Friedrich Adolf Schmidt was
born March 31, 1827 in the hamlet of Colochau (now
Kolochau and incorporated within the community of
Kremitzaue), Merseburg district of Brandenburg,
Germany, formerly in the Prussian province of Saxony
about midway between Berlin and Leipzig. He was the
son of innkeeper Johann Karl Schmidt and Johanna
Christina Gießmann. Friedrich Adolf is first
documented in Köln (Cologne) in 1846 at the age of
nineteen probably as an apprentice to
Leopold
August Matthias Schröder whom he succeeded in
business in 1848. Schröder had established himself as
a brass instrument maker first in Coblenz in 1812 then
moving to Köln in 1822. In 1841 his address was
Breitestrasse 72 and in 1846 Breitestrasse 93. In 1847
Schröder applied unsucessfully for patent on a new
valve. The following year F.A. Schmidt became his
successor continuing to do business in the name of
Schröder for some time. Schröder died some time before
1852; that year his widow, Maria Christ E. Schröder
was residing at Breitestrasse 93.
F.A. Schmidt was married first November 8, 1851 to
Aloisa Nikoletta Sutorius who was born on January 15,
1828. She was the daughter of Josef Konstantin
Satorius, a tailor, and Magarete Groß. To this
marriage was born
Carl
Friedrich (C.F.) Schmidt on March 7, 1852, who
became a well-known horn maker of Weimar and Berlin.
Aloisi died June 5, 1859 and the following year on May
5, 1860 F.A. Schmidt married Margaret Brassart. She
was born September 22, 1834 the daughter of Karl
Brassart,
Schönfärber, and Magarete Flügel.
Sources do not indicate which of these marriages
produced the other two sons of F.A. Schmidt: Leopold
August Schmidt, who succeeded his father in business
in 1893, and F.A. Schmidt, junior, who also flourished
as a brass instrument maker in Berlin from about 1892
to after 1908.
In 1852 F.A. Scmidt exhibited his products in London.
The following year he invented the "Echocornet" in
1853 (see illustration at bottom right).
F.A. Schmidt is also credited with inventing the
characteristic "
Kölner
Modell" horn and trumpet, the "Kölner Druckwerk"
(finger lever mechanism), and the "Altkölnerventil" or
"Pointventil" brass instrument valve. Herbert Heyde
(1987, p.38) doubts, however, that Schmidt was
actually the inventor:
Wann Friedrich Adolf Schmidt (1827-1893),
der sich 1848 in Köln etablierte, das Pointventil zu
bauen begann, is fraglich. Nach der
Firemüberlieferung soll er es sogar selbst erfunden
haben (Altenburg, 1975, S.98), was sich aber wohl
nur auf die werkstattindividuelle Ausprägung von
Ventil und Druckwerk ("Original-Kölner Druckwerk")
bezieht. Fakt ist, daß Schmidt Ventile und
Druckwerke in bester Qualität und eigenwilliger
Weise baute, daß die Kölner Maschine geschätzt war
wegen ihrer Zuverlässigkeit und auch von anderen
Firmen gebaut wurde.
When Adolf Friedrich Schmidt (1827-1893), who
established himself in Cologne in 1848, began to
build the point valve is questionable. According to
tradition about the firm he should have even
invented it (Altenburg, 1975, S.98), but it was
probably only about the workshop's individual
expression of the valve and linkage ("original
Cologne mechanism"). The fact is that since Schmidt
valves and levers were of the best quality and built
in a unique way that the Cologne mechanism was
valued because of its reliability and was also built
by other companies.
