Alfred Kern & fils
Interior of the reformed chapel of Saint-Marc, with a Kern organ, in Bourtzwiller, Mulhouse, Alsace
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| Industry | Organ building |
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| Founded | 1953 |
| Headquarters | Strasbourg, France |
| Products | Daniel Kern organs |
| Website | www |
The Daniel Kern Manufacture d'Orgues (formerly Alfred Kern & Fils) is an organ builder based in Strasbourg, France. New Kern organs have been installed in many churches in France and other countries. In addition, Kern undertakes restoration work on historic organs.
Alfred Kern (12 February 1910 - 13 October 1989) founded the company in 1953, encouraged by Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Prize winner who was also an organist. Kern made organs using traditional techniques, as well as repairing historically valuable instruments. His son Daniel Kern has continued the tradition. In 1961 Alfred Kern built the core of the organ in the church of Gunsbach, designed by Albert Schweitzer, who described this as his "last work". In 1977, Alfred's son Daniel Kern took charge of the firm.
The company mostly builds or repair church organs, but also builds small organs for music schools and associations. New Kern organs can be found in France in several places in Strasbourg, in the church of Saint-Jean-de-Malte in Aix-en-Provence, in the Anglican Church of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal in Paris and in the Church of Saint-Pothin in Lyon. Other organs are in Japan and Austria. In Germany Kern organs are found in Hagen, Burg, Dithmarschen, Bremen (Lesum) and the organ of the newly built Frauenkirche in Dresden.
The great pipe organ of St. George's Church, Haguenau was built in 1988, installed in a case by Eberhard Friedrich Walcker from 1867. The Sapporo Concert Hall in Japan, completed in 1997, includes a huge 4,976-pipe Kern organ in the main concert hall, which took two years to build. The Dresden Frauenkirche, an eighteenth-century Lutheran Church, was destroyed by fire bombing in February 1945 during World War II. It was rebuilt, with Daniel Kern supplying the organ, completed in April 2005. The new organ is not an exact replica of the original Silbermann organ, a decision that caused some controversy at the time, including some loss of funding.
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Wikipedia