , Volume 37, No. 28 (1917)
- Hupfeld AG. Leipzig (Ed.): 1921 Animatic, 88 Animatic and 73 Phonola piano rolls catalog . Leipzig 1921
- Andreas Flegel (Ed.): Eilenburg in old views - Chapter 37 . Zaltbommel, 2002
- Hans-W. Schmitz: Welte-Mignon and Hupfeld DEA, two reproduction systems in competition . In: Das Mechanische Musikinstrument No. 19, March 1981, pp. 3-18. ISSN 0721-6092
- Jürgen Hocker: The Phonola . In: Das Mechanische Musikinstrument Nr. 57, February 1993, pp. 14-26. ISSN 0721-6092
- Hans-W. Schmitz: An essay on Hupfeld's piano rolls . In: Das Mechanische Musikinstrument No. 79, 2000, pp. 16ff. ISSN 0721-6092
- Hans-W. Schmitz: Overview of Hupfeld piano rolls . In: Das Mechanische Musikinstrument No. 79, 2000, pp. 23–24. ISSN 0721-6092
- Eszter Fontana (Ed.): Well-known pianists in the Hupfeld recording salon . Halle 2001. ISBN 3-932863-34-8 or ISBN 3-9804574-4-3
- Gabriele fights, Eszter Fontana: Historical sound carrier collection. Inventory catalog I. Piano rolls for art play and reproduction pianos . Musical Instrument Museum of the University of Leipzig 2006 (CD-ROM edition).
- Werner Baus: Ludwig Hupfeld - his life's work . CD-ROM edition, place and year of publication and other details currently unknown.