Unhappy Hearts

Prosperous German piano tycoons once battened on the parents of flaxen-haired fraeuleins. Each apple-cheeked Lorelei of 1914, required, as her minimum working equipment, a revolving stool, a well-tuned upright, and hundreds of sheets of such saccharine music as Die Ungluecklichen Herzen (The Unhappy Hearts). Last week a survey of the German piano business showed how strikingly frauleins and times have changed.

Of the 300 old established piano factories nearly all are running part time, with thousands of skilled workmen laid off or reduced to making radios. Four years ago the British Isles were buying 22,000 German pianos annually. With the enactment of the McKenna tariff that figure has fallen to a mere 1500 in 1928. Similar tariff enactments by other countries have cut German piano exports from 76,400 in 1913, to 30,000 in 1928.

Even more disheartening is the fact that today the German piano tycoons stand clearly defeated, after a two-year battle with "sales resistance" in Germany itself. The offensive began in 1926. Only 45,000 pianos had been sold to Germans in 1926, as against 60,000 in other years. The tycoons were scared. Therefore they organized an "American Campaign" of high-pressure salesmanship, something unprecedented in the Reich. Salesmen rambled through the countryside with trucks full of pianos, selling and delivering on the spot, selling on credit, shouting, pleading, browbeating. . . .

Presto! High-pressure sold 60,000 pianos in 1927. So-called "American Methods" seemed triumphantly vindicated --until they were tried out a second year. Last week's survey showed that Germans bought only some 28,000 pianos in 1928.

From Stuttgart to Munich and from Bremen to Berlin, piano salesmen are talking with ungluechen herzen, about "the saturation point."