A locksmith works with metals, a carpenter with wood and a furrier with leather. Johann Gebert works with all three and many more materials. Johann Gebert is one of the last barrel organ builders in Europe. Electroplating also plays a role in his work - as does a secret recipe for tinning screws.
Whether barrel organ, showman's organ or orchestrion, the world of self-playing musical instruments is complex," explains the 58-year-old. "Their bodies are made of wood; fittings, strings and pipes are made of metal, valves and bellows are made of leather and rubber cloth. The built-in instruments are brought to life by air currents generated by bellows."
While this hardware forms the instruments of an orchestra, the perforated strip on which the pieces of music are punched and which ultimately brings the pieces into the instrument is the musician.
"An organ builder must not only be a versatile craftsman, he must also and above all be a music arranger," says Gebert. This is most evident on the road. A good barrel organ is one whose music makes passers-by stop and then, of course, throw a coin into the hat. This also underlines another factor: the wind pressure. In organ building, this is given in millimetres of water column and is decisive for the volume. A respectable church organ has a water column of 30 to 70 millimetres, while a fairground organ easily reaches 200 millimetres.
Special problem screws: if they do not correspond to metric measurements or the inch system, Gebert turns them himself
Gebert's career began, almost logically, with an electric guitar amplifier, which the then twelve-year-old wanted. It cost 100 marks, which he didn't have. His mother sent her son to Finsterlingen in the Hotzenwald forest for vacation work. An acquaintance of hers built barrel organs there. After the vacations, Gebert was able to buy the amplifier. Above all, however, he had found his future training company. He enjoyed the vacation work so much that he decided to learn this trade.
Showman's orchestrion in the Speyer Museum of Technology. Gebert used several square meters of gold leaf to refine the wooden surfaces. The orchestrion is privately owned and cannot be viewed"I started in the early 1980s. I was paid 250 marks a month, and 300 marks in the third year of my apprenticeship. I lived with the master in an unheated attic room, like servants and maids in the Middle Ages. At least the kitchen in the boss's apartment was heated and the stove warmed the art in the living room. Sometimes I thought I was freezing to death." In 1985, at a time when this craft was as good as dead, Gebert bucked the trend and initially set up his own business in Merdingen am Tuniberg (South Baden). "There are perhaps ten barrel organ builders left in the whole of Europe today," estimates Gebert. The organ, which was a fixture at every fair and funfair 100 years ago, and which gave its maker his job title, has disappeared from the streetscape. Gebert also had to find other sources of income. Today, his work focuses on restoring defective fairground organs and orchestrions. 90 percent of his customers are museums. He rarely builds complete barrel organs anymore.
Many of the instruments he receives are so dilapidated that restoring them is tantamount to building a new one. Then he actually uses all the materials from which such an organ is made. Unfortunately, the spare parts market is virtually empty or simply non-existent. Every component that is not available has to be manufactured from scratch.
In the meantime, Gebert has moved from Merdingen to Volgelsheim in Alsace. Back in the 1990s, he bought the traditional "Restaurant Ott" there, which he initially leased out, but moved into himself with his workshop in 1999. This would not be worth mentioning in itself if this property did not meet all of Gebert's requirements. He set up his main workshop in the main building, i.e. in the guest rooms and the kitchen. The former bowling alley next door now houses the carpentry workshop. And he has even installed a small foundry in the old coach house.
Gebert uses both the sand casting and lost wax casting processes
"Often a turning wheel, a handle or a decorative element such as a candle holder is missing. I then have to recast these parts as faithfully as possible." Gebert uses both sand casting and lost wax casting, very old casting methods: Half of an existing original part of a similar organ is pressed into a modeling clay. The upper half is filled with silicone. Later, the workpiece is rotated in the silicone and then covered with another layer of silicone from above. Now remove the piece of metal and fit the two silicone halves with the recesses precisely together. Pour liquid wax into the cavity. This hardens and now represents the metal part to be cast 1:1 as a wax pattern. The wax part is now poured into model plaster, brick chippings or fireclay, always mixed with plaster, and a sprue is worked into it. The whole thing is placed in a kiln and the wax is completely melted, flowing out through the spout. The resulting cavity is then filled with the liquid metal, usually bronze. This is again done through the spout. An important factor: the water bound in the plaster-sand mixture must have completely evaporated. Otherwise, filling the bronze will have a similar effect to trying to extinguish burning fat with water. In the less serious case, the surface of the workpiece will simply be ugly.
Sand casting process: The molten metal is poured into a sand bed of modeling plaster, brick chippings or fireclay. This sand is very dimensionally stable
"The be-all and end-all of this process is the surface treatment of the wax pattern. The more perfect the wax surface, the less work you have to do later with the finished metal piece. This is because it still has to be finished by grinding and polishing after the casting process," explains Gebert. Speaking of foundries: when a traditional foundry in Freiburg had to close, Gebert bought some of the old equipment. Today, this forms the basis of his foundry equipment.
Lost wax process: Gebert recasts missing metal parts of an instrument. First, a sample is made from wax. The higher the quality of its surface, the better the metal part will be later on
Gebert is not only a proven, internationally active expert in his field, he also knows the history and stories surrounding his industry. The fact that Waldkirch, one of the hotspots of music automaton manufacturing, is practically within sight of Volgelsheim has hardly affected the business development of his company. But Gebert knows that before the First World War, the two French market leaders Gavioli and Limonaire were battling it out for German market share. The weaker company, Limonaire, won the competition. At the time, Gavioli experimented with a new type of bellows, which did not prove successful and cost the company market share. It withdrew and Limonaire took over its premises in Waldkirch. This success spread to the company's home country. In France, barrel organs are actually called, correctly translated, orgue de barbarie. But the colloquial term is still limonaire today. Limonaire was also later forced to leave Waldkirch. With the beginning of the First World War, French companies were no longer tolerated in Germany.
The heyday of self-playing musical instruments was between 1850 and 1930. In Belgium, for example, huge dance orchestras were built and played in ballrooms. Throughout Europe, so-called pub orchestrions, stripped-down versions, were found in inns.
"There must have been thousands of self-playing musical instruments built and delivered back then," says Gebert. Nobody knows how many of them are still in existence today. But it may be possible to determine estimated values on the basis of a sub-market. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Leipzig-based company Hupfeld built between 1100 and 1500 examples of the premium orchestrion Phonoliszt-Violina. Only 65 of these are still in existence today. A well-preserved or restored model is worth between 400,000 and 700,000 euros these days.
A look at the screw warehouse: wherever the opportunity presents itself, Gebert buys up stocks of old screwsThe factis that Gebert's order books are always full for two or three years, despite the small number of preserved barrel organs and the like. On the one hand, this is of course reassuring for a self-employed person, but on the other hand it also makes him inflexible and he has to put off many clients - who may then be gone forever.
The one-man business Gebert has a vertical range of manufacture that would make any industrial company green with envy. As already described, this is due to the fact that there are hardly any finished components or even original spare parts. Every component, no matter how small, has to be manufactured in-house. Gebert even restores or repairs inlay work himself. And this is where many restorers, not just those of self-playing musical instruments, come up against problems that laymen don't usually think about: nature and species conservation.
"Rare tropical woods or animal materials such as ivory are now subject to a trade ban," says the restorer. "They are not readily available on the market. Using plastic is frowned upon." So Gebert buys such materials second-hand wherever he can get them. This is because secondary uses are not affected by the bans. "Strangely enough, ivory parts made from mammoth tusks are freely available," says Gebert.
Although the use of plastic would also make things easier elsewhere, it is avoided as far as possible - in the piping. In a large orchestrion, there are up to 750 meters of lead pipes that transport the air flows. It would be easy to replace them with plastic pipes, but this would create two problems: Firstly, the orchestrions then no longer sound as good and secondly, plastic pipes are nowhere near as durable.
Newly cast bronze console. A Freiburg electroplating shop finished the surface with a layer of nickel. Such jobs are rather unpopular in electroplating companies. (Photos: J. Gebert)Another problem, strange as it may sound, is screws. In order to remain as true to the original as possible when restoring an organ, Gebert only uses the slotted screws that were common at the time. Cross-head or even Torx screws are taboo. Difficulties always arise when the screw has neither inch nor meter measurements. Many manufacturers back then simply used their own measurements. He is also prepared for this. Gebert has a whole arsenal of metal rods of different thicknesses - from XXS to XXL. If necessary, he turns them into the required size himself. Wherever possible, he also buys up stocks of old screws from old joineries. He does not even disdain used ones. He reconditions them by means of vibratory grinding.
Gebert also regularly needs galvanized surfaces, but only rarely. He then outsources this work to an electroplating company in Freiburg. "But," Gebert emphasizes, "these jobs are rather unpopular. They usually involve pieces that are quite difficult to work on, such as the bronze music tables. They are decorated, chased, have undercuts and hollows - in short, everything that an electroplater doesn't like."
But even an organ builder can't get by without plating and so he reveals a secret recipe for tinning screws to the readers of "Galvanotechnik", which is very similar to electroplating but works without electricity: Distilled water is added to a saucepan, along with a good pinch of potassium hydrogen tartrate, the potassium salt of tartaric acid. Add tin shavings and screws and boil for about an hour, stirring constantly. The screws are then cleanly tinned and Gebert speaks of a very good result.
