Jürgen Ahrend's organ in the Deutsches Museum
08.08.2025,
In 1994, the Deutsches Museum was able to persuade the well-known organ builder and restorer Jürgen Ahrend from Leer to build an organ for its musical instrument exhibition. The aim was to show the construction method and the sound ideal of Johann Sebastian Bach's time and to provide a special insight into how the organ works. The organ was inaugurated in 1995. Since then, it has been heard in countless guided tours, concerts and workshops.
Jürgen Ahrend's organ is not only an outstanding musical instrument, which he built based on North German models from the Baroque period, but also a museum instrument that visualises the complex structure of an organ from this period:
The pedal pipes rise high behind the organ case – otherwise they are usually hidden in the case. The movement of the loops, which ensure that the wind can flow into the pipes, can also be seen. Removable parts also allow a view of the wave board and the abstracts. And since 2023, there has been a visible wind system with two wedge bellows, which shows that nothing works in an organ without wind and what full-bodied playing with many stops does.
In this way, various aspects of organs from Bach's time can be experienced on one instrument.
Bach and his pioneers
Margareta Hürholz will perform works by Bach, Buxtehude, Reincken, Frescobaldi, de Grigny and Vivaldi on the Ahrend organ in her concert on 15 November at 2:30 pm.
