Great Variety. Double Reeds. Single Action. Spare Parts. The Factory. Inquiry Form. How To Find Us. Privacy Policy. He sold his business to Ernst Louis Arnold ten years later. His son, Alfred Arnold, took over part of the company in His bandonions were exported all over the world until the World War II ….
The origins of the bandonion can be found at the beginning of the 19th century in the border triangle of Saxony, Bavaria and Bohemia. There, with the decline of the silver mining in the Ore Mountains, the production of musical instruments developed into a new branch of industry.
In Carl Friedrich Uhlig built the first alternating tones German Concertina in Chemnitz, a square button instrument with 20 tones. A few years later Carl Friedrich Zimmermann starts the production of hand pull instruments in Carlsfeld. However, Heinrich Band is considered the inventor of the bandonion, and in he founds a shop for musical instrument teaching and trading in Krefeld.
He makes the decisive changes to the Concertina which lead to the "birth" of the Bandonion. The new instrument is first called "Accordion" by him, and only around does it receive the name "Bandonion".
The name is probably a variation of the term "Band Union", under which the trading business of the Band family is known at that time. Heinrich Band does not build instruments himself, he buys them in Bohemia and Saxony, in order to sell them in his shops. Where he purchases his bandonions is not clear beyond doubt. What is certain is that Carl Friedrich Zimmermann had a harmonica factory built in Carlsfeld in , where he began making concertinas and bandonions a short time later.
