Karl Rönisch is a

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

manufacturer in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. The owner Karl Moritz Hermann Rönisch was awarded an imperial and

royal warrant of appointment Royal warrants of appointment have been issued for centuries to tradespeople who supply goods or services to a royal court or certain royal personages. The royal warrant enables the supplier to advertise the fact that they supply to the issuer of ...

to the court of

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

. The company exported to Russia and, to avoid high tariffs, built a factory in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

in 1897, parts for which were still manufactured in Dresden, in the main factory. In 1918, Hermann Rönisch, the son of the company's founder, sold the "Carl Rönisch Hof-Pianofabrik" to Ludwig Hupfeld AG in Leipzig after his grandson, who had been designated as his successor, had been killed in the First World War. He had been associated with Ludwig Hupfeld as a business partner since 1902. In 2009, the company merged with

Blüthner Julius Blüthner Pianofortefabrik GmbH, is a piano-manufacturing company in Leipzig, Germany.

and the production was moved to Blüthner factory in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

, Germany. In 1945, most of Rönisch's main factory in Dresden's Innere Neustadt fell victim to the air raids on Dresden. Since 1948, instruments bearing the Rönisch brand name have been built at the "Leipziger Pianofortefabrik", the main factory of Ludwig Hupfeld AG in the Böhlitz-Ehrenberg district of Leipzig.

Current grand piano models

Current upright piano models

References

External links

Official homepage of Karl Rönisch
Manufacturing companies based in Dresden Piano manufacturing companies of Germany Purveyors to the Imperial and Royal Court Piano makers German brands {{germany-company-stub