By Porter Lang
Gear first, and the one design fact the sources give. Smithsonian Magazine says that in 1825 Joseph Richter designed a harmonica with two notes per hole, one on the draw and one on the blow, and that the layout remains the standard for harmonica tuning. Hohner did not invent the instrument. It built an industry around it.
Before Hohner
The same magazine article, by Daniel A. Gross in 2014, says the earliest recognisable Mundharmonika appeared in Berlin and Vienna in the 1820s. Christian Messner founded his firm in Trossingen in 1827, kept his methods secret, and let only close family see how the factory worked. His nephew Christian Weiss joined in the 1850s and later founded his own factory.
The founder
The Neue Deutsche Biographie entry on Matthias Hohner says he was born in Trossingen on 12 December 1833 and died there on 11 December 1902, and that he trained as a clockmaker. The magazine says he travelled the Black Forest selling wooden clocks before entering the harmonica trade. It tells a story that in 1856 he visited Weiss’s factory and was thrown out, and that in 1857 he started his own harmonica company. We repeat the story as the magazine tells it and note that it is one source.
On where he started, the sources differ. The biography says that in 1857 he began making mouth harmonicas in his Trossingen home, with his wife and his brother Jacob. The magazine says he started his company in a neighbouring village, which later moved to Trossingen. We give both.
Both agree on the year, 1857. The biography and Wikipedia both say 650 instruments in the first year, and the biography adds that they were shaped, cast, riveted and stamped by hand.
Growth
The biography gives a run of dates. Early sales were local, in Tuttlingen and Villingen. In 1862 he began exporting to America. By 1863 there were sales houses in New York, Chicago and Toronto. The American Civil War caused a setback. A steam engine was installed in 1880, and machines began to replace hand work. In 1890 more than a million harmonicas were produced, about three-quarters of them shipped to America. The 1893 American economic crisis caused another setback, offset by sales growth in Europe, especially England and Russia. He handed the company to his sons in 1900. Accordion production, which he had prepared, began in 1903. Before the First World War annual output exceeded ten million instruments, and the company became a joint-stock company in 1909.
The magazine gives a different pace: after about two decades, it says, the company was producing a million harmonicas a year, which, our reading, would put that milestone around 1877. The biography’s first million is 1890. The two cannot both describe the same threshold, and neither gives a production record.
How it reached America
The magazine says Hohner looked to the United States, where German immigrants helped distribute the harmonica, and quotes the museum director saying it travelled with European migrants to Texas, the South and the Southwest. The biography backs the scale of the American trade with its three-quarters figure and its list of sales houses, and adds that Hohner employed 25 apprentices at one point. Neither says who the first American buyers were.
One model
Wikipedia says the Marine Band 1896/20 was introduced in 1896, has twenty reeds, and is the base model of the line. It also says the page carries a “multiple issues” warning, so we use only this fact and label it. Wikipedia adds that the Special 20, introduced in the mid-1970s, was the first Hohner harmonica with a plastic comb. For readers who care about gear, that detail matters. Our reading is that earlier combs were made of something else, but the source does not say what.
A town built on reeds
The magazine quotes the director of the Deutsches Harmonika Museum as saying the town built its railway and city hall with harmonica money. That is the director’s claim. It also says Hohner employed thousands of local residents for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that the company has produced more than a billion harmonicas.
The magazine says an astronaut played a Hohner “Little Lady” harmonica aboard Gemini 6 in December 1965, and describes it as weighing half an ounce with seven notes. We include it as the magazine’s account.
Dates in order
- 1825: Richter’s two-notes-per-hole layout (magazine).
- 1827: Messner founds his firm in Trossingen (magazine).
- 1833: Matthias Hohner is born (biography).
- 1856: the Weiss story (magazine).
- 1857: first harmonicas, 650 in the first year (biography; Wikipedia agrees on 650).
- 1862: exports to America begin (biography).
- 1880: steam engine (biography).
- 1890: over a million harmonicas (biography).
- 1896: Marine Band (Wikipedia).
- 1900: the sons take over (biography).
- 1903: accordions (biography).
- 1909: joint-stock company (biography).
What kind of sources these are
A standard national biography, a magazine feature and an open-edit encyclopedia. The biography is the most exact on dates. The magazine is the most readable and leans on one museum director. Wikipedia carries its own warning.
What the sources do not say
They do not tell us the year Hohner bought the Messner firm, which the magazine mentions without a date. They do not name a maker we can point you to today.
What we left out
Price points, the corporate ownership changes of recent decades, and the names of Hohner’s sons beyond what the biography lists.
Roam first. Shop later.