Horn-u-Copia's Display of Makers

1857 - The Heber Workshop was a small workshop for orchestral brass instruments, founded by Carl August Heber (4/28/1831-5/31/1914) in Markneukirchen/Germany. Carl August was succeeded by Richard Oskar Heber (4/11/1872-9/28/1938), who invented the Normaphon, followed by Richard Rudolf Heber (3/11/1901-11//05/1965) and Rudolf Wolfgang Heber (born 1934).

The workshop in Markneukirchen existed until 1938. But due to a worldwide economic crisis, they did not build as many instruments after 1930. The workshop closed due to the death of Richard Oskar Heber. His son Richard Rudolph Heber, switched to running a sewery. After World War II, rather than return to Markneukirchen, he reopened the workshop in Oldenburg in 1948, along with two other instrument builders from Markneukirchen, Alfred Hammig (bows) and Martin Kessler (guitars). First, he concentrated in building accordions, but in 1960 he started building brass instruments again together with his son Rudolf Wolfgang Heber.

"Norma" was a style of brass instruments, produced by Richard Oskar Heber approximately between 1900 and 1935. During the Roaring Twenties, the Saxophone was extremely popular. Due to the lack of good saxophone players, Richard Oskar invented the Normaphon - a hybrid between the Saxophone and the Trumpet. Roughly 100 instruments of this kind were built approximately from 1924- 1930, and were distributed through wholesalers such as C.A. Wunderlich in Siebenbrunn, R.O. Adler in Markneukirchen and Ammon Glaser in Erlbach. It was very common at that time at Markneukirchen to stencil. There were four sizes of the instrument (specials possible), but most of the approximately 100 Normaphones were build as Tenors.¹

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