The name Carl Friedrich (Charles Frederick) Zimmermann figures prominently in the early histories of the accordion and concertina, as well as of mechanized zithers. When discussed in the first context, his “Carlsfelder Concertina” is a frequent centerpiece, together with the importance of his factory in Carlsfeld to the local economy. It is usually noted in passing that he later shifted his attention to the autoharp. When that instrument is the main focus, mention is sometimes made of his having started out as an accordion maker, but his significance in that field is rarely discussed further.
Writers approaching Zimmermann from either perspective have relied on an autobiography found in the personal archives of his corporate successor in the US, Rudolf Dolge. Alvin Doyle Moore brought it to light by including passages translated from the original German in his seminal article from 1963, “The Autoharp: Its Origin and Development from a Popular to a Folk Instrument,” published in the New York Folklore Quarterly (vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 261–74; reprinted in 1967 by Harry Taussig in the Folk Style Autoharp). Becky Blackley paraphrased the autobiography more extensively in The Autoharp Book, from 1983.
A typescript of the German document is in the Becky Blackley Collection #20282, Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is available online there as scans 1‑5 in Folder 22. An audio recording in the same collection indicates that she had difficulty obtaining a satisfactory English translation. She discussed this further with archival details of the original text and its translation history in a footnote in her book.
Zimmermann’s autobiography is not written entirely in grammatically complete sentences, is sometimes punctuated awkwardly, and shifts abruptly from a third-person to a first-person narrative. Nor is there always a one-to-one correspondence between key terms in English and German. Nonetheless, speaking as a musicologist who has been translating German texts related to musical instruments for academic publication for over 50 years, I believe that it can be framed accurately in cogent English. I’m unaware of any readily available rigorous translation but even if that’s an oversight, the one below may still prove useful.
I’ve applied the punctuation and sentence structure of the target language, with square brackets marking substantive interpolation. The terms accordion, concertina, and harmonica are left as in the original, changed only to English spelling. Their semantics differ in the two languages and have shifted in both since Zimmermann wrote his autobiography. The physharmonica was a type of harmonium seen in an advertisement from 1855 placed by a competitor whose products closely resembled Zimmermann’s.
A few additional contextual details about events mentioned tersely in the autobiography may also be worth noting. Zimmermann displayed a range of “harmonicas and accordions” at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. He published a Practical Self-Teacher for Concertina in 1848 but no copy survives to identify the design of the designated instrument. However, the original text is generally assumed to have been incorporated into a bilingual Praktischer Selbstlehrer für Concertina, further presumed to have been released at the 1851 Exhibition.
The numbers of tones produced by the described instruments are counted differently in the two languages. The wording of the German description, plus subsequent illustrations, places one variant directly in the lineage of the bandoneon, detailed further here and here. The Carlsfelder concertina was later to be paralleled in significance among Zimmermann’s innovations by his Union Accordion (this post’s banner image). He specified this with a derivation of the name in US Patent no. 56319, applied for on 28 December 1865 and issued on 10 July 1866.
Despite the retrospective narrative implying otherwise, he continued developing accordions after protecting the Union instrument. This is demonstrated by US Patent no. 106018 issued on 2 August 1870 (discussed here; all parenthetical references in the same form are to other posts on this blog). The numeric notation system still targeted accordions in US Patent no. 110719, dated 3 January 1871.
Zimmermann would obviously have obtained those patents before writing his autobiography. In it, he notes a subsequent shift in focus “toward a string instrument with key bars.” This was the “autoharp” described in his US Patent no. 257808, applied for on 10 December 1881 and issued on 9 May 1882, where the term was first coined. It seems peculiar that there is no reference to this patent in the chronicle.
Nevertheless, it goes on to relate “two years of constant attempts [to bring the autoharp] to the greatest possible perfection.” Zimmermann made several well-documented changes to the design described in his patent. He displayed two revised models at industrial exhibitions beginning in December 1884, three months after the first mention of the autoharp in the US daily press (discussed here). He began marketing his autoharps at these exhibitions, and it can plausibly be surmised that he penned his autobiography in that context.
Zimmermann ended the text by noting a patented “special key” added to his concertina in 1851, that could “raise all the notes on this instrument a full octave.” He made special note of the same “change key” in the preface to the Self-Teacher seen above. I haven’t located the patent issued for it in Saxony but an octave device with the described functionality was claimed in US Patent no. 15401 granted to his brother in Philadelphia, Carl Moritz Zimmermann, on 22 July 1856.
The significance C. F. Zimmermann ascribed to the octave device may explain the flageolet bar that served the same purpose in the initial designs of the autoharp. It is also possible that his familiarity with the manufacture of, and performance on, various types of zithers increased during a mentioned trip to Europe, including its Baltic forms (discussed here). Again if so, this can have provided impetus to the shift of focus toward such instruments at the heart of his “greater work.”
A clearly dated opportunity for that cultural exchange was also provided at the US Centennial Exhibition in 1876 (discussed here). It is often maintained that the pivotal observation was of an autoharp in Germany. However, the emergence of that instrument in Europe is well documented and Zimmermann’s US patent predates all of it (detailed in a journal article).
Here is my translation of the typescript autobiography of Carl Friedrich Zimmermann.
Born on 4 September 1817 in the ironworks [village of] Morgenröthe in Saxony to very poor parents. By his 12th year had learned a few things from the school teacher there, Kessner, on his four octave piano. Then moved with his parents to Carlsfeld near Auersberg. Went to Bohemia with a few friends for violin lessons with cantor Wenens. Played dance music on Sundays with his friends, where they also shared their musical knowledge about the clarinet, flute, bass, and trumpet, with each other.
His father abandoned iron casting and spent the entire year as a traveling salesman of silk goods, round and about Saxony. After the death of my mother when I was in my 15th year, I acted as housekeeper for my five siblings. In my 16th year, my father married an unsophisticated grumpy woman. This moved me to become an apprentice iron caster to my uncle Heinrich Rockstroh in Chemnitz. I resumed playing music there to earn enough for clothing during my apprenticeship, which took three years.
Those last three years were the happiest of my life but destiny wanted me to forsake these occupations. When I had returned home in order to get to Bohemia, I was talked into taking up the silk trade by my younger brother, with whom I plied it together for an entire year. However, our stepmother neglected to send us any goods, turning instead toward an expectant brother-in-law. We had gotten as far as Danzig, and since I knew how to make myself popular there with my three-row harmonica made by Uhlig from Chemnitz, other tradespeople helped us out with goods so that we could participate in the Dominican Market held every four weeks.
A favorable review of my lovely playing, in the “Danzig Steamboat” [a daily newspaper; Danizger Dampfboot], changed my feelings. I decided to build a larger such instrument for myself, since Uhlig could not be persuaded to do so. However, he did deliver a second set of reed plates with my three-row harmonica and I set to making myself such an instrument. This began by spending five thalers on basic material and a few tools, but I was not met with immediate success. Since I was living in my father’s house at no cost and had only a single room for myself, I needed to start by making simple one-row harmonicas. I could thereby live frugally and acquire the most essential means for building further. In the third or fourth year thereafter I had three [of the larger] instruments ready for an intended performance tour with one of my brothers and another friend. However, our three-leaf clover fell apart a short way into that tour.
I then decided to continue making smaller harmonicas and hired workers from the local wall-clock factory. My establishment ultimately grew so that there were 76 employees in the most successful period, mainly forestry workers and nailsmiths.
[The firm] did good business at the Leipzig Trade Fair with larger instruments [such as] physharmonicas with a rapid response achieved by a hammer mechanism. Two monetary advances were received from the state government and, since I was an alderman in the municipality, I had to acquiesce to a political search of my house ordered by the Royal Judiciary Authority. Instead of evidence of political activity, they only found huge orders for London and other articles for my competitors. Meanwhile, this competition outmaneuvered me in my own region through greater capitalization and lower-cost products. For this reason, I and my brother-in-law revived a defunct local glassworks. However, again, I also had to pull out of that.
I now heeded my brother’s call to America with my wife and six children, leaving two behind with my parents-in-law. A service maid in my 48th year, I took over my brother’s music store — in a sorry state at the time — while he left me four months after my arrival and traveled to Germany.
If I had been working hard in Germany, I had to do so all the harder here, repairing French accordions. It was still wartime and I established my existence anew. After only two or three years, I obtained a patent here for the Union Accordion; not just here but in France, England, Belgium, and Saxony as well.
This instrument was combined with a new system for the numerical notation of music. For this reason, I wanted to sell the patents abroad and traveled to England, France, and Germany for that purpose but had no luck.
Upon my return, again focusing all energy day and night, and with good financial credit in Germany alongside, I pursued my further plans for the new system of numerical music notation, which I had already revised for the third time.
Whereas the difficulties in introducing such a system became more and more clear, I turned my thoughts entirely away from the Union Accordion toward a string instrument with key bars [Tastenbalken], which would produce chords in all musical keys by silencing the strings not belonging to them. After two years of constant attempts I have now brought it — the autoharp [Autoharfe] — to the greatest possible perfection, described further in the following.
I regard it as the best work that a person could ever produce on this earth. It is not only a pleasant instrument for easy learning, it is a mechanical self-instructor in the shorthand notation of the sound of all possible harmonies in the new system of numerical music notation. This should be introduced in public schools under all circumstances because music — as the composer Ocken once said — is of divine origin. All of humanity is thereby capable of bringing it bit by bit into a far better position than the one that has suppressed its divine properties for nearly 1,000 years through the music notation of the Jesuits or Pharisees.
One remembers the fight with notation for my first larger harmonicas; two different notes for pull and push on each [physical] key, the scale disjointed by multiple rows of keys, where possible also arranged in chords. Here is where the key numbers — not note numbers — had to lead me through this labyrinth and ever onward. Numbers were placed in 34,000 printed books of music for accordions and concertinas. This led to the numbers gaining public favor, albeit slowly at first. The thrice revised note numbering system was finally made suitable for all instruments and it only remained for it to be accepted.
In 1851, I obtained a patent in Saxony for an improvement to my three-row concertina. I was able to raise all the notes on this instrument a full octave using a special key. Not only that, but all the notes could optionally be sounded doubly — in octaves. However, this was unsuccessful because it was not understood and the harmonica was not regarded as a proper instrument. Nonetheless, I thereby acquired the experience necessary for my greater work.