1 mins
LUTHIER RAINER W. LEONHARDT
A peek into lutherie workshops around the world
Lutherie
ALL PHOTOS DIETMAR DENGER
LOCATION Mittenwald, Germany
My grandfather set up the family business in Markneukirchen in 1926, and moved it to Mittenwald in 1950 after the Iron Curtain came down. He built this workshop in 1952, where we’ve been ever since. In 1968 he passed it on to my father Wilfried Leonhardt, who in turn passed it over to me in 1997. Now I work here with six other people, including my daughter Julia, who represents the fourth generation of instrument makers in our family. Things have changed a lot since I graduated from the Mittenwald Violin Making School in 1982 – in those days there were more than 20 luthiers in the town, but now it’s more like 6. The school still attracts dozens of students from all over the world, but I think it’s been years since someone born in Mittenwald studied there.
The building used to have just one workshop, but in 2000 we realised we needed more space so we built the one you can see in the photo. Now we use the original workshop exclusively for new making, and carry out all restoration and repair work here. Normally we have three people working in each space, although sometimes it can change depending on the work. We make around 80 new instruments per year, and restore a lot more – sometimes repair jobs can take five hours, sometimes three months.
Mittenwald still attracts customers, who can also visit the museum or attend a concert at the nearby Schloss Elmau. But we had to change our business structure completely in 2020 owing to the pandemic. Because no one could travel, we expanded our website so that every instrument we sold had lots of photos, full measurements and at least one sound sample. We also created a password-protected area for dealers, where we put instruments that still need set-ups. Dealers are still wary of travelling, but hopefully that will change with the trade fairs this year.
INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD
This is the old workshop, built by my grandfather, where we now make all our new instruments. Very little has changed since 1952!