The New World – Steinway & Sons | Crises

Steinway & Sons quickly grew into one of the world's leading piano manufacturers after its foundation in 1853. The company name stands for highest quality until today.

Like many longstanding enterprises, Steinway & Sons had to weather frequent crises along the current affairs. In the slipstream of technical achievements, the culture of amusement increasingly changed after 1900: Often, people would rather enjoy the cinema or records and gramophones, than sitting down at the piano. And as of 1929, the Global Depression hit. At times, production was almost completely shut down and over a thousand employees lost their jobs or were only hired on an hourly basis. Henry Z. Steinway, (1915–2008), last president of the Steinway family, recalls that

„most of the temporarily dismissed workers got jobs as taxi drivers. When something was going on in the factory, several cabs were parked behind the plant. The workers came by and worked for an hour or two on a piecework basis. They took an instrument, adjusted the mechanics or polished the varnish, then returned to their cabs and drove off.”

Just when the market started to recover, WWII broke out. The materials needed for piano making, such as copper, iron, brass and felt, were rationed; Steinway & Sons now produced wooden cargo gliders for the US army instead of instruments – and coffins. An exception was the field piano, the so-called “Victory Vertical”, which was delivered to the American forces. On the other side of the Atlantic, in Hamburg, the factory was declared enemy asset, and was assigned to build armaments for the Third Reich. After the war, the Hamburg branch was transferred back to the Steinway family. However, as in New York, production was slow to restart.