TWO OF A KIND

With the demand for massproduced German instruments skyrocketing in the 1920s, enterprising makers sent family members to America to represent them. Clifford Hall explores the careers and legacies of Andrew Schroetter and Heinrich Roth

Browsing the pages of an online thrift shop one day, I noticed a fairly beaten-up 16-inch viola from Indianapolis. Although it had clearly seen some hard times, as inlay had fallen out of its ebony pegs and scratches were abundant on the table, there were some indicators of quality craftsmanship. The nicely carved cello-style pegbox and ornamented tailpiece didn’t make sense on a generic German factory instrument, and I was curious as to what they were doing there. Luckily a photo helped me peer through one of the f-holes to see ‘Anton Schroetter Geigenbaumeister Mittenwald /Bayern Made in Germany’ on the label.

So who was Anton Schroetter? As I had never heard of this brand before, I wondered if this was just another example of what Scherl & Roth’s 1940 brochure The Master Violins Made by Ernst Heinrich Roth described as ‘a fantastic and fictitious label which represented a make and name that never existed’. It was a definite possibility, as the trade was thick with wholesalers who, in competing to offer the cheapest possible prices, unrelentingly valued efficiency and myth making over quality and integrity.

Heinrich Roth in 1955

VIOLA PHOTO CLIFFORD HALL.

To answer this question, I would peer deep into the histories of violin making in Bavaria and Bohemia to unearth the story of Andrew Schroetter. During my search I discovered that the narrative of this somewhat anonymous immigrant strongly paralleled that of the equally ambitious, but more familiar, Heinrich Roth. Both men took similar journeys as they brought their fathers’ crafts across an ocean to pursue the American dream.

It is well known that from the 19th century up until World War II, the tiny town of Markneukirchen in Germany produced millions of instruments. About a third of them ended up in American hands as they filled the catalogues of wholesalers such as Sears and Montgomery Ward. To make money on such inexpensive instruments, the system was reliant on a steady supply of low-cost violin parts coming from across the border in Bohemia. Individual workers in small towns like Schönbach, Gossengrün (now Krajková), and Graslitz supplied fingerboards, necks and sometimes completed violins by the dozen (giving these craftsmen the nickname Duzendgeigen). Although this system made many distributors in Markneukirchen quite rich, none of the workers providing these parts saw any of the profit. ‘The success and wealth of these people in Markneukirchen was, at least on the stringed instrument side of things, built on the backs of these people from Schönbach,’ says Bruce Babbitt, author of Markneukirchen Violins & Bows. ‘My analogy is that those Bohemian shops are the ones who pick the tomatoes but they weren’t the ones making the ketchup.’

But not all luthiers were interested in participating in this system, and after World War I the more ambitious violin makers looked to America to market their products directly as the doors to the import market began to reopen. Heinrich Roth and Andrew Schroetter both grew up watching their fathers (Ernst Heinrich Roth I and Anton Schrötter) create well-crafted violins. Convinced they could take over the marketing of these instruments to a wider audience, Roth and Schroetter boarded boats to America within a couple years of each other at the beginning of the 1920s.

The year 1923 was an important one for P’MICo, the Progressive Musical Instrument Company (‘Our Name Is Our Slogan’). Although their Scottish-born founder A.W. Landay had been working in the phonograph industry with retail chain store firm Landay Brothers since the beginning of the century, he severed his connection with it in 1923 to widen his focus to the import and wholesale of musical instruments. Flush with $100,000 (almost $1.5 million in 2022) and on the hunt for new lines, Landay needed a buyer to oversee the purchase of orchestral instruments. After he placed an advertisement in The Music Trades magazine for ‘High Grade Musical Instrument Salesmen’, into his office stepped Andrew Schroetter. Born Andreas Schrötter in 1898, he had anglicised his name on arriving in the US in 1923.

‘In terms of attitude, he was a “real American” from the start and I think the name change is actually consistent,’ says his nephew Gerhard Klier, who currently works as a violin maker in Neunkirchen am Brand, southern Germany. ‘I think he went to America for economic reasons and to manage the export of stringed instruments from home. He had the very best business relationships in Germany.’ His timing and his birth name, it would turn out, were spot on.

Appreciating the value of Schroetter’s old-world German pedigree, Landay hired Schroetter and registered a trademark in 1925 using Schroetter’s birth name for marketing purposes. Continuing in this line, the 1931 P’MICo catalogue notes accurately (as Schroetter had apprenticed in his father’s shop since he was a child), ‘Andreas Schroetter is our violin expert. He is a practical man and enjoys a distinct reputation in the trade of making exceptionally fine violins. He has personally selected our rare old violin collection.’

The beaten-up viola that started the quest, made by the Schroetter firm in Bubenreuth

Executive board of Simson & Frey Inc in 1927. Ernst Heinrich Roth II is seated right, with Max Scherl standing left

Schroetter managed the importing of his ‘approved’ violins from a wide array of Markneukirchen shops (including an Enrico Robella model from Roth’s shop), even putting his own name to some instruments made in his father’s workshop.

Heinrich Roth took a similar path. Ernst Heinrich Roth III (grandson of Ernst Heinrich Roth I) remembered it was not so much a choice for his Uncle Heinrich as it was an order.

According to Roth III, his grandfather simply told his then 19-year-old uncle: ‘You sell Roth instruments in the USA’. ‘He [Roth II] was a salesman at Simson & Frey in New York in 1921, and the agency was transferred to them at the time,’ Roth III explains. ‘The sale of Ernst Heinrich Roth instruments was very good from the start.’

Having just relocated their headquarters to a 9,000 sq ft location in 1922, Simson & Frey were also growing their business. Although they had been quite successful in selling imported band instruments and, having just printed what The Music Trades described as ‘a very attractive printed booklet’ for Silvestre & Maucotel’s Tricolore strings the previous year, they were expanding their orchestra lines. Like Schroetter, Roth managed the importation of violins that were labelled ‘Simson & Frey’, but he also focused on marketing the instruments of his family.

Demand for Roth’s instruments grew nationally as dealers across the country placed advertisements in local newspapers and Simson & Frey published the aforementioned deluxe brochure, The Master Violins Made by Ernst Heinrich Roth, geared to selling Roth’s instruments to the American upper class. Ernst Heinrich Roth I even undertook a tour of America with his son in 1931 to promote his instruments in person.

A 1920s portrait of Anton Schrötter

SCHRÖTTER PHOTO GERHARD KLIER. SIMSON & FREY PHOTO ERNST HEINRICH ROTH III

HEINRICH ROTH’S FATHER SIMPLY TOLD HIM: ‘YOU SELL ROTH INSTRUMENTS IN THE USA’

‘His friend Max Scherl was also there as a salesman,’ says Roth III. ‘When the company Simson & Frey closed in 1932, the two gentlemen founded the company Scherl & Roth. The company was later relocated to Cleveland in 1938.’ This was following the partnership with the Cleveland-based band instruments maker F.A. Reynolds.

The tides of war affected all American instrument manufacturing as materials like wood and metal became scarce. While Schroetter enlisted in the US Army in 1942, Max Scherl addressed the shortage in his December 1943 editorial for The Music Trades entitled ‘Manpower and Supplies Are 1944 Problem.’ German companies were limited as well. ‘Before World War II we had in the Roth factory 50 people, 30 for guitars and 20 for violins,’ remembered Roth III in a 1983 interview for Frets magazine. ‘At the end of the war – five people.’

After the conflict, the company fell into even more disarray. The Roth company in Markneukirchen, then managed by Ernst Heinrich Roth’s other son Albert, was expropriated by the state, and in 1953 Albert moved with his family to Bubenreuth. Luthiers and their families had begun moving to this small Bavarian farming village in 1945, with more than 1,600 people eventually relocating there. The mayor of Bubenreuth successfully attracted these refugees (who were eager to recreate the parts network they had in Markneukirchen) to centralise the music builders and, in turn, to promote the growth of his town (see The Strad, April 2017). The transition was aided in no small part by the US Army, which helped transport entire families and all their possessions to Bubenreuth. Notable among them were Hofner and Framus, the giants of the industry. As the ascendant violin-manufacturing powerhouse, Bubenreuth started to put many previously successful Bavarian firms out of business.

A 1967 advertisement for Schroetter violins

P’MICo instruments are described as ‘approved by Andreas Schroetter’ in this 1931 advertisement

Schrötter instrument labels from Gossengrün

It was in this environment of postwar America that the Bohemian Schroetter decided to strike out on his own. Using his extensive contacts and knowledge from almost two decades with P’MICo, he incorporated the ‘A. Schroetter Company’ with the tagline of ‘Importers, Manufacturers and Wholesalers of Musical Instruments’, and set up shop down the street from his original employer. He was awarded a US patent for Howe’s Cremona Oil Varnish (a reference to the well-known but then defunct Boston brand Elias Howe) in 1947, and specialised in distributing decent-quality but well-priced student stringed instruments made in Neunkirchen am Brand (near Bubenreuth) labelled ‘Anton Schroetter’.

Anton Schrötter’s name appears as ‘Schroetter’ on this viola’s label, even though he never used that spelling or worked in Mittenwald

VIOLA LABEL COURTESY CLIFFORD HALL. SCHROETTER IMAGES COURTESY GERHARD KLIER

Why did he use this curious amalgamation of his father’s first name and Andrew’s anglicised last name? ‘Anton Schrötter received a permit for Bavaria in 1949,’ explains Klier, ‘and was allowed to live with his wife Franziska and his daughter Anna in Neunkirchen am Brand in the “resettling”. Although he was in poor health, he tried again to establish an instrument making business here. Unfortunately he didn’t succeed and he died in 1952. The Mittenwald violin labels could come from this time, because Anton Dietl, a former employee/journeyman from the workshop in Gossengrün, was also working there. The later reuse of these labels probably has marketing reasons, as Mittenwald’s image was much higher. In Bubenreuth the industry was only slowly being established during this time.’

Simultaneously, the American violin market was undergoing a shift. Orchestra programmes in America’s public schools had been popular since the beginning of the 20th century but the industry’s landscape had undergone a major shift. In a note about his career, obtained by Babbitt, Heinrich Roth wrote: ‘As I recall, the largest number of violins imported into this country was the record attained in 1928. From then on, however, a rapid decline set in. Reason: school bands had become more popular, and it was considered more glamorous and exciting for a boy or a girl to play in a school band than in the school orchestra.’

In response to this downturn, after World War II groups like the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) launched savvy organisational efforts to boost interest in school orchestras again. It was in this environment that Schroetter found a revitalised market with sales to schools. Like many school districts throughout the country, the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) renewed its interest in a school orchestra programme. Coupled with a rapid population growth in the 1950s, the programme expanded exponentially. In addition to band instruments and new teacher salaries, the IPS found itself needing a whole orchestra of violins, violas, cellos, double basses, and their accompanying bows and cases. The IPS went on a spending spree that would last almost two decades.

Cover of You Fix Them, Scherl & Roth’s 1955 repair guide

The ‘Jewel Edition’ violin, decorated with 3,000 Swarovski crystals, was built for the Roth firm’s 105th anniversary

Article in The Music Trades of November 1955, announcing Scherl’s retirement

Although other companies bid for these contracts, IPS ended up buying tens of thousands of dollars of instruments from both Scherl & Roth and the A. Schroetter Company. And I discovered via their highly organised online record-keeping system, the Schroetter viola I had found was one of those purchases.

With school districts like this one regularly increasing their inventory over the decades, Schroetter’s business boomed. ‘Andrew Schroetter also had a strong foothold in the violin business with the New York school districts,’ says Don Dittmar, a former manager for the bow and instrument maker Paesold. ‘His product line was – and still is – concentrated on beginner to intermediate-level instruments.’

Schroetter tried to keep in tune with current styles as he went from his original, older-style label to a more modern approach in the 1960s. Klier settled in Bubenreuth in 1967 working at the Fuchs workshop, which exported violins to his uncle Andrew in the US. Evidence of this relationship is in the nearly identical (and more contemporary-looking) labels that the Fuchs workshop was using at that time.

Schroetter grew this brand quite successfully until 1973, when he sold the company to Tolchin Instruments, which would also go on to acquire Carl Fischer Musical Instruments Inc., Buffet- Crampon International, and W. Schreiber & Söhne by 1980.

The Scherl & Roth factory in Cleveland

ROTH IMAGES COURTESY ERNST HEINRICH ROTH III

Scherl & Roth made an even bigger splash. Roth knew early to focus on the education market in the US. Starting in 1945 he built a bridge between his company and educators with a juggernaut of publishing (magazines and booklets like The Baritone Comes of Age and the 1955 stringed instrument repair guide You Fix Them) and spending heavily on advertising (with the winsome slogan ‘An Honest Violin Sold at an Honest Price’) in trade publications and journals published by ASTA. ‘In my research, I have decided that Heinrich Roth was a very important person,’ says Babbitt about how Heinrich Roth shaped the industry. ‘If it wasn’t for him, there wouldn’t even be a Roth in Bubenreuth right now.’

Heinrich Roth recruited highly skilled young violin makers from Europe to his Cleveland factory, which produced modestly priced school instruments in massive numbers. With rigorous attention to detail, Scherl & Roth set the standards for construction and adjusting specifications that the Music Educator National Conference would adopt as their own. They launched their quarterly magazine Orchestra News in 1962 and Heinrich Roth promoted the company at events, even receiving the ASTA Distinguished Service Award in 1969.

‘In the years from 1970 onwards, Asian instruments did not have such a great impact on the markets,’ said Roth. ‘Therefore the companies in Bubenreuth as well as the Ernst Heinrich Roth company were well supplied with orders worldwide.’ As a result of moves like this, G.C. Conn Company (later Conn- Selmer) bought out the company in 1968 and it was reported by the Associated Press in 1975 that Roth retired a millionaire.

The legacies of Schroetter and Roth endure. One proof of their successes is that both of their brands are still active, although their manufacturing is now done in China. Even today, beginner to advanced students still chart their musical journeys with instruments labelled Andrew Schroetter and Scherl & Roth. Over the course of 50 years, these men not only helped shape an industry but they also made their fathers’ dreams come true in a distant land.