Hans Goltfuss

Hans Goltfuss was one of the leading organ builders of the southern Netherlands in the seventeenth century, a figure positioned between the Flemish tradition and the German techniques that were beginning to spread through Brabant. He was born in Cologne around 1595 or 1596 and died in Antwerp in November 1658, although his date of birth is not known with certainty.

He trained as an apprentice to the organ builder Floris Hocque, whose most distinguished pupil he became. He lived in Antwerp until 1642, when he moved to Haacht, where he remained until his death. During these years he built numerous organs in the southern Netherlands, including territory in present-day Belgium. His most ambitious commission was the Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, an instrument with three manuals and forty-three stops, completed between 1642 and 1644, in which he combined Dutch, Flemish and German elements. That same year the organ for Tongerlo Abbey was built which, like the one in Rotterdam, incorporated a pedalboard of five stops, a novelty in a region where the bass parts usually depended on the main manual.

After his death, his widow married his apprentice Jan Dekens, who continued to run the workshop with the help of his brother-in-law and of Peter Goltfuss, the master's son and successor.