Hi Olaf, to answer your question: To be accepted into the school you have to speak German at a certain level. This year, 12 people got accepted into the violin making class with multiple hundreds applying. Besides violin making, it also offers classes for plucked instruments, mostly guitars, woodwinds and brass. Thank you for the cool video!
Thanks for taking the time with this video. We were in Cremona this year and managed to get a tour of the Violin Making school there. Mittenwald is on our list of places to visit. I will try and get into the school there, possibly video if it’s allowed. They wouldn’t let me record videos in the Cremona school, although I did take some photographs. Some beautiful buildings in Mittenwald. Thanks again for the tour of Mittenwald.
I was so happy to see this video. Mittenwald is the birthplace of my viola in 1959. It is so wonderful to see where your instruments come from. Beautiful landscape.
This video is very informative. I’ve owned a Mittenwald violins for almost 50 years and wondered about the town where it came from. In my imagination I thought that the town was more rural and less populated. I had no idea of the rich cultural heritage that it possessed. Thank you for this wonderful video.
Ich freue mich über deine Begeisterung. Wir haben Mittenwald letztes Jahr besucht, und ich verstehe warum du so aufgeregt bist. Beste Grüße aus Amerika.
Olaf, Mittenvald is so picturesque and serene, it makes the uk look like pure chaos by comparison. Glad you are going back eventually as the violin school sounds pretty fascinating. It is good to see the violins scrolls wow how skilled those luthiers were then and now.
Not sure which part of Germany my little workshop violin comes from - less sure which workshop because they certainly did not stamp or label it. Im still finding clues though. I think I found a tool mark under the scroll in the pegbox that says 67. My search continues.
My last name is Clonts. My ancestor Hieronymus Glantz got off the boat in America from Germany in about 1722. Two generations before that the last name was Klotz. My ancestors are from the Klotz family.
10:25 ... when did we stop decorating buildings like this ? Such a shame ... It looked similar all across Europe and into Asian Russia even ... as the Germans went all the way to Siberia (on different occasions for different reasons) the culture of string instruments is very deep there. People are either into car modding or classical music. In Russia it was a general social rule to decorate your house. I assume it was the same in Germany. Russian royalty were often Swiss/German etc and also loved to bring advances from Europe - I assume they copied German art under decree. It was beautiful. Now we have concrete bunkers or everything black.
Maybe the black and bunkers came from WW2. I live in the US, and it must be about the ugliest nation in the world. Why? Cars and trucks. Every city is built up for car traffic. Parking lots, massive ones, cover what used to be wild places and farms. We were sold a bill of goods by Henry ford and the oil moguls, and have virtually no mass transit. There are ugly billboards everywhere, hardly any trees or other plants, except in parks. Even most of our buildings are ugly. Most forests are gone. Development is rampant, we have suburban sprawl like you wouldn’t imagine. We even ruined one of the Hawaiian islands. There are only a few towns with pretty and functioning downtowns. Even our beaches….oh well, enough bitching. I’d love to live in Germany!
I've found a copy of a 1713 "Stradivarius" imported to Canada by George Heinl and Co. with bow and coffin case for $8.00 at a thrift store. It says Made in Western Germany instead of the typical Made in West Germany - so I'm thinking it was made around 1945-50. I'm just learning about violin making yet it seems to be a very high quality instrument. The spruce top has very fine grain and runs straight and true and the maple back has a rich flame figure. Aside from not being signed - how can one tell if it made by a single craftsman -or mass produced and assembled by a "factory"? Would it be a Mittenwald violin because of the very fine grained spruce; or were there other west German centers of violin making? If it is made to the exact specs as a 1713 Strad; using high quality woods and the same manufacturing specs; why do they call these copies cheap student models??? Is not the end product EXACTLY like a brand new violin made by Stradivarius himself? Even the bow is made of Pernambuco wood!!! Of course I understand it's NOT a genuine Stradivarius million dollar violin....but to me the woods look like real treasure and very high quality worth much more than most $500 copies - it looks to be more in the $3-5,000 or $5-15,000 range. How can one tell? regardless- I'm so glad I rescued it. Heinl was a noted Canadian Luthier with substantial knowledge - so I'm leaning heavily that he would have imported higher quality instruments. At any rate I sure have learned a lot about Violin making this past week.....LOVE your videos Olaf and thanks for sharing your knowledge. Geez if I had life to live over again I think I should have been a violinist or maker......fascinating history and stories!!
