Sonderausstellung
Special Exhibition: “Those Who Make Music Get More Out of Life” – The Accordion-Orchestra Movement
18.05.2018 – 07.10.2018
From advertising slogan to mass movement
“Those who make music get more out of life” was a slogan used by Matth. Hohner AG around 1930. Players jokingly added: “Those who play Hohner never strike a wrong note.”
Towards the end of the 1920s, the already popular practice of playing hand harmonicas in groups developed into a mass phenomenon. It began in Switzerland and south-western Germany, but soon spread much further, powerfully encouraged by Hohner’s advertising.
The enthusiasm lasted for decades and had a name:
Hermann Schittenhelm
Hermann Schittenhelm (1893–1979)
On 10 September 2018, the passionate musician, who grew up in Boll near Oberndorf, would have celebrated his 125th birthday. This anniversary provided the opportunity to examine the orchestral movement’s history of almost one hundred years.
Previously unseen treasures from Schittenhelm’s estate and the museum’s photographic archive were presented for the first time. They underline the role of the enormously popular master player as the figurehead of a mass movement involving thousands of orchestras. As virtuoso, founder and conductor of the Hohner Orchestra 1927, this popular musician from the Black Forest dominated the movement’s finest decades. Schittenhelm and his orchestra were both a powerful advertising force and a model for many others.
A changing musical landscape
The exhibition explored not only the movement’s long periods of prosperity, but also the changes that followed the end of the accordion-orchestra phenomenon as a mass movement.
Much has changed in recent decades, particularly since the turn of the millennium. The orchestra scene remains alive, but has gradually become smaller. Until the end of the 20th century, it was strongly dominated by the Hohner company in Trossingen.
Now independent, the DHV, the German Harmonica Association, continues to flourish as Germany’s second-largest amateur-music association and has launched new initiatives in the 21st century.
Special exhibition brochure
The brochure for the special exhibition “Those Who Make Music Get More Out of Life” – The Accordion-Orchestra Movement.
