Sunken Ocean-Liner Britannic's pipe organ found - high and dry

Sunken Ocean-Liner Britannic’s pipe organ found - high and dry in the
Museum of Music Automatons Seewen in Switzerland
Experts are now certain they have found the pipe organ which belonged to the steamship
Britannic – sister ship to the Titanic. It is in the Museum of Music Automatons at Seewen,
15 km south of Basel, Switzerland. The organ had apparently disappeared for nearly a
century. The discovery was made during recent restoration work. Dr. Christoph Haenggi,
Director of the museum, said “organ builders in Zürich cleaned up three normally unseen
beams under the windchests, and found they each had the same indication, ‘Britanik’
inscribed on them. We had independently come to an opinion that our organ had been built
around 1912-1914, but information pre-1920 was missing. Historic Welte-company
catalogues in our archives contain a picture of an organ installed in a ‘British steamer’. The
photograph has been verified as a picture of the stairwell of Britannic. We had until now
never imagined that this organ was ours!”
Australian organist David Rumsey, consultant to the restoration, holds the same view: “It is a
Welte-Philharmonie (“Philharmonic” in USA), a pneumatic organ which can be played
normally from its keyboard or by pre-recorded paper rolls. From internal evidence, pipework,
construction and specification I guessed it was built around 1913. It is virtually identical to
the destroyed roll-recording organ of M. Welte & Söhne in Germany at Freiburg in Breisgau.
If, as now appears certain, it was intended for the Britannic, then it needed to have been
finished by spring 1914 when the ship was due for launching. However fate decreed a change
of destiny for both vessel and organ: with the outbreak of the First World War, the ship was
requisitioned by the British navy and re-fitted as a floating hospital. In the process the organ
appears to have been installed, then removed and stored.”
Key to illustrations 1-3: Organ builders, Kuhn Orgelbau, contractors to the Museum at Seewen, discovered
these clues as to the provenance of the Welte-Philharmonie instrument under a layer of dust which had covered
them for nearly 100 years.
In recent years there has been much public interest in the three famous Olympic class sister
ships – Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. There is no evidence that the 1911 Olympic ever had
an organ. However North Atlantic passengers valued its comforts and luxuries so highly as a
mode of travel that, in 1912 the company planned to heighten these for Titanic. It seems a
player organ was ordered from Welte company in Freiburg for Titanic – such instruments
were prominently displayed at the great Trade Fairs of the day and were much in demand
from the wealthy. There may even have been plans to include installation of a top-of-therange
Welte-Philharmonie. However in the short space of time between Welte receiving the
order and the maiden voyage of the Titanic it was only possible to include a small salon
organ. Even this was not finished on time and never came to play upon the high seas. The so-

called Titanic-Organ, an orchestrion (playing rolls but possessing no keyboard) is today
preserved in the Automatic Musical Instrument Museum at Bruchsal, Germany.
Even greater luxury travel standards were planned for the third Olympic-Class ship,
originally to be called Gigantic. However, after the sinking of the Titanic on 15 th April 1912,
this ocean giant was quickly re-named Britannic. In 1911, even before the Titanic tragedy,
Britannic’s keel had already been laid. Her launching was delayed after the Titanic events;
eventually taking place on 26 th February 1914. The extra time was used to review plans and
especially to re-check security aspects. An organ, however, would have had little effect on
these, so it can be assumed that Welte continued building the instrument through 1913. Its
placement was to be in the great First Class stairwell, for the edification and entertainment of
these most important passengers. There were two “storeys” available for it here, an ideal
space, for example, to put the pipes above and wind apparatus below. It might well also have
been an unrealized objective to build a Welte-Philharmonie for the Titanic – which had an
identical stairwell – but on account of the time-scales, and that ship’s destiny, this, if
intended, was never completed. However, since Welte only first offered the Philharmonie for
sale in 1911, a full range of models first in 1912, it looks unlikely that one was ever going to
be destined for Titanic.
At the end of July 1914 war broke out and the British Admiralty requisitioned all large
passenger ships as troop transports or hospital ships. In December 1915 the Britannic was refitted
as the latter and served for about 11 months. She ran into a German mine on 21 st
November 1916 near the Island of Kea (Tzia) in the Aegean Sea and sank without ever
having transported a civilian passenger or plied the Atlantic route. A photograph of her, fitted
out for wartime service, shows the stairwell of the Britannic in an absolutely basic condition,
just white-painted metallic walls. However, woodwork from the stairwell appeared later in
collections, which indicates that the internal outfitting of the ship had indeed been well
advanced at the time of her requisitioning in July 1914. Builders’ sketches, and a photograph
in Welte’s catalogue dating from the summer of 1914, confirm that an organ the size of a
Welte-Philharmonie was installed. Both this photo and a sketch prove the organ’s existence,
but nothing further was found until now.
Key to illustration 5 and 6: the photograph which appears in the Welte Company's 1914 catalogue and
corresponding drawing of unknown origin show the Britannic's staircase.

Welte caption their photograph with “Welte-Philharmonie-Orgel an Bord eines grossen
englischen Dampfers“ (“Welte-Philharmonie on board a large British Steamer”) but do not
identify the ship by name. This is understandable if the organ was removed to storage in late
summer of 1914 and the Britannic never sailed as a passenger ship. Since Britannic sank,
then the organ could not be returned to her after the war. At this time all traces disappear.
Neither relevant Harland & Wolff, shipbuilders of Belfast, Ireland, nor Welte records are now
to be found.
Around 1920 the Camera-Manufacturer August Nagel (1882-1943) installed a Welte-
Philharmonie organ in his imposing villa in Stuttgart. A great music lover, he naturally
enough indulged in an instrument by the world famous firm from neighbouring Freiburg.
Organs of this kind were to be found, symbols of wealth and status, in the residences of
industrial magnates and the aristocracy. There was quite a number of them, as customer
listings of Welte show. Around 1935 Nagel returned his instrument to the manufacturer for
unknown reasons. In 1937 it was moved to the reception room of the Radium electric light
company of Eugen Kersting (1888-1958) in Wipperfürth, Germany. The organ builder
Werner Bosch (1916-1992) as an employee of Welte, slightly enlarged it and installed it
there. It remained in use until the 1960s. After the second world war and the final demise of
the Welte firm it came entirely under Bosch’s care. In 1961 it was used to make an LPrecording
issued as Max Reger spielt eigene Orgelwerke (Max Reger plays his own organ
works) – also issued as Reger plays Reger – by the Electrola at Cologne, Germany (1961: 1C
053-28925). It was apparently also issued by Columbia. This was produced from Welte-rolls
recorded in 1913 by Reger on the Welte recording organ in Freiburg. The organ was selected
as the best available for this purpose, having a specification closely corresponding to that of
the original Freiburg recording organ. The reception room in Wipperfürth was then turned
into a storeroom after a change of ownership. The organ was offered for sale but attracted no
buyers. Eventually this was drawn to the attention of Heinrich Weiss, founder of the Museum
at Seewen, who quickly acquired it for his collection. Weiss then invested some 1,500
working hours in installing it and had Werner Bosch come and do the final regulation. On
30 th May 1970 its completion and re-inauguration was celebrated in Seewen. Bosch was so
touched by the rescue of “his” Welte-Philharmonie that he offered to sell the Seewen
Museum 1,230 original rolls, which had passed into his possession on the closure of Welte.
Accordingly the Seewen Museum now not only possesses an exceptional instrument with an
extraordinary history, but also the original recordings made for all Philharmonie organs.
Apart from Max Reger these include famous artists of the day such as Harry Goss-Custard,
Edwin Lemare, Alfred Hollins, Joseph Bonnet, William Wolstenholme, Eugène Gigout,
Clarence Eddy, Marco Enrico Bossi, Karl Straube and Günter Ramin.
In the course of major renovations to the Museum, the instrument – after 30 years service –
was carefully removed and stored in 1998. In 2000 the building extensions were opened. The
major exhibit, however, remained in storage until 2006 when restoration work could finally
begin. It should be playing again after mid-2007. In the course of restoration work the
pointers to the Britannic were discovered.
In late 2007, including the Museum’s Open Day on 14 th October 2007, and in two evening
concerts, 3 rd and 10 th November 2007, the organ will again be publicly heard in its new
location in the Museum’s large KlangKunst-Saal (Hall of Auditory Arts.) Here it will form

the central part of the Museum’s collection, be included in guided tours and used for
concerts. The Seewen Museum’s – or Britannic’s – Welte-Philharmonie of 1913, with its
comprehensive roll collection, is musicologically an exceptionally valuable combination, a
unique item of world heritage. The rolls will be able to be replayed with a very high degree of
authenticity, thus providing a key to the interpretation of historic music, such as that of Max
Reger, Charles-Marie Widor or Camille Saint-Saëns, and giving retrospective detail of the
performance practices of an important era from which virtually no other recordings exist. An
original roll-recording apparatus of Welte is also held in the Museum’s collection.
David Rumsey is convinced: “everything leads us to the conclusion that this organ was the
one intended for the Britannic, installed and photographed in situ, but removed in mid-1914
and stored by Welte in Freiburg. There it escaped the fate of the ship and survived the First
World War. From the beginning it was planned as a larger organ than Titanic’s - the largest
and most modern of its kind. Organs on vessels began in fiction with organist-Captain Nemo
in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea in 1869/70. To all intents and purposes,
however, they were only ever realized aboard ships twice in history, just over 40 years later –
Titanic and Britannic. It is remarkable that both organs managed somehow to avoid their
destinies of watery graves, ending up on dry land, quite safe from the ocean’s grasp. The
museum at Seewen is some 610 metres above sea level!”
Dates:
- Restoration work on the organ : April 2006 to April 2007
- Return to, voicing and regulation in the Museum: May to September 2007
- Contracted organ builders: Orgelbau Kuhn AG, Männedorf, Switzerland
Organ committee: Dr. Christoph E. Hänggi, Georg Hofmeier, Bernhard Prisi,
David Rumsey, Dr. h.c. Heinrich Weiss
- Open Day: 14 th October 2007
- Concert with David Rumsey: 3 rd November 2007
- Concert with George Gruntz: 10 th November 2007
For further information, in German or English (other languages also available), contact:
Dr. Christoph E. Haenggi
Museum für Musikautomaten
CH-4206 Seewen Switzerland
+41 61 915 98 80
musikautomaten@slm.admin.ch
www.landesmuseen.ch/seewen
or
David Rumsey
Bruderholzrain 28
CH-4059 Basel Switzerland
+41 61 261 91 10
davidrumsey@bluewin.ch
www.davidrumsey.ch