U.S. Operations
The Hohner family long retained both ownership and management of the business, control passing from father to son(s). For its international subsidiaries, control usually was delegated to brothers, sons, or nephews. As with a nation, when a corporation is ruled by a "royal family," the capabilities and imagination of the people in charge may fluctuate significantly.
The U.S. distributor, M. Hohner, Inc., originally was headquartered in Manhattan. It did not manufacture instruments, but it imported and warehoused them, supplied them to dealers, advertised them (via print ads, and also by sponsoring public events and harmonica competitions), and it maintained connections with community organizations that might link the business to customers, especially scouting. For a while, it also sponsored a weekly network radio broadcast of a harmonica band.
Harmonicas were affordable and portable. Hohner's advertising told young men that harmonica playing would enhance their love life. Adolescents and boys were told that being able to play would make them the life of any party - nothing was said, however, about what to do when you turned up at a party and found that another boy (or perhaps even everyone at the party) had brought along a harmonica.
New York Daily News, June 5, 1923
New York Daily News, December 5, 1937
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As Nazi Germany prepared for World War II, it redirected some of Hohner's production line to manufacture detonators for ordnance - but curiously, the company was permitted to continue the make harmonicas, albeit at a reduced rate. Obviously, the war interrupted the flow of Hohner's instruments into most countries.
After the war, with Germany divided, the Trossingen plant benefited from being in West Germany. It had relatively few difficulties increasing production, but the recent war made overseas sales awkward in nations that had fought against the Axis. American news media were reluctant to carry advertisements for West German products; they thought that American consumers needed time to buy into the idea that West Germans now were allies of the U.S. in the Cold War. Although Hohner resumed selling harmonicas to professional American musicians, it waited until late 1964 before it felt the country was ready for a new consumer advertising campaign.
The lack of post-war advertising makes it difficult to confirm just when M. Hohner, Inc. left New York City for Hicksville; I have seen the year given in different sources as 1958 and as 1960. Why did it relocate? Hohner's business profile at Encyclopedia.com indicates that the move was made simply because "cost of doing business [there] was much lower." An unspoken secondary factor may have been that the ranking Mr. Hohner of early 1950s lived in Oyster Bay.
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