3 years in restoration...yawn

1842

Georg Tiefenbrunner was born in Mittenwald in 1812, six years after Bavaria had been transformed from a duchy into a kingdom. Napoleon still dominated the political scene in Europe, and it was just seven years since little Mittenwald had been a scene of conflict, under constant harrassement to deliver supplies (food, rooms, horses) to whichever army happened to be in the vicinity.

Tiefenbrunner was a common family name among the violin makers in Mittenwald at that time. Georg, very likely, spent all his afterschool hours in one of the family or neighboring violin workshops, engaged in all the little tasks Mittenwald boys were then responsible for: carrying, stacking, varnishing (the first coats), polishing, keeping the fire in the stove going, hanging up the violins outside to dry, etc. He learned a lot. Of course he wanted to become a violin maker. But he went into apprenticeship not in Mittenwald, but in Landshut, north of Munich. His master was probably Lorenz Kriner, an excellent craftsman who had been born in Mittenwald himself. Georg later worked in the shop of one of the finest violin makers of the day: Andreas Engleder, in Munich. Here his path crossed that of Anton Kiendl (see below), who took his mastership in Engleder’s workshop. Engleder made some beautiful zithers around this time, some of which may actually have been made by Tiefenbrunner or by Kiendl, with Engleder’s label (as shop master) glued inside. Georg took his mastership as a violin maker in Augsburg.


Georg Tiefenbrunner Zither Label
At the beginning of the 1840s, Tiefenbrunner married the daughter of a Munich shop keeper, who sold just about everything, including shoe polish, salt, simple zithers and violin strings (that he made himself). Tiefenbrunner’s father-in-law, Franz Kren, possessed a license to maintain this kind of a shop in the middle of Munich. With his marriage, Tiefenbrunner acquired the right to continue running the shop when his father-in-law retired. In those days, resorting to marriage was one of the few means open to poor, talented craftsmen which assured them the right to a workshop within the city (these being otherwise controlled by the strictly limited guilds). And indeed, Tiefenbrunner took over the Kren family business in 1842. For reasons we’ll have to explain another time, this was perfect timing in an almost-perfect place. Tiefenbrunner’s excellent zithers (and those of his son and grandson) are admired today not only for their sound, but also for their painstaking craftsmanship. In many respects they closely resemble those made by Anton Kiendl. .