Luthier’s workshop Benedykt Niewczyk
‘It was my great-grandfather Franciszek who started the luthier tradition in our family. It was already during the Partitions of Poland. In 1885.’
Franciszek belonged to Polish national organisations. Because of this, Prussian authorities, which ruled in Poznan, ordered him to leave the annexed land. At the beginning of the 20th century, he moved his luthier’s workshop to Lviv. There he turned it into a modern factory producing musical instruments. Advertisements said that it even had electricity. The fact that ‘commissions came from various orchestras which were fully-equipped with [Franciszek’s] instruments’ proves the scale of the enterprise.
The factory in Lviv was closed down when Franciszek died in 1945. However, his son Stanisław opened a branch of the factory in Bydgoszcz already before the Second World War. In 1936 he moved his workshop to Poznan where it is still today. Then Stanisław’s son Stefan took it over from him. Today it is run by Stefan’s son, Benedykt.
