A short history of Mittenwald
The first mention of Mittenwald in a written document was in 1096. Probably before 1305, Mittenwald was awarded the right to classify itself as a Markt, which gave it special rights having to do with the selling and transport of goods. It was one of the main towns within the Grafschaft Werdenfels (lands of the Counts of Werdenfels), which lay between Tyrolia and Bavaria. The Grafschaft Werdenfels was a latifundium of the Hochstift Freising (church division/Bishop´s Seat) from 1294 until its secularization in1802, at which point the Grafschaft became part of Bavaria.
Located on the Unteren Weg, one of two arms of the trade route between Augsburg and Venice, Mittenwald profited as of the end of the 15th century from the Rottfuhrwesen (transport industry; merchants were also, by law, required to stop in Mittenwald), the Bozener Markt, which at times was held in Mittenwald, and the participation in the long distance, trans-alpine movement of goods. Under these positive circumstances, by the end of the 17th century new trades had become established in Mittenwald, such as Bortenwirkerei (the weaving of decorative ribbons and borders), Filetseidenstickerei (fancy silk embroidery) and violin making.
Extending from these early beginnings to the present, Mittenwald became, along with the Saxonian town of Markneukirchen, one of the most important centers for the making of both plucked and bowed string instruments in Germany.
Coat of arms of the Markt Mittenwald
from 1408 in a copy from the 16th century
The importance of the Klotz Family for Mittenwald violin making
Matthias Klotz (1653 -1743) may be considered to have the founder of violin making in Mittenwald. Klotz most likely learned his craft from an instrument maker of the Fuessen area before he worked from 1672 - 1678 as a journeyman in Padua for the emigrated Allgaeu lute maker Pietro Railich. There is nothing further known about how he spent the years after this period of time until his return to Mittenwald in the 1680s.
Klotz had clearly found a positive set of circumstances for violin making in Mittenwald: he had plenty of high quality material available (in particular maple and spruce), there were favorable sales possibilities (through access to the larger national trade situation) and he was able to get official permission to run his business with no competition or interference from the guild.
It is most likely that he established a workshop as a lute maker some time around the end of 1685/the beginning of 1686, a time close both to his first marriage and to the purchase of his first house in Mittenwald. Violin making as a whole in Mittenwald grew out of these beginnings.
Mittenwald in its surrounding countryside
Landscape by Adalbert Kromer
Oil painting on wood, Freising 1885
Based on a gouache by Valentin Gappnigg from 1700
Diözesanmuseum Freising
This painting by Kromer shows Mittenwald in its early days of violin making.
Klotz "school" and the Klotz model
Matthias Klotz ran a larger workshop in which he not only trained his three sons, Georg I (1687 - 1737), Sebastian I (1696 - 1775) and Johann Carol (1709 - 1769) but also trained other Mittenwald violin makers such as the well known Andreas Jais (1685 - 1753).
Klotz´s son Sebastian I Klotz had a huge stylistic influence on the Mittenwald "school" of violin making: his personal violin model came to have the status of a shining example for other makers. There was a later, second "school" of violin making that developed parallel to the Klotz school: this was based on the work and influence of Matthias Hornsteiner (fl. 1760–1803), who was known by the "house" nickname Hofschmied. Through the influence of these two "schools", Mittenwald violin making reached its first peak of success in the second half of the 18th century.
Violin by Sebastian Klotz, Mittenwald, ca. 1750
The Klotz model served in all its conceptual details as an inspiration for
Mittenwald violin making of the 18th century.
Crises in Mittenwald violin making
As a result of wars, local fires, natural catastrophes and economic lows, Mittenwald, and with it violin making in general in this area, suffered a number of painful set-backs.
One of the results of the secularization of both the Habsburg lands (1783) and in southern Germany in general (ca. 1803) was that many abbeys and churches were lost as regular customers to violin makers in Mittenwald. In order to both escape the resulting pressure to conform to the demands of the retailer´s organizations and also to establish themselves with the newly developing up and coming middle class, a number of violin makers emigrated to other southern German cities around the turn of the 18th to 19th century. Examples of this are: B. Franz Knittl (1744–1791), who went to Freising, Franz Simon (1757–1803), who went to Salzburg, Ignaz Simon (1789–1866), who went to Haidhausen, near Munich and Anton Zwerger (1761–1831), who went to Passau and Salzburg.
The Napoleonic Wars and, in particular, the Russian Campaign of 1812 had a disastrous influence on the sales of instruments and on violin making in general in this area. Of the 90 violin makers (and 12 bow makers) registered in 1811, only 25 violin makers (and 2 bow makers) lived through both the years of chaos and the economic depression following the wars.
The retailer´s organizations
It is probable that by the beginning of the 18th century Mittenwald retailers had also taken over the sales of individual instruments as, by this time, almost every fifth Mittenwalder was working "on the road" as a traveling salesman.
The second half of the 18th century saw the specialization of a number of Mittenwald families (Baader, Hornsteiner, Jais, Jochner, Kriner, Lipp, Neuner, Oettl, Resch, Rieger, Seiler, Woernle) in retailing large quantities of instruments that had been made in Mittenwald workshops. During this period of time, only a small percent of the instruments would actually have been signed by their makers; others simply received a label indicating the general model used – and a great number of them had no indication whatsoever of their origins.
A Mittenwald Amati label, ca. 1750
As of the early 19th century, the retailers had come to have full control over violin making in Mittenwald; they established and controlled the prices and dictated what would be made and how. Since the most financially lucrative market at this time was for inexpensive, simply made instruments, there was a decline in the general quality and individuality of the instruments produced in Mittenwald.
As a result of the violin makers growing dependence on the retailers to sell their products, both nationally and in almost all the European countries, violin making became a piecework trade, in which individuals specialized in doing one step of the process. By the middle of the 19th century, the division of labor was so extreme (there were specialists, for example, for making the body, for the neck, for the varnish and for setting the instruments up) that there were very few in Mittenwald who could still make an instrument from start to finish.
The violin workshop of an early 20th century Mittenwald craftsman
reconstructed in the first Mittenwald Violin Making Museum (founded in 1930).
Photographer unknown, c. 1935
Geigenbaumuseum Mittenwald
The Mittenwald Violin Making School
In order to stop the decay of the violin making trade as such, the Mittenwald Violin Making School was founded in 1858 with the support of Maximilian II, the King of Bavaria. The first director of the school was Johann Kriner (1834–1883), who had learned his trade from the Munich violin maker Andreas Engleder. Another violin maker, Johann I Reiter (1834–1899), who was a student of Jean Vauchel (1782–1856) in Damm, near Aschaffenburg became a kind of wandering teacher, going into the workshops of the Mittenwald violin makers in order to help them learn more about the complexities of their craft.
Mittenwald violin makers have been taking their craft out into the world since the second half of the 19th century. Some of these are: Joseph Bernhard Hornsteiner (1853–1919) in Berlin, Alois Kriner (1805–1890) in Freising, Franz Poller (1856–after 1932, Andreas Rieger (1836–after 1904) and Anton Zunterer (1858–1917) in Munich, Johann Hornsteiner (1835–1885) in Passau and Anton Sprenger (1833–1900) in Stuttgart. A number of Mittenwald violin makers also either worked in and/or emigrated to other European and American cities.
One Mittenwald man deserves special notice: Ludwig Neuner (1840–1897), of the retail company Neuner & Hornsteiner, went to Paris and worked as a violin maker for Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (1798–1875), thereby coming in contact with many examples of classic Italian violins. He returned to Mittenwald with examples of the Vuillaume models and had the best of the Mittenwald craftsmen copy them, working with them to encourage a rise in the general level of quality produced in Mittenwald.
Fresco by Sebastian Pfeffer (1990) on the facade of a Mittenwald house
Mittenwald violin making in the 20th century
The ravages of WWI and the resulting economic crisis that came afterwards put an end to violin making as a Mittenwald industry: the retail company Neuner & Hornsteiner closed down in 1930, the Baader retail company in 1934. The efforts of the national socialist Reichsmusikkammer (national department of music) to support the Mittenwald violin makers by establishing Arbeitsgemeinschaften I & II (communal working groups) for violin making failed due to the onset of WWII.
It was not until there was a general new direction of thought about violin making as Kunstgeigenbau (high quality, individually made instruments) that violin making began to come into its own again in Mittenwald.
The fact that a number of violin makers who were Sudetendeutschen Vertriebenen (displaced persons from Czechoslovakia) settled in Mittenwald after WWII contributed greatly to the reestablishment of quality violin making in Mittenwald. Some of the violin maker families who fall under this category are: Bitterer, Dietl, Gruettner, Guetter, Hausmann, Lang, Paulus, Peschke, Sandner, Schmidt and Walther.
In todays Mittenwald (2003) there are 11 local workshops in which plucked or bowed string instruments are made.
Introductory Bibliography of Mittenwald Violin Making
Index of all Mittenwald Violin Makers