CHAPTER 1: HOW DID IT ALL
BEGIN?
Josef Hӧfner was the eldest son, and was born in 1892.
After serving as a Lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First
World War, and studying at the Royal Imperial Export Academy in Vienna, he
entered his father’s business and effectively took control of it from 1919.
Josef had tremendous drive and business acumen, and very soon the Hӧfner
Company was a recognised manufacturer in its own right, instead of being simply
a supplier to the established manufacturers of Markneukirchen. In no time at all, the Hӧfner
Company was exporting their stringed orchestral instruments to the United
Kingdom, the USA, and Japan!
Born in 1904, Walter was the youngest of Karl Hӧfner’s
surviving children. Brought up literally in the workshop, he nonetheless
qualified in Business Studies at the Pilsen Academy of Commerce in 1921.
However, Walter was a born luthier, a very effective leader of men, and perhaps
most importantly as far as history is concerned, an innovator touched with
genius. When he had formally commenced working for the Company in 1921, the two
brothers with their very different skills provided exactly the right mix of
business management and technical expertise to ensure a very successful musical
instrument manufacturing company.
The Karl Hӧfner Company had always made orchestral stringed
instruments. However, musical fashions and styles were changing, driven in
particular by trends coming from the USA. Josef would have been well aware of
these changes through his contacts in the USA and perhaps to a lesser extent in
Britain. Back then, there was an old saying in the business that what happens in
America arrives a year later in the UK, and two years later in the rest of
Europe.
There had been flat topped guitars with round soundholes
made in Europe, particularly Spain and Italy, since the time of the Renaissance.
Lutes, zithers, and yes even a few guitars are known to have been produced by
other instrument makers in the Schönbach area since the 1820’s. Please therefore
don’t get the impression that the Karl Hӧfner company was the first in
Schoenbach to make guitars!
The Martin Company in the USA, founded actually by the son
of a cabinet maker and luthier from Markneukirchen, had of course been making
that style of guitar in the US since the mid 1830’s, first in New York City and
then in Pennsylvania. In fact, it would appear that one reason that C. J. Martin
left Markneukirchen was that being a cabinet maker he was prevented from making
wooden musical instruments by the restrictive practices of the Violin Makers’
Guild in that area. Karl Hӧfner, after serving his formal apprenticeship with
Anton Schaller, would of course have been accepted in the area as a bona-fide
luthier who was therefore un-restricted in his business operations.
Such acoustic guitars would initially have been used for “parlour”
home playing, but they also began to be used by general entertainers in the form
of groups of musicians, usually together with banjos, mandolins or ukuleles, all
of which were far more popular than the guitar in the first quarter of the 20th
Century. The popularity of singing cowboys such as Gene Autry, on American radio
and in the movies of the late 1920’s and 1930’s, substantially increased
interest in the acoustic flattop guitar, and also implied that it was an
“outdoors” instrument, suitable for taking on picnics and accompanying singing
around the camp fire.
From around 1915, Hawaiian guitar music had taken on an
increasing popularity in the United States. The origins of this style of music
followed the introduction of European-style instruments, in particular guitars,
to the Hawaiian Islands by European sailors and settlers and their adoption by
the islanders. Once the music had found its way to the US mainland however,
initially played there by Hawaiian musicians, commercialism took over and by
1916, Hawaiian music played on either guitar or ukulele was the most popular
recording style in the States. The guitars were strung with steel strings, and
fretted by means of a “steel” (short steel bar curved in section) which was slid
along the plucked strings over the fretboard in order to create the traditional
Hawaiian sound. In order to ensure that the strings responded to the steel and
were not damped by the frets and/or fingerboard, the nut was usually raised in
order to provide additional string clearance above the fingerboard. The guitar
was generally played in a horizontal position on the lap, hence the name for
such instruments later being described as “lap-steels”. Naturally, guitar
manufacturers in the US were not slow to see the commercial potential of this
new style of music. Gibson for instance introduced their first Hawaiian guitar
kit in the early 1920’s. This included a nut extender, thumb and finger picks,
and of course a “steel”. Gibson guitars of course were ideally suited for use as
Hawaiian guitars as they were designed to be strung with steel strings
- but more of
that later.
I am not sure exactly when Hӧfner produced their first
commercial guitar model. The Company’s records for that period have been almost
entirely lost. Certainly in advertising literature dating around 1925, there is
no mention of guitars being offered for sale; violins, cellos, basses - yes;
guitars - no. However, in the 1931 catalogue, no less than twelve flattop
acoustic guitar models are on offer, with seven of these also being available
set up as Hawaiian guitars with steel tailpieces to cater for steel strings,
separate high bridges, nut extenders, and supplied with steel slider bars,
finger picks, and thumb ring!
One slim but still relevant piece of evidence relating to
the matter of production start-dates has survived the ages, and this within the
Hӧfner/Benker family albums. The photograph below shows Walter Hӧfner lying in a
meadow surrounded by young ladies... and playing a flattop guitar. With that
sort of company, he is still obviously un-married! That would place the date of
that photo as being around 1930. So probably, the most likely date for the
commencement of guitar manufacture by the Hӧfner Company is at the end of the
1920’s. That would have been just seven or eight years after he had joined the
Company; just long enough for him to have found his feet and to begin
challenging the situation whereby the Karl Hӧfner Company were manufacturers of
orchestral stringed instruments only. No doubt his father Karl would have been
seriously perturbed at the suggestion that they should move away from the more
traditional instruments to the rapidly-becoming-popular guitar. There is a very
strong possibility however that Josef also would have been fully aware of the
trends in America and he would have realised that it was just a matter of time
before they would spread all over the World. In any case, The United States was
a country that Josef was already working hard to export Hӧfner’s products to. It
is obvious that the two brothers got their own way!
Walter Hӧfner in the 1920's, entertaining the local youth with a guitar that he probably made himself.
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