Wappen Style Mandoline (made in Bravaria )

[Renny]

Need to discover the builder of this Mandolin if Markneukirchen luthiers

[Manfred Hacker]

Renny, something in your query doesn't match:
Markneukirchen is a town in the German state of Saxony (former East Germany)

[billhay4]

I read this that he was asking if this might have been built by one of the luthiers in Markneukirchen, and, if so, who.
Bill

[Manfred Hacker]

And I read that this was made in Bravaria [sic], which would rule out a luthier in Markneukirchen ...:confused:

[Graham McDonald]

Need to discover the builder of this Mandolin if Markneukirchen luthiers

You could always look at the label, which seems quite visible through the sound hole.

[Graham McDonald]

Here are a couple of pics of a very similar instrument, with images from a German eBay sale in 2013. The eBay listing dated it as 1930s but it looks a bit too clean for that. It looks like the same label from what I can see in your photo. Musik Jerusalem is or was in business until fairly recently, as they did have a website www.musik-jerusalem.de which didn't seem to work for me. Markneukirchen and the region seems to have worked a bit like Chicago with a few big factories, some smaller manufacturers and a number of distributors who would put their own labels on them or supply instruments labeled for the retailer (which this might be). Aachen is also a long way from Bavaria, west of Cologne on the German/Belgian border.


148783

[houseworker]

If I were going to hazard a guess, I'd go for Hora as the builder, a long-established Romanian company who make a vast range of 'ethnic' string instruments for the European market. They'll happily produce small batches of specific instruments to order for distributors or individual retailers.

I agree that neither of these instruments look to have any significant age.

[houseworker]

Here's the original eBay listing (http://www.ebay.com/itm/mandolin-/122068110015?rmvSB=true&nma=true&si=nvYx9FF7HIjKGxFtJKnOltZPTYY%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557) for this instrument (which completed the day before the OP opened the thread). The pictures with the listing are much better than the OP's. The mandolin has clearly had some use, but it still doesn't look what I'd call old.

Musikhaus Jerusalem was a retailer. The website was certainly down by 2009 but is in the internet archive (http://web.archive.org/web/20010306003624/http://www.musik-jerusalem.de/index.htm) from 2004, not that I found it any use.

There are quite a few of these instruments about including a second variant with cats eyes. Most look nearly new, come in recent cases, and have the same slightly crude splice where the headstock joins the neck. It was that detail that made me think that Hora was the builder.