It dawned on me over the weekend that, having been made in 1934 in Leipzig, my beautiful Blüthner was a piece of Nazi memorabilia. This worried me enough to do a bit of googling and I am glad I did. My mind is set at ease.
In other words, Blüthner was a company with a predilection for social good long before that term, as now used, was even a term. With a little more research–and, let it be said, things on the Internet do wait patiently to be found–I came across another extraordinary story in a 2010 feature about the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust:
It [the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust] will … showcase a Blüthner piano that belonged to Alfred Sendrey, a Jewish conductor born in Budapest who achieved renown worldwide in the early 20th century. He led the Radio Berlin Orchestra and the Radio Leipzig Orchestra when the Nazis came to power.
When Sendrey left Germany, the 6-foot-4-inch-long grand piano stayed behind. “He thought he’d never see his Blüthner again,” said Helga Kasimoff, who owns and operates the Kasimoff-Blüthner Piano Co. on North Larchmont Boulevard in Los Angeles, the oldest purveyor of the German pianos in the United States. But before the war, Kasimoff said, “Blüthner contacted all their Jewish customers and said that if they wanted to leave [Germany], [the Blüthner family] could be helpful picking [their piano] up, putting it in a crate and shipping it to a new address.”
After spending the war years in Paris and New York, Sendrey arrived in Los Angeles. Shortly after his arrival, Kasimoff said, “He got notice from San Pedro that his Blüthner had arrived.” The Blüthner family itself paid to transport the instrument from Europe."
From
https://www.polishookpiano.com/…/arnold-schoenberg-pianos-…/
It therefore represents the Spirit of Liberation and is in itself a beacon. Suck on that, Nazi scum!
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As a footnote to the above, as my piano was manufactured in 1934, there is quite a strong chance that it was itself a refugee from the Nazis. I asked Marcus Roberts of Roberts Pianos about its history, but he was reasonably circumspect, saying that they bought it privately after the owner's death. It isn't difficult to ascertain that it has been resting, unused, for a very long time. It seems to have its original action, wrest plank etc. and the case is in lovely condition. Roberts French polished it to restore it to its former glory. The original photos on the Roberts website show it in a very faded and sun-bleached state, but otherwise it's fine.
Edit: just checked. Serial number 118939 which, according to the Blüthner website, makes my piano a 1935 job. I also discovered that the Nazis commandeered their factory to make munitions boxes during the war.
