Olga Adelmann:
Master Violin Maker, Restorer, Scholar - Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung - Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Otto Möckel himself came from a Berlin-based violinmaking family – his father and brother were both in the same profession. In 1908, he opened up his first shop in Dresden, moving back to Berlin in 1912 after the death of his father. Today, he is known mainly for his book Die Kunst des Geigenbaus (The Art of Violinmaking) from 1930. In the book, he describes not only the process of making violins, but also its repair and that of the bow. There are three aspects of both the book and Möckel himself that seem to have had considerable influence on Olga Adelmann and her work.

The first is the accuracy and precision that Möckel demands for every step of the making process. For example, the method developed by him to form the arching of the back and front plate made it possible to copy historic archings to a high degree of accuracy. Secondly, he saw historical instruments as important sources and models for contemporary violinmaking. For this reason, he composed an extensive archive of measurement data, drawings and photographs of important instruments. Unfortunately, this archive was brought to Silesia for safeguarding during the Second World War and was lost in the aftermath.

Thirdly, because of the important role of historical violins as sources for new ones, he also tried to minimize the loss of original substance during repair work. While this notion is not comparable to the modern idea of conservation, it does show that these old instruments were more to him than just objects whose sole purpose was to make music. (Möckel 1967)

In this context Adelmann learned her craft. The same year she passed the journey mans exam her teacher Otto Möckel died. And in this period the sources are unclear. Möckel's shop was taken over by his employee Curt Jung who later passed down the buisness to his son. According to fembio.org, Olga Adelmann went on a journey to work at different shops. 

In 1956 she has, what she will later call, “the luckiest turn of events in my life”: employment as a restorer at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum SIMPK (at first as a freelancer*, but from 1960, as a fulltime employee). During this time, she completed two of her most important works.

In 1957 and 1960 the museum bought two bowed stringed instruments “of a strange and archaic look”. Olga was fascinated by these, with their unusual form and elaborate decorations. She started studying the instruments, documenting them meticulously and searching for similar instruments to compare them to. Her research brought her to different public and private collections in Europe, and above all to Switzerland. Piece-by-piece – or more precisely, instrument-by-instrument – and in continuous exchange with her colleagues worldwide, she reconstructed the history of these instruments and their makers. The results were published in her first publication, “Unsignierte Instrumente des Schweizer Geigenbauers Hans Krouchdaler. Zu einer vergessenen Geigenbauschule des 17. Jahrhunderts” (“Unsigned Instruments by the Swiss Violin Maker Hans Krouchdaler. On the Forgotten Violinmaking School of the 17th Century”) in the Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung from 1969. Just as she had hoped, the publication successfully brought to light other instruments and traces of that particular violinmaking tradition. (Adelmann 1997)

In 1969, she travelled to the USA (specifically New York), where Simone Ferdinando Sacconi had moved to and with whom she started exchange letters after the end of the war. She took this opportunity to renew their acquaintance. According to the forward of the German translation of Sacconi’s book, she visited him several times in his workshop at the Wurlizer Company, where he showed her his working methods and told her about the book he was writing, which would be published three years later.

This short intermezzo, however, did not deter her from the project that secured her place in violinmaking history. The publication of her article in the Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung in 1969 successfully brought to light other instruments and archival documents. In 1990, fourteen years after her retirement, she published her book Die Alemannische Schule. Archaischer Geigenbau im 17. Jahrhundert im südlichen Schwarzwald und der Schweiz (The Alemanic School. Archaic Violin Making in the 17th Century in the Southern Black Forest and Switzerland). All in all, Adelmann found, investigated, documented and catalogued twenty-one objects. In doing so, she not only identified and located the individual violinmakers but also meticulously analysed their style and construction methods. Her training as a violinmaker was a particular asset as it allowed her to replicate the methods employed by these forgotten masters to make a copy in their style. The Musikinstrumenten-Museum thus not only owns an interesting collection of these rare historic instruments but also the beautiful copy made by Olga Adelmann herself.

In 1996, the number of identified instruments went from twenty-one to thirty-three, which made it necessary to do a second edition of her book. In collaboration with her colleagues from the Staatlichen Institut für Musikforschung, they revised the whole book, adding new chapters and getting rid of the word “archaic” from the title. (Adelmann 1997)

Adelmann’s book was a breath of fresh air. Instead of focusing on Antonio Stradivari or other exponents of the Cremonese school, she shows that other violinmaking traditions are also important in their own right, despite (or perhaps due to) not following the aesthetic rules and working methods of the Cremonese masters.

The collection of the Musikinstrumenten-Museum SIMPK holds many items that document the life and work of Olga Adelmann: hand-written notes, documents, small objects and even entire instruments. Every day, one encounters something that she left behind. But the research about her life is scarce. Many questions remain unanswered and her importance for the modern violinmaking community is often forgotten.