Friedrich Trautwein ( August 11, 1888 in Würzburg – December 20, 1956 in Düsseldorf ) was a German engineer. Trautwein developed the

Trautonium The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1930 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon afterwards Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's de ...

and is considered a pioneer of electronic music in Germany.

Life

As a child, Friedrich Trautwein learned to play the organ in church. He studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, followed by law and physics in Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1906, he joined the '' Teutonia fraternity'' in Karlsruhe. He passed the traineeship examination for the higher postal service in 1911. During WWI, he was a lieutenant in charge of a mounted radio squad. After passing the assessor exam in 1919, he went on to study physics in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

and

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...

, where he earned his doctorate in engineering. He began working as a postal clerk at the ''Telegraphentechnisches Reichsamt'' the following year. In this capacity, he was involved in the establishment of the first German radio station, which was based in Berlin's Vox building. He was also dealing with electrical sound generation at the time, where he received his first patent for his research in 1922. In 1929, he accepted a lectureship at Berlin's Academy of Arts and started the development of the

, which it would be finished in 1930. Trautwein was involved in the instrument's further development until around 1933, after which

Oskar Sala Oskar Sala (18 July 1910 – 26 February 2002) was a German composer and a pioneer of electronic music. He played an instrument called the Trautonium, an early form of electronic synthesizer. Early life Sala was born in Greiz, Thuringia, Germany ...

continued to work on it independently. In 1933, he joined the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

, which later became the SA. Trautwein started working at the Image and Sound Academy BIKLA in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...

in 1949, but it quickly closed down. Subsequently, Trautwein went to the Düsseldorf Conservatory (now the Robert Schumann Hochschule) with his students and established the foundation for a degree in audio and video technology that still exists today. Another musical instrument, the electronic

Monochord A monochord, also known as sonometer (see below), is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument, involving one (mono-) string ( chord). The term ''monochord'' is sometimes used as the class-name for any musical stringed instrument h ...

, was developed in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

in 1952 as a further development of the

and allowed dynamic variations in the shape of the sound envelope.

Literature

* German Biographical Encyclopedia (DBE) * Peter Donhauser: ''Electrical Sound Machines.'' Böhlau, Vienna 2007 * Helge Dvorak: ''Biographical Encyclopedia of the German Fraternity.'' Volume II: ''Artists.'' Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5Suche/9783825368135
pp. 690–692.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Trautwein, Friedrich 1888 births 1956 deaths 20th-century German engineers