Gundel’s Excelsior

[Eric P]

I have a very old concertina made by Gundel’s in Germany.  I cannot find any information about it.  My great grandfather brought back from WW2. It is called Excelsior. Any help is greatly appreciated.  

[richard]

Not a concertina, sadly.

[AnnC]

🙂looks more like a Melodeon 

[Eric P]

Thanks, Anne!

[DickT]

Is it a flutina?

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

It's a nice good old-fashioned wotsit melodeon.  You sometimes see them often in old antique shops or those unusual warehouse places full with webs, dust, old, faded photos, and ancient gramophone records of yore!😀

[Anglo-Irishman]

The German designation would be "Handharmonika," not "Konzertina."

Cheers,

John

[Stephen Chambers]

On 2/15/2023 at 8:00 PM, Anglo-Irishman said:

The German designation would be "Handharmonika," not "Konzertina."

 

The correct German designation would be „Deutsche Harmonika".

 

„Handharmonika“ is, properly speaking, a general classification term for all handheld free-reed instruments, including „Konzertina".

 

I speak from half a century of correspondence and discussion with German authorities on free-reed instruments, researchers, authors, manufacturers, and museum curators (especially those of the Schloßbergmuseum in Chemnitz {where the German concertina was invented in 1834} when I was involved in researching and putting on the exhibition „Sehnsucht aus dem Blasebalg. Concertina & Bandoneon" there in 2001).

 

 

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by Stephen Chambers
Edited to add "manufacturers".

[Stephen Chambers]

On 2/12/2023 at 12:47 PM, Eric P said:

I have a very old concertina made by Gundel’s in Germany.  I cannot find any information about it.  My great grandfather brought back from WW2. It is called Excelsior. Any help is greatly appreciated.  

 

Gebr. Gündel (Guendel Bros.) was a manufacturer of accordions in Klingenthal, Saxony, in Eastern Germany. They were founded in 1872 and still in business into the 1960s.

 

They produced piano accordions bearing their brand name Barcarole, and inexpensive diatonic accordions/melodeons bearing their own name.