Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (February 17, 1797 in Wolfshagen - February 7, 1871 in New York), piano manufacturer, also Heinrich Engelhardt Steinweg and Henry E. Steinway.

Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg had a very poor and hard childhood and with the age of 15 he started to become a carpenter, later he decided to learn the work from a organ builder in a town named Goslar. Soon he felt in love with the music and became an organ player in the church, because of the strong rules in the working class he started building instruments, hidden in the kitchen of the house he lived in. In 1835 he made the first square piano witch he presented his bride Juliane at their wedding. 1836 he build his first grand piano in his old kitchen in the town of Seesen. This piano was later named to be the kitchen piano.

Because of the unstable political time in Germany he decided to leave the country. Before he emigrated to New York, he gave in 1850 the company to his son Theodore Steinweg. Steinweg emigrated from Brunswick, Germany, to New York in 1851 together with four of his sons. He anglicised his name into Henry E. Steinway. In New York they worked for other piano companies until they could establish their own production under the name of Steinway & Sons in 1853. The business expanded with the inventions they made. The overstrung scale in a square piano made the Steinway Piano to get the first price of the New York Industrial Fair of 1855.