Welte-Mignon

M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg and New York

From 1832 until 1932, the firm produced mechanical musical Instruments of highest quality. The founder Michael Welte and his company was prominent in the technical and qualitative aspects in their construction of orchestrions produced from 1850 to the beginning of the 20th Century.

In 1872 the firm moved from the remote black forest town Vöhrenbach to Freiburg to a newly developed business complex beneath the main railway-station. They entered into an epoch-making development when they substituted the playing gear of their instruments from the vulnerable wooden pinned cylinders through perforated paper rolls. In 1883 Emil Welte, the eldest son of Michael who went in 1865 to the United States, patented this paper roll method (US-Patent 287.599). In 1889 the technique was perfected and again protected through patents. Further on Welte built only instruments with the new technique, which was also licensed to other companies. With a branch in New York and Moscow and representatives world wide, one can consider the firm as one of the best known in those days.

Further more the firm was already famous for the inventions in the field of the reproduction of music when Welte introduced the Welte-Mignon reproducing piano in 1904, which came onto the market in 1905. Through this invention by Edwin Welte and his brother-in-law Karl Bockisch it became possible to reproduce the music once played by a pianist as true to nature as possible.

The technical mastership was then a sensation and it enables us today to listen to authentic reproduction of recordings on the few well-preserved Instruments. From 1912 on, a similar system for organs branded "Welte Philharmonic-Organ" was produced. In 1912 an new company was founded, the "M. Welte & Sons. Inc." in New York, which built a new factory in Poughkeepsie, New York. Shareholders were predominantly family in US and Germany, among them Barney Dreyfuss, Edwins brother-in-law.

Welte & Sons, Pougkeepsie factory building 1913/14. Today: Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation

The loss of the American branch and all their patents during WW I due to the Alien Property Custodian Act met the company hard. The economic crisis and the invention of new technologies like the radio and the electric record player about 1926 was almost the end of the firm with its expensive instruments. World wide the whole line of business in this field came to an end. In 1932, the firm could escape bankruptcy very tightly. Furthermore they built exclusively church organs and other special organs, now with Karl Bockisch as sole owner.

The last project of Edwin Welte was an electronic organ provided with photo-cells, the Lichttonorgel or Phototone-Organ”. This instrument was the first ever which used analog sampled sound. In 1936, a prototype of such an organ was demonstrated in a concert in Berlin. The production of these organs - in cooperation with the Telefunken Company - was halted because the inventor, Edwin Welte, was married to Betty Dreyfuss, which was Jewish.

The business complex in Freiburg was bombed and completely destroyed in November 1944. This event seemed to obscure the closely kept secret of the firm and the recording apparatus and recording process appeared lost forever. But in recent years parts of the recording apparatus for the Welte Philharmonic-Organs and documents were found in the United States. It was then possible to reconstruct the recording process at last theoretically. In the Augustinermuseum of Freiburg the inheritance of the company is preserved - all that survived the Second World War.

Literature

Automatische Musikinstrumente aus Freiburg in die Welt - 100 Jahre Welte-Mignon: Augustinermuseum, Ausstellung vom 17. September 2005 bis 8. Januar 2006 / [Hrsg.: Augustinermuseum]. Mit Beitr. von Durward R. Center, Gerhard Dangel, ... [Red.: Gerhard Dangel]. Freiburg : Augustinermuseum, 2005.

Quirin David Bowers: Encyclopedia of automatic musical instruments: Cylinder music boxes, disc music boxes, piano players and player pianos... Incl. a dictionary of automatic musical instrument terms. Vestal, N. Y.: The Vestal Press, 1988.

Gerhard Dangel: Geschichte der Firma M. Welte & Söhne Freiburg i. B. und New York. Freiburg: Augustinermuseum 1991.

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