It is appropriate that the Schulze family shared the Thuringia area of Germany with Johann Sebastian Bach, missing out on being contemporaries by no more than a whisker. J.S.B. died in 1750, while Johann Andreas Schulze was born three years later, to become a renowned organ builder in the area. He was succeeded by his son, Johann Friedrich in 1806. It seems that J.F.S. took the art he had inherited and expanded the horizons by studying acoustics, and associating with Gottlob Tõpfer, professor of music and organist of Weimar, a position not exactly unknown by Bach himself. J.F.Schulze moved from Milbitz to the neighbouring village of Paulinzelle, (now Paulinzella) in 1826, where he set up house and workshops for what was becoming one of the most renowned organ building firms in Europe. He was well known by Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg who was shortly to get his under the table of the British throne. It was natural that Albert, setting up his Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851 should think of Schulze when it came to providing an organ for Crystal Palace, after which the name Schulze became the musical flavour of the gentry, especially 'oop north', in Lancashire and Yorkshire, where the brass was.
