Meinel & Herold Info
Aidan M Humphreys
Hi,
Can anyone tell me anything about the history of the German musical
instrument maker Meinel & Herold. I own a upright bass made by the company
but I gather they were principally known as Accordion and Bandoneon makers.
Does anyone know were they were based, during which years they were active,
when they stopped production and the general quality of their insturments.
Aidan.
JHB NIJHOF
A copy of a reply I sent to the accordion list:
(actually, I could just have referred to dejanews of course)
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Meinel & Herold was founded in 1893, and went bust in the fifties.
Below I've copied/translated the relevant sections from
Christoph Wagner: Das Akkordeon -- eine wilde Karriere
(:Transit, Berlin, 1993, ISBN 3-88747-088-5).
That isn't the first time I quote that book! Get it, if
you can read German!
My translation is a bit awkward at times, but I'm sure you'll
get the idea.
Jeroen Nijhof
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(p.65)
Lament, bandoneon, your grey tango.. accordions in Latin America
Besides the USA, Latin America traditionally was the most imporant
overseas market of the European accordion industry. Millions of
Europan emigrants meant that every year, thousands of accordions
crossed the Atlantic Ocean. In the main markets, Argentinia and Brasil,
the various European producers had trade offices, like Hohner
in Buenos Aires or the compagny Meinel & Herold (Klingenthal)
which had three offices in South America: two in Argentinia
and one in the south of Brasil. But Chile, Guatemala,
Urugay, Colombia and Ecuador also imported large quantities.
[..]
p. 70
In Brasil, the instrument [the bandoneon] still plays an important
part in the musical folk culture in the South and in the North East.
In Rio Grande do Sul, an area in the South of Brasil, where
many Germans, Italians, Spanish and Portuges have settled,
one meets Gauchos, who accompagny their spontaneous songs
of thier Payadas and Conversas do Galpoa not with guitars,
but with the Sanfona (=accordion). Here the instruments of
the compagny Meinel & Herold from Klingental were sold
directly from the saddle bags by 'sample riders' [?], salesmen
on horseback selling a large selection of commodities.
(p.103)
Home workers and large industry -- Klingenthal and Trossingen
Until the turn of the century, apart from Gera (Thueringen),
Leipzig, Magdeburg and Berlin, the area around Klingenthal
in Sachesn was the navel of the German accordion industry.
In the 'music corner' in the Vogtland region there were many compagnies,
with all together ca. 700 employees, involved in the accordion production,
of which at the turn of the century the most important were
those of Otto Weidlich, G. A. Doerfel, J. C. Seydel,
F. A. Boehm, J. C. Herold, W. L. Meinel, C. F. Doerfel, the
brothers Guendel and the brothers Ludwig. Initially there
were mainly concertinas [Chemnitzers/bandoneons] produced in Klingenthal,
and indeed around 1860 the Klingenthal almost had the world monopoly
for these, but gradually the one started to produce accordions,
whose sales had become equal to the sales of the concertinas around
1880, and had overshadowed it since.
The accordions and concertinas from Klingenthal were sold over the
world, but especially in North America (in 1860 half of the production
went to the USA), where the world wide trade relations were used that the
musical instrument industries of the region had built since the
end of the 18th century. Many compagnies had 'sample stores'
in Vienna, Budapest, Paris, Amsterdam Stockholm, London and Johannesburg.
Others, like the compagny Meinel & Herold, which was one of the
larger ones of the sector, dealt with their export more directly.
The compagny from Klingenthal, which had been founded in 1893 as a
pure trading compagny, and had only started producing itself after
the turn of the century, dealt directly with its costumers via the mail,
which made lower prices possible, as the middle man was cut out.
With a catalog, that was sent free on request, and with ads in magazines,
calenders and almanacs all over Europe, the mail order clients
were found. For that the compagny did have three correspondents,
one French, one Swedish and one Hungarian, who supplied the
advertisements for the foreign countries from Klingenthal.
Ten percent of the turnover went into publicity (!).
Apart from that, a direct representative in Rumania and an advertising
plane in Slovenia stimulated the markets there,
while associated trading compagnies in Sao Paulo (Brasil) and
Buenos Aires (Argentinia) organised the trade in South America.
(p. 202)
A sales crisis at the end of the fifties drove many compagnies
into recievership (e.g. Meinel & Herold), while a second one
in the middle of the sixties again decimated the number of compagnies
in the area (amongst the victims was e.g. the compagny C. W. Meinel [11]),
and a third one, a few years later, finished the rest of the
private compagnies, so that after 1972 the 'music corner' in Sachsen did not
have any private accordion compagnies anymore. (Only after the 'Wende'
in 1989 a few compagnies started again). The production was now
concentrated in a central state compagny, a powerful, gigantic
factory at the Hauptstrasse (main road) in Klingenthal.
[11] Interview: W. Meinel (Meinel & Herold. Before the Second World War,
Meinel & Herold had approximately 200 employees.