Karl Hofner Germany circa 1950s. Beautiful tone and in excellent condition. This violin is presented to you beautifully restored and perfectly setup at The String Workshop by Phil Whitehead. Fitted with new Ebony pegs, new Larsen Tzigane strings, a new Despiau bridge and a new Pusch tailpiece.
A piece of violin making history.
The Höfner company was founded by Karl Höfner (1864 – 1955) who, having been apprenticed to Anton Schaller as a violin maker, sold his first violins in 1887. He established his works at Schönbach then the European centre of stringed instrument making. His reputation grew and so did his business as he sold instruments of the finest quality throughout Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and other European countries. Karl brought two of his sons, Josef and Walter, into the business just after the First World War and they quickly began to expand the business, particularly into export markets. Thus Höfner gained not only a European reputation but a world-wide one as manufacturers of quality stringed instruments.
The product line expanded to include violas, celli and double basses. During the 1930s the company began production of guitars, the first models were steel strung with arched tops and backs and known as “Schlaggitarren”, forerunners of the modern day archtop guitar. By the mid 1930s the company employed around 300 outworkers and 30 staff in the factory.
The Second World War significantly restricted Höfner’s ability to export goods and the company found itself producing wood based items for the army, such as crates and soles for boots. After the war the business saw its greatest upheaval as Schönbach was now located in Czechoslovakia where the German-speaking population was expropriated and companies in Czechoslovakia nationalized, resulting in the summer of 1945 in the takeover of the company by a state administrator. This was not a situation that the Höfner family were happy with so they applied for permission to move to West Germany where they set up the business, almost from scratch, in 1948 at Möhrendorf in Bavaria.
Conditions at Möhrendorf were far from ideal but nonetheless Höfner worked hard to begin production and soon had a steady flow of instruments to deliver to the market. It was a difficult time. Gerhilde Benker (Walter Höfner’s daughter) recalled many years later; “You couldn’t buy anything, everything was done by bartering. So many screws for a sheet of glass, that sort of thing”. Josef and Walter began looking at the possibility of building not only a new factory but a whole small town for the workers and homeworkers from Schönbach to live in. Following much deliberation with officials they found the ideal site at Bubenreuth, a small village that was open to the idea of expansion and development. On 20th October, 1949, the laying of the foundation-stone for an estate to house the luthiers took place in Bubenreuth and by Christmas 1950 the new Hofner factory was up and running.
You are welcome to visit The String Workshop in Mairangi bay and Try before you Buy.