Round Top, Texas – 1997 Restoration of pipes and keyboard from the Traugott Wandke Organ

When the Berlin wall came down, he left his East German home and traveled all other Europe installing and restoring pipe organs. Eventually, he came to America and now to Round Top.

His name is Friedemann Buschbeck and he is an organ Builder and restorer. He is engaged in a series of organ restorations at the Festival-Institute at Round Top and during our interview, was completing a restoration of the Wandke organ in the Bethlehem Lutheran Church.

The Wandke organ was built by a German immigrant named Traugott Wandke who moved to Round Top in the 1860's. It is made entirely of native cedar and is a registered State historical Treasure. It was built in a stone Workshop that is now the Herb Haus at the Round Top Inn.

It is a long Standing claim in Round Top that Mr. Wandke credited the first organs made in Texas.

Friedemann has been involved in a number of projects at the Festival-Institute, including the restoration of a beautiful Henry Erben organ in the newly restored Edythe Bates Old Chapel. I asked him if he was done at Festival Hill?

"No, after I finish this organ, I rebuild the other Wandke organ that he built first. It has just three wooden stops. It is now at Festival Hill. They got it from Otto Hoffman. He is an organ builder in Austin. It's supposed to be Wandke's first organ."

Friedemann showed me that the pipes on the Bethlehem Lutheran Church organ were dated 1867. The one he had to restore at Festival Hill was dated 1864.

I told him that we say in Round Top that the Wandke or­gans are the first organs made in Texas and asked if he thought that was true.

"It could be." he replied sheepishly. "I'm supposed to say it's the first organ. But...there are older cities than Round Top in Texas. Maybe none of those organs arrived in Texas." he laughed. I explained that we have a great affection in Round Top for hyperbole and that we would deny it if we find evidence that we are wrong.

Friedemann spends a lot of time away from home. I asked him what place he called home. "My home is now America," he answered "but it is not so exactly located where I live... I came three years ago to this country from Dresden, Germany."

I asked him to describe what he did for a living. "Restoration of organs." he replied. "The last three years of my organ building career in Germany, I worked for a company that specialized in restorations." He pointed to the Wandke organ. "For this instrument especially, it means that we leave everything like it is or how it was built and we are not trying to make it better.

"When I came to this organ and saw it, I thought 'This is really wonderful. It... looks so great that we really should preserve it so everybody can see how old the instrument is.'"

 I asked how he learned his trade and he told me that he had first been a carpenter but had decided it was not a sufficient challenge. "I always liked to do something with music" he said " and I am not such an excellent player, so I thought maybe it was better to build something. I was fascinated with that idea...to build something with wood that made a sound."

He learned organ building in Dresden while working in an apprenticeship program that lasted for three years, then went to work for a company in Germany that built organs. Then, he moved to America and while working in upstate New York on a little Johnson Organ the Txas musician Susan Ferre heard of his work. She planed to donated an English chamber organ to the Festival Institute.

“She ask me if I would be avelibel to move the instrument. When I said yes … she said ´take the organ to Festival Hill.” When I arrived in the evening and was driving through Carmin, I saw the street sign still labeld “Hauptstrasse”.  “I thought that´s good. Then I came to Festival Hill and I liked so much the place. I was sitting in Dorothy Dicks kitchen and everything lookd like so much home … like the German countryside. I liked the people and the people liked me and they ask me to do some more work.”

 Round Top´s background is very interesting to Friedemann. “This church … is built by a German mason who came from the same town where my father was born.

“there´s no problem for me to feel like home. The people are so friendly. It remindes me a little of East Germany.

I ask him about his work at the Festival Institute. My biggest project was the installation of the Henry Erben organ for the chapel. It was a lot of fun to do this because Erben was an excellent builder. He built the organ in 1835 and the instrument looks and sounds beautiful. “It was totally dismantled and in boxes.There were no drawings or photograps, so I had to figure out everything.”

The builder Wandke of the cedar organ in Bethlehem Lutheran Church was an unusual man. In addition to being an organ builder, he was also known as an herbalist and according to some reports, a magician.

There is a story in the folk lore of Round Top, that when Traugott Wandke was building the organ in the church, he would memorize a note made by the small organ in his work shop and carry it by humming to himself all the way to the church and thus, tune the new organ.

It is said that one day he fell and sprained his ankle but never lost the note. I asked Friedemann what he though about the story and he replied "I don't believe so much of this...but he was quite an interesting character. He also wrote songs for the church. He came with a lot of organ information and documentation to Round Top. He had a description from a big cathedral organ in Görlitz and another one in Merseburg.

If you see the instrument, you know that it must have been somebody trained or maybe he was a good carpenter...but with the circum­stances here in Round Top, he might have had some problems."

Friedemann told me that the Wandke organs were the first he had ever seen made of cedar, "...but there is a small tradition of organs with just wooden pipes. There is a famous organ (with wooden pipes) in... Denmark... built in 1611 that still plays without any major restoration."

I asked what special challenges he had faced in the restoration of the Wandke organ and he replied. "I just want to bring it to the condition that it had when it was built. The only problem is that our expectations to organ music are based more on baroque music and baroque organs, so we expect more fresh and clear sounds.

"This organ was just made in the 19th century out of organ traditions where you have a lot of soft stops... and so Wandke used these traditions. Now I just clean the pipes up to speak as clearly as we can so somebody downstairs can hear something."

I told him that we had been able to hear something before it was restored but it wasn't something we especially wanted to hear.

"That was because  you couldn't tune it. All of the tuning (mechanism) was gone. So that will be a change that the organ is in tune again. It was lucky for me to find an organ entirely of wood pipes. I get the idea now to build for me, an organ with wood pipes. So, Friedemann gave something to Round Top... and Round Top gave something back.

Winter 1997-1998