The Daniel Kern Manufacture d'Orgues is an organ builder based in Strasbourg, France. New Kern organs have been installed in many churches in France and other countries. In addition, Kern undertakes restoration work on historic organs.
History
Alfred Kern founded the company in 1953, encouraged by Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Prize winner who was also an organist. Kern made organs using traditional techniques, as well as repairing historically valuable instruments. His son Daniel Kern has continued the tradition. In 1961 Alfred Kern built the core of the organ in the church of Gunsbach, designed by Albert Schweitzer, who described this as his "last work". In 1977, Alfred's son Daniel Kern took charge of the firm.
Installations
The company mostly builds or repair church organs, but also builds small organs for music schools and associations. New Kern organs can be found in France in several places in Strasbourg, in the church of Saint-Jean-de-Malte in Aix-en-Provence, in the Anglican Church of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal in Paris and in the Church of Saint-Pothin in Lyon. Other organs are in Japan and Austria. In Germany Kern organs are found in Hagen, Burg, Dithmarschen, Bremen and the organ of the newly built Frauenkirche in Dresden. The great pipe organ of St. George's Church, Haguenau was built in 1988, installed in a case by Eberhard Friedrich Walcker from 1867. The Sapporo Concert Hall in Japan, completed in 1997, includes a huge 4,976-pipe Kern organ in the main concert hall, which took two years to build. The Dresden Frauenkirche, an eighteenth-century Lutheran Church, was destroyed by fire bombing in February 1945 during World War II. It was rebuilt, with Daniel Kern supplying the organ, completed in April 2005. The new organ is not an exact replica of the original Silbermann organ, a decision that caused some controversy at the time, including some loss of funding.
Reconstruction projects
The company has been involved in the restoration of historic organs by builders such as Johann Andreas Silbermann, Robert Clicquot, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll and Joseph Merklin. A major restoration of the organ in the Église Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas in Paris was undertaken in the 1960s by Alfred Kern & fils. This organ was made by Matthijs Langhedul. Part of the wooden case had been made by Claude Delaistre in 1587, so the church has part of the oldest organ case in Paris. The new organ, which retains parts of the old, was inaugurated on 18 May 1971 by Pierre Cochereau. The Organ in St. Thomas, Strasbourg was built by Silbermann between 1737 and 1741. Over the years it went through many changes, but retained many of the original components. Alfred Kern & Son undertook a careful restoration, which was completed in 1979. In 1981 Alfred Kern & fils undertook a repair of the historical suspended pipe organ on the north side of the central nave in Strasbourg Cathedral. In 2004 Kern began work on repair of the Roethinger organ in Strasbourg's Ste-Madeleine church. An organ built in 1762 by Johann Andreas Silbermann was transferred in 1865 to the St. Moriz Church of the parish of Soultz-les-Bains. There, it has been restored to its 1848 condition by Alfred Kern & fils between 2006 and 2008.
