Rudolf Würthner: 100th Anniversary

A musician’s life in Trossingen

Rudolf Würthner was a true native of Trossingen and grew up during the golden age of the hand harmonica and accordion in the 1920s and 1930s. In the early 1930s, he became the youngest member of the newly founded Hohner hand-harmonica orchestra.

Würthner is easy to identify in the orchestra photographs from those early years because, from the very beginning, he played his instrument “the other way round”, using his left hand for the melody side. The reason was simple: as a child, he caught his right hand in a chaff cutter on his father’s farm and lost his index finger and half of his thumb.

Virtuoso, teacher and conductor

In 1939, Rudolf Würthner was one of the best graduates of the specialist school for hand harmonica, today’s Hohner Conservatory. He soon joined the school as a teacher.

In the post-war years, the young musician and music educator played a leading role in rebuilding the accordion scene. In 1947, Würthner transformed a small elite ensemble into the Orchestra of the House of Hohner, which became famous within only a few years through its concert tours.

Würthner achieved his greatest success as a soloist in 1948. At the World Music Festival in Lausanne, he took second place behind the French accordionist Yvette Horner, becoming vice world champion with an accordion arrangement of Bach.

The period of the Orchestra of the House of Hohner was undoubtedly the most productive phase of his career. Rudolf Würthner nevertheless remained highly active after 1963. He directed a professional quintet and succeeded Schittenhelm as conductor of the Hohner Accordion Orchestra 1927.

Marked by illness, he died far too young on 3 December 1974.

The Orchestra of the House of Hohner

Music naturally played an important role in the small but carefully conceived exhibition “Rudolf Würthner: 100th Anniversary”, presented in the multifunction room of the German Harmonica Museum until 6 September during the museum’s regular opening hours.

The exhibition explored not only the life and work of Würthner, an outstanding figure among the many accordion virtuosos and teachers of the 20th century. It also commemorated “his” Orchestra of the House of Hohner, which caused a sensation in concert halls around the world as the “Hohner Symphony Accordion Orchestra”. The orchestra existed from 1947 to 1963, is inseparably linked with the name of its conductor Rudolf Würthner and continues to enjoy an excellent reputation among experts in the accordion world.

Only a few former members of the orchestra—all professionally trained accordionists—are still alive today. Those in Trossingen are Edith Gelück, Lore Würthner, Heinz Herre and Erhard Winter.