Can anyone help identy this machine

[rgordon939]

Can anyone help identy this machine.

Rich Gordon

[Lucius1958]

Looks like a typical piano-orchestrion of the 1900s - made in Prague, if I read the banner right...

Bill

[Sidewinder]

Sorry, I just translated with google

Diego Fuchs was one of the founders of the mechanical music / gramophone industry in Czechoslovakia. Diego Fuchs who was murdered 75 years ago in Terezín on November 7.

The District Governor of Roudnice nad Labem issued a permit to transport the deceased Diego Fuchs on November 10, 1941 so that his remains could be transported from the Gestapo Prison to the Terezín Small Fortress to the New Jewish Cemetery in Strašnice, Prague. According to official Nazi documentation, Diego Fuchs died on Friday, November 7, 1941, of heart failure. A similar "heart problem" affected his son Joseph eight days later at the Small Fortress.

Only in the post-war trial with Heinrich Jöckel, then a prisoner of war, was it shown that Jöckel "killed his prisoner Fuchs and his son with his fists in the head". Jöckel and some of his subordinates, among whom is probably the most well-known Anton Mallot (convicted for his actions in 2001), were exploited in the extreme brutal treatment of Jewish prisoners.

The information about the events in 1941 is complicated, as few have survived a long crime, but the brutal thrashing of the prisoners, their forced roll-out before a moving car, buried in the snow. The consequences of these "games" were often fatal. According to other testimonies, the sadist Jöckel had his method of hand-murdering prisoners. He knocked a man down on the ground with a blow to the back of his neck to let him down on his ligament or jump through his chest.


Just days before the first transport from Prague to Terezin is dispatched, Diego Fuchs travels in a double coffin in the opposite direction to be buried in the parents' tomb. There is no information about the funeral process but is recorded in the funeral book.


Diego Fuchs was one of the first Czech music merchant, who has made a significant contribution to the development of the recording industry in the Czech lands, today reminds only the tiny letters of his name written on the bottom of Vojtěch and Eleonora Fuchs tombstone. He is known only a narrow circle of collectors of old shellac records, gramophones and orchestrions.

One reason for this oblivion is the fact that within a few months, the Nazis murdered the entire male population of the business class. Diego and Joseph were beaten at the Small Fortress, Otakar's son was shot dead on Jan. 5, 1942, in the concentration camp of Mauthausen. Wife of Stephen Fuchs died of "natural causes" at home on December 11, 1941, but with regard to her low age, commencement of transport, death, and imprisonment of family members, her departure probably was not natural.

It is only possible to speculate on why Diego Fuchs and his sons were arrested by the Gestapo. There is a possibility that the former owner of the company, which also sold radio components, could be connected or associated with the resistance. Another possibility is his pre-war activity in the Union of Czech Jews, which criticized Nazi Germany. According to relatives, the reason was the imprisonment of property. The Gestapo might have favored the apartment where Fuchs lived, which was only a few blocks from Prague's Pecherna.

[Sidewinder]

Some more on the phonograph side (Fuchs is German for FOX)

Here link to the excellent article in full. Brilliant piece of research by Tomáš Jelínek & Gabriel Gösselk

http://ceskapozice.lidovky.cz/diego-fuc ... -tema_lube

[audiophile102]

The orchestrion is interesting by its self. Add the history of the company and it really is something special.

[JacksonDo]

It looks like a giant music box.