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Franz Michl

pete

Brassica Oleracea
Staff member
Administrator
Very loosely translating and synthesizing from this thread, using Google Translate ...

(See below note on the dates.)

* Mentioned in one of Gunter Dullat's books. (I assume that's where the poster got the rest of this info. I couldn't translate the title well enough.)
* Franz Michl trained at Bohland & Fuchs in Grazlitz.

Problem part -- Helen, a little help please -- I think the poster is saying that Franz joined his father's company in 1923. Amusingly, his father's name was also Franz. Which makes my life more interesting. Also mentioned in that Horn-U-Copia link is the notation that there isn't any connection between Franz and Johann Michl & Sohn. FWIW, Milandro on SOTW says that the Johann Michl horns he's seen are Kohlert stencils, but I'm not 100% sure of that: the G# cluster on the tenor he uses as an example looks a tad odd for Kohlert. Helen's also has a Pierret with "Johann Michl & Sohn Graslitz" engraved on it, so we can, at least, say "Johann bought stencils."

* On January 10, 1932 ownership of the company went to Franz, Rudolf and Adolf Michl.
* In 1936, the company started producing saxophones.

Again, a little help requested, but I think it says that in 1940, the company was converted to produce stuff for the war effort.

* In 1946, Franz was "expelled" from Grazlitz, which is what happened with Julius Keilwerth and others.
* On May 2, 1949, Franz re-started his company with his son. They set-up shop in the Straubing area.
* On January 4, 1950, Franz died.
* On April, 1951, Rudolf took over the company. (I'm not sure if this is "Rudolf Michl" or another Rudolf. My browsers choked on some of the umlauts.)
* By March 10, 1952, the company had only 3 employees.
* In 1953, the company headquarters was moved to Aschaffenburg.

Note: The poster uses three different date formats. I'm assuming he's being consistent with "day.month.year," which is more-or-less standard -- I've been told, at least -- everyplace but the US. At the very least, the years should be right.

===================

Anyhow, I've found three different models of Franz Michl saxophones. At least, I think all three are different models. I thik it's possible that the split-bell-key horn, which has the wonderful name of "Tango - Orchestra," might be a stencil. The split-bell-key style was rather old by 1936.
 
Sorry this thread slipped past my radar screen until today... OK, here goes...

Ignore the first guy asking the question. We don't know where he got his info. He's asking about a Tuba he bought anyway. The fellow answering the question (Johannes Meinel) works at the museum. Here is what he says:

  • There is a fair amount of info about Franz Michl in the book: Der Musikinstrumentenbau und die Musikfachschule in Graslitz von den Anfängen bis 1945, by G. Dullat.
  • According to this book, Franz Michl learned his trade in Graslitz at the company, Bohland & Fuchs.
  • In 1887 Franz Michl started to work independently in Graslitz.
  • In 1923 his son, also named Franz, took over the company.
  • Between 1935-27 Michl employed 35-40 employees.
  • On October 1, 1932 Michl was transformed into a general partnership with the partners being Franz, Rudolf, and Adolf Michl.
  • As of 1936 the company also produced saxophones.
  • After 1940 the company was required to fill defence orders, so musical instrument manufacturing went into the background.
  • In 1947 Franz Michl was expelled. (Presumably from Graslitz, although that is not stated.)
  • On May 2, 1949, he and his son had a new start in the area around Straubing. (A city in Bavaria--hence West Germany).
  • Franz Michl (unknown if father or son) died on January 4, 1950.
  • Rudolf migrated to Haibach on April 11, 1951. (Hailbach is also in Bavaria.)
  • The name "Franz Michl" was continued.
  • On March 10, 1952 Rudolf passed the trade examation for master craftsman.
  • At the time he employed 3 employees.
  • Since February 1953 the company is headquartered in Aschaffenburg.

==============================================================================

As far as date convetions goes, he was consistant. In German it does go day, month, year.

I am assuming that this is (was?) a family company, and that everyone had the last name Michl.



PS: I found this page very helpful in descrambling all the umlauts that get f'd up in b-boards. These used to make my head hurt when I tried to read them.

Specifically the codes for German are:

ä = ä
ë = ë
ï = ï
ö = ö
ü = ü

Ä = Ä
Ë = Ë
Ï = Ï
Ö = Ö
Ü = ÃÅ“
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I've also got pics of a Bohland & Fuchs sax. I'll try to upload them in the semi-near future.
 
You're facing another of the perils of using the Windows system. Rendering stuff in foreign notation is a doddle on the Macintosh system, with none of the bizarre coding involved as it is in your case.

Want an umlaut on a letter, capital or lower case? Just hold down the Option key and type a "u", then type the letter that you're wanting to insert. Other accents are done in a similar fashion, with the only ones really causing a problem are the different categories in the French language, and then only because I don't understand the difference between them.

Easy-peasy...

The only character encoding problems that I have encountered on a weekly basis are when wanting to insert an inch or foot sign. All of the word processing programs have an option, buried in the preferences somewhere, that allows you to redirect the inch or foot symbol into a single quote or a double quote. (Indeed, the software even goes so far as to enter the opening and closing versions of these symbols automatically.)

However, if you want to put something like 4" (as it appears in this program) instead of the quote mark, you have to access a character viewer and drop it in from there. This is the same sort of obstacle that you are facing. I overcome it by getting one of each mark in the document, and then cutting and pasting, thereby not having to either fish coded stuff nor change the normal settings.
 
It's not the entry that's the problem. It's the reading. The encoding for foreign websites is screwy. Here's how the first post from that German website looks (double-click to embiggen):

Capture.JPG

It looks the same on Firefox and Chrome, both on my Mac and PC.

It's the character encoding. Considering I'm playing around with a lot more German websites than I used to, I'll probably look into fixing the encoding in my browsers. I just really hadn't bothered before.
 
Well, I've had the same sort of problems here. Apparently the "universal" coding used by the Macintosh OSX system is not recognized by all internet display websites.

For example, I often get "gibberish" displayed if I choose to use the ellipsis character (… - see what I just did there?) over the much easier-to-enter triple period (...). I've had similar problems here with some characters when scrolling in text from a word processing software, for example the proper opening and closing quotes rather than the inch symbol (") that we are seeing here. (I'd bother to display the opening and closing quotes, but a) I don't know the secret code to make it happen, and b) they would just end up as more "gibberish" anyway.)

It's not the internet that is the problem, it's the display software, the stuff that websites used to display their data. As far back as I can remember, I've never had it with Dreamweaver when working with my website, but these problems have been around for many years, and it's not likely that they'll be resolved soon.
 
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