An idea from America
The idea came to Siegfried Wendel on his honeymoon. In the mid-1960s he and his wife Gretel visited an open-air museum near Los Angeles.
What impressed the visitors from Germany most was a building that looked like a saloon from the outside but housed a whole arsenal of player pianos and other automatic instruments.
Siegfried Wendel knew at once that Germany needed something like it. Five years later the first vague notion had become reality.
“Germany needs something like this. The penny had dropped.”
Siegfried WendelA start in Hochheim
On 17 October 1969 the “First German Museum of Mechanical Musical Instruments” opened its doors. Siegfried Wendel welcomed his first visitors at the local history museum of Hochheim am Main, the Dalheimer Klosterhof. Wendel — still working as a social worker in Mainz-Gustavsburg at the time — had in fact wanted Rüdesheim, with its stream of tourists, as the ideal location. But the town fathers of Rüdesheim refused to support him.
The room in Hochheim soon became too small. In 1971 Siegfried Wendel moved his musical automata into the former “Fischle” winery, which he had bought for that very purpose. The museum was now larger and finer, with room for almost twice as many instruments. Yet his greatest problem remained: the visitors did not come.
The move to Rüdesheim
Siegfried Wendel seized the opportunity as soon as he heard that the building of the former winegrowers’ cooperative in Rüdesheim was to be leased. That was in 1973. To show off the appeal of his collection he renamed it “Siegfried’s Mechanical Music Salon”.
“At first the tourists streamed from the coach park straight past the music salon and into the Drosselgasse.”
Siegfried WendelThat only changed when Wendel managed to make contact with English tour guides during the Rüdesheim wine festival — and the first groups found their way into the music salon.
A visit to the Chancellor
Siegfried Wendel’s collection became known nationwide when the then Chancellor Helmut Schmidt invited him to his garden party in Bonn. From eight in the evening until four in the morning, Wendel and his staff gave a concert of mechanical musical instruments at the Palais Schaumburg. German television showed Siegfried Wendel in a black cloak, with a flowing beard and hat.
The rush of visitors after the garden party brought new problems: the rooms in the former winegrowers’ cooperative now proved too small and too cramped. Siegfried Wendel began to consider an offer from the town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber to move his museum there.
The Brömserhof
Now Rüdesheim’s officials reacted. They offered Siegfried Wendel the Brömserhof on Oberstraße, an old knight’s residence barely fifty metres from the tourist magnet of the Drosselgasse. Parts of the building date back to 1310.
“I had stood in front of this house once before, on my first trip to Rüdesheim, and thought to myself that it would be ideal.” Wendel did not hesitate long and stayed in Rüdesheim. For the third and last time he moved his museum.
Since then both the collection and the number of visitors have grown steadily. Since 1998 the Wendel family has not been the tenant of the Brömserhof but its owner — securing the museum in its present home for the foreseeable future.
Today his son Jens has taken up his father’s legacy in the second generation and, together with his daughter Lena and his son Lucas, continues the family business into the third.
Experience the story yourself
A dream from 1969 became Germany’s first museum of mechanical musical instruments. Hear and see it on a 45-minute journey through time in the Brömserhof.