Georg Ottensteiner

Johann Georg Ottensteiner (Füssen, 1815 – Munich, 1879) was a German wind instrument maker who worked between France and Bavaria in the second half of the nineteenth century.

He trained in the workshop of Karl Friedrich Adler in Bamberg between 1837 and 1838, and then spent a decade in Paris in contact with makers such as Sax and Triébert; it is not known with certainty whether he ever worked in their workshops. After the Revolution of 1848 he returned briefly to Füssen, and in 1851 he settled in Munich, where he obtained licences to manufacture woodwinds and brass. In 1860 he was appointed official supplier to the Bavarian court.

In 1867, when the Munich court orchestra adopted the Parisian pitch (a' = 435), he supplied most of its new instruments, which were heard in many Wagner productions. Among his models the most notable are the "Baermann-Ottensteiner" clarinet, the "Munich" oboe and a bass clarinet patented in 1869. His instruments were played by Baermann, Richard Mühlfeld and Franz Strauss.

He was the first German maker to build Boehm-system clarinets and saxhorns, and he sought to combine the traditions of both countries. He is remembered as a pioneer of the industrial manufacture of wind instruments in Germany.