Guest Author - Holly Fox

When Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg and his family boarded the Helena Sloman in Hamburg in 1850 and set sail for New York City, they joined the five million Germans who would abandon their home country for the promise of political freedom and better economic opportunities in the US between 1850 and 1930. A younger son had fled Germany in the wake of the failed 1848 revolution and when his father couldn’t acquire the land next door for his expanding piano business, he encouraged the family to join him. The Steinwegs anglicized their names to Steinway and quickly established what would become a model German-American company and the maker of the most prestigious pianos in the world.

The family initially worked for other piano makers and when they founded Steinway and Sons in 1853 they were able to bring the best craftsmen with them. Success followed shortly after and by 1880 they were looking for a way to better serve their European customers. Son Theodore, who had always been a reluctant immigrant, was given the task of establishing a sister factory in Sternschanze in Hamburg. From this point on the New York factory provided Steinway pianos for the Americas while the Hamburg factory filled orders for the rest of the world.

Although there are no Americans working in today’s German factory and showroom, located in the Bahrenfeld area of Hamburg, managing director Thomas Kurrer tells me that communication between the two locations is constant. The only disruptions in the last 127 years were World War I and World War II. Both branches suffered during the wars due to their connections with the enemy and production was mostly halted as supplies and energy were directed toward the war effort. Steinway Hamburg used its factory to build wooden decoy planes for fake airfields in Schleswig-Holstein while Steinway New York began building “Victory Verticals,” small, upright pianos painted olive drab and shipped overseas to American troops. After the wars, the company reconnected. Family interest, however, was declining and the company was sold to CBS Inc. in 1972. It is now publicly owned company, traded as LVB (for Ludwig van Beethoven) on the New York Stock Exchange.

Steinway now produces about 5,000 pianos a year in much the same way that they were made in the last century. Kurrer says new technology is only adopted when it results in improved quality. Production for one piano takes roughly a year. Cost-cutting and time-saving are left to other, lesser manufacturers. Over 13,000 pianists are considered “Steinway Artists,” which means they own a Steinway and will only perform on Steinway pianos, an endorsement they make without compensation from Steinway. Some artists prefer either the Hamburg Steinway or the New York Steinway over the other, citing differences in timbre, but Kurrer claims that the differences are superficial: Hamburg Steinways are glossy while the New York Steinways have a matte finish.