RICHARD OTTO GLÄSEL
PARISIAN SPLENDOUR
Having perfected his skills in the French capital, German bow maker Richard Otto Gläsel was much inspired by the work of his Gallic forebears, from Voirin to Vigneron. Gennady Filimonov tells his story and examines several of his finest works
The city of Paris as Gläsel would have known it in 1913
Markneukirchen, the Mirecourt of Germany, dominated the international market of musical instrument sales in the second half of the 19th century. It proved to have better access to exotic woods and was at one time one of the most affluent cities in Germany – it even had its own US consulate general. Nevertheless, while much of the town focused on mass production of musical instruments, a few dedicated makers pursued their craft elsewhere. The advances made in French bow manufacturing by luminaries such as François Xavier Tourte, Étienne Pajeot, Dominique Peccatte and François Nicolas Voirin (known as the ‘modern Tourte’), attracted many of Germany’s finest makers, such as George Gemünder, H.R. Pfretzschner and Johann Christoph Nürnberger, who for five years worked as assistant to Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. From that time onwards, many of Germany’s best and brightest makers looked to Paris to broaden their knowledge of the French bow making tradition.
Richard Otto Gläsel was one such disciple of the craft. He was an assistant of Claude Thomassin in Paris before returning to Germany just before the outbreak of war in 1914. The experience apparently left him an avowed Francophile, as his bows frequently display the brand ‘O. GLÈSEL’ – the ‘Frenchified’ version of his name.
Gläsel, most frequently known by his middle name ‘Otto’, was born in Markneukirchen on 24 October 1885. According to the records of the town’s St Nicholas Church, his father Heinrich Wilhelm Louis Gläsel (d.14 April 1922) was a maker of brass instruments, as well as a ‘factory worker’ according to the Markneukirchen address books. On 17 May 1877 he married Friedericke Emma Schneider (d.18 October 1932) and the couple had seven children: Heinrich Max, Emil Paul, Richard Otto, Theodor Walter (b.3 March 1889) and three others. Since there is no record of their names, it is possible those three died at birth.
It would be easy to assume that Heinrich’s family was connected to the famous Gläsel family of Markneukirchen instrument makers. However, detailed research in the archives indicates that this is not the case. The town’s church register indicates he was a ‘spurious’ (i.e. illegitimate or pre-marital) child of Maria Magdalena Gläsel from Dürngrün, a town just west of Schönbach, who immigrated to Saxony from Bohemia. This was common labour migration in Germany at the border region in the 19th century. Maria later married into the Pöllmann family of makers. Heinrich’s grandfather, Johann Andres Gläsel, was a stocking maker in Oberschönbach, so there was no obvious familial connection to instrument making there.