Bernhard Hausmann’s instrument collection

I was gratified to read among the headlines of the Berliner Morgenpost for 11 May 2023 news about correspondence between Joseph Joachim and Bernhard Hausmann, Robert Hausmann’s great-uncle.¹ Seven letters were given by a member of the Hausmann family as a gift to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche Stiftung, in honor of the church’s cemetery, where Joseph and Amalie Joachim are buried. The letters will be kept by the library of the Universität der Künste. All the news article reveals is that they include requests from Joachim to borrow instruments belonging to Bernhard Hausmann, described as a factory owner in Hanover. This brief news item spurred me to write up what I know about Joachim and Bernhard Hausmann’s instruments. I have explored Joachim’s connection to Bernhard’s son Georg and his great-nephew Robert in earlier posts.

Bernhard Hausmann (1784-1873)

Besides running the family business, serving as an elected official, and leading the plans for the first railroads through Hanover, Bernhard Hausmann pursued the collecting of art and musical instruments.² He was also a lifelong amateur violinist who shared his enthusiasm for playing chamber music with the Duke of Cambridge, the Viceroy of Hanover from 1816-37. He had influence in music appointments at the Hanover court and was well connected in the German music world. Before Joachim’s arrival, concertmasters at Hanover included Louis Maurer, Anton Bohrer, and Georg Hellmesberger, who were important violinists and string quartet players in the first part of the nineteenth century. Hausmann was also friends with the concertmaster Carl Müller of nearby Braunschweig, who led the famous Müller brothers quartet, the most significant forerunner of the Joachim Quartet.

Joachim was a guest in Hausmann’s home for chamber music parties during his time at Hanover, from 1853-66. The occasion for the first time in 1854 was the visit of the violinist and composer Louis Spohr, Bernhard’s friend going back to 1810. The venerable 68-year-old got to play quartets with the 23-year-old who would become one of his greatest advocates. Another time Joachim visited was in 1859: Bernhard needed a viola player to complete a quartet made up three generations of Hausmanns: himself, his cellist son Georg and his grandson Fritz Hartmann.

The last occasion for a get together in 1865 had to do with Hausmann’s violin collection. Joachim facilitated a meeting with an English amateur violinist who was the daughter of Ada Lovelace and granddaughter of Lord Byron. In a letter of 13 September 1865 to his brother, Joachim referred to Lady Anabella Noel as a delightful guest and reported that he had been “playing her two wonderful Stradivarius violins a lot.”³ He arranged a comparison of a total of five Stradivarius instruments: two of Lady Noel’s, two of Bernhard’s, and Joachim’s first (and at the time, only) Strad that he had acquired in 1849. After playing all of the violins, Joachim judged Bernhard’s “Unico” the best; second was the violin known today by Lady Noel’s married name, “Lady Blunt”; third was his own 1714 instrument; then Bernhard’s “Hartmann” Strad, and finally the other, “smaller” violin of Lady Noel.

Bernhard had bought the 1709 Strad known as the “Unico” or “King Maximillian” in 1827. Its most recent claim to fame is for being stolen in 1999 (and is still missing). The “Lady Blunt” last made news in 2011 when it sold for $15.9 million.

When Bernhard Hausmann died in 1873, the auction of his instruments made news for the high price paid for one of his violins.⁴ The buyer was Jean Joseph Bott, a Spohr student who became famous when his violin was stolen in New York in 1894; the subsequent recovery and court case took years and generated huge publicity.⁵ That was a 1715 (or 1725?) Strad known as the “Duke of Cambridge,” once owned by the violinist Pierre Rode.⁶ Presumably this was the violin he acquired from the Hausmann auction.

Despite the incredible value and scarcity of violins made by Antonio Stradivari, identifying and tracing them can be difficult. Of the fourteen (or more) Strads Joachim possessed, there are still a surprising number of questions about which violins he had, what the dates of possession were, and what happened to them.⁷One fairly clear case of an instrument that was owned by both Bernhard and Joachim is the 1714 Strad known as “Leonora Jackson,” Joachim’s most successful student from the U.S (pictured above).⁸ I spent a lot of time working on a list of Joachim’s violins and those of his students, but it will probably always be in an incomplete and unsatisfactory state.

At least I found some interesting reads along the way. David Laurie’s Reminiscences of a Fiddle Dealer has a lot of information and some insights about the craze for collecting. Crazed musicians and obsessed collectors are also featured in a short story about a stolen Strad by William Crawford Honeyman, “The Romance of a Real Cremona,” from 1884. It is part of a collection of fictional cases told by an Edinburgh detective who predates Sherlock Holmes.

A stolen Strad is also at the center of 2022 mystery The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocum. I recommend it and am looking forward to his second novel, Symphony of Secrets.

Bernhard Hausmann (1784-1873)

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