German manufacturer of harmonicas, accordions, keyboard instruments and guitars. It was founded in 1857 in Trossingen by the clockmaker Matthias Hohner (b 1833; d Trossingen, 1903), who was not so much an innovator as a perfector of other people’s inventions, which he then marketed successfully. He learnt how to make his first harmonica after visiting a friend’s workshop. For almost half a century he focussed on this single product, which was exported to more than 100 countries around the world. The biggest market was the USA, which in 1890 absorbed more than 90% of the firm’s production. Hohner was the unrivalled market leader and the company name became almost synonymous with the harmonica (see Harmonica (i), esp. fig.2). After Matthias’s death his five sons took over the business. They began also to make accordions, and contributed greatly to their technical and musical advancement. The Hohner ‘Gola’ piano accordion, which is still produced, is seen by many as the ‘Stradivari’ of accordions. By the 1920s the company had become the world’s largest producer of musical instruments, employing a workforce of nearly 5000. In 1928–9 Hohner swallowed up its main rivals Koch and Weiss, which were also based in Trossingen, and the annual output soared to 25 million harmonicas and more than 200,000 button and keyboard accordions. They also became the largest publisher of original works for these instruments.
In the mid-1950s a decline in Hohner’s fortunes was brought about by changing patterns of leisure (e.g. television), youth culture and developing music technology. Hohner tried to compensate by creating new products such as the Melodica (a keyboard harmonica), and by diversifying into a whole range of acoustic and electric guitars, mandolins, keyboard and percussion instruments, but although some real innovations were made, they proved only a limited success and did little to stem the general decline. They produced many unusual electroacoustic (often using amplified free reeds) or electronic instruments, including electronic and hybrid accordions (all now discontinued), organs and pianos. Two very successful portable five-octave keyboards, related to the electric piano, were marketed from the early 1960s to the early 80s: the Clavinet (popularized by Stevie Wonder) and the Pianet (the two instruments were combined as the Duo in 1978). Since the mid-1980s digital versions of some of these instruments have been produced, as well as accordions with MIDI. In the 1970s and 80s the company came near to bankruptcy several times and was finally bought by the HS Investment Group from the Virgin Islands in 1997, which reduced the workforce to fewer than 200 people. In 1999 Hohner was still the biggest global manufacturer of harmonicas but its annual sales of one million instruments were merely the equivalent of three weeks’ production during its peak in the late 1920s.
Hundert Jahre Hohner 1857–1957 (Trossingen, 1957)
R. Bierl: Elementare technische Akustik der elektronischen Musikinstrumente (Frankfurt, 1965)
P. Forrest: The A-Z of Analogue Synthesisers, i: A-M (Crediton, 1994, 2/1998), 184–90, 211–13
B. Carson: ‘A Parade of Exotic Electric Pianos and Fellow Travellers’, Keyboard, xix/12 (1993), 144–54
H. Berghoff: Zwischen Kleinstadt und Weltmarkt: Hohner und die Harmonika 1857–1961 (Paderborn, 1997)
HUGH DAVIES, CHRISTOPH WAGNER