Brass post horn – ZIMMERMANN, Jul. Heinr.

Brasswind

This brass post horn was made by the Julius Heinrich ZIMMERMANN (1851-1922) company. Zimmermann was an extremely successful entrepreneur in the manufacture of musical instruments and also publishing.  He had branches of his company in St. Petersburg, Moscow, London, Riga and Leipzig.

This particular instrument is stamped ‘LEIPZIG’, where he set up his business in 1886. We can date it to around the end of the nineteenth century. This German post horn is made of brass with circular coils. Its mouthpiece is also crafted in brass. It features an open tone-hole, known as a Quartloch [fourth hole], which was used to transpose all notes of the natural scale a fourth higher.

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Post horn

A post horn is a valveless cylindrical brass instrument with a cupped mouthpiece. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, stage coaches were used to carry letters and parcels. People were also transported and had to endure extremely bumpy rides and often accidents. Along each route or road, there were stations or ‘stages’ where the stagecoaches stopped.

The postillion was the person who guided the horse-drawn coach while actually mounted on the horse or pair of horses. A coachman would control the horse from the actual vehicle itself.
They blew the post horns to announce their arrival at or departure from postal stations. This meant that everything could be ready for when they arrived, including for example, a change of horses. They went into disuse with the modernisation of postal systems. Yet the post horn remains a symbol of mail systems in many countries, including Germany with the Deutsche Post for example.