German Jazz Guitars: The Archtop Guitar in Post-War Central Europe

Most guitarists today think of the USA as the land of the guitar. Classical guitars come from Spain but rock, jazz and folk guitars must surely be American? They know the ‘great’ names – Gibson, Epiphone, Fender, Gretsch, Martin but few non-German speakers know that Bohemia and neighbouring Saxony, where Christian Friedrich Martin was born in 1796, produced for over three centuries a massive proportion of the world’s stringed instruments – lutes, fiddles, cellos, double basses and guitars.

Authors Cameron Brown and Stefan Lob are two of the world’s experts on the subject and this book, the first in the English language, is informed by many years of research.

The Bate Collection is a museum of musical instruments at the University of Oxford and it owns a collection of 110 guitars donated by Cameron Brown. Half of them were made by German speaking Czech craftsmen expelled from their homeland after the Second World War, resettling in Bavaria, the other half by their former neighbours in Saxony, now behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany.

This book shows the complete collection (and more), summarises the socio-political background and the way it led to the decline – and almost the extinction – of what was once the most productive centre of stringed-instrument making in the world, plus a unique guide to help collectors identify the makers of their instruments.