Our history

In 1902 the brothers separated, and Gustav retired to Vienna. Otto Franz Rieger (1880-1920) - of the third generation - ran the business alone from 1903.
The company was now so efficient that up to 90 instruments could be delivered per year. The basis for this was a sophisticated construction system that enabled cost-effective production, despite the instruments’ meeting all quality requirements. At the same time there was a breakthrough in the construction of large concert hall organs.

From 1936, the next generation of the Glatter-Götz family joined the company. Egon (1911–1940) and Joseph Glatter-Götz Jr. (1914–1989) undertook technical and academic studies in Breslau and Berlin to supplement their training in their own company.

At this time, in addition to pneumatic actions, electrical systems were often built, and the tonal requirements of the Romantic organ were adapted to suit customer requirements in favour of classical ideas.

With the establishment of further branches in Scandinavia, Poland and Austria, new markets were opened up, overseas exports intensified, and in 1926 another fully-fledged organ building site was built near the parent company in German-Polish Mocker.

Austria’s political merger with the German Reich initially brought a further upswing, but organ building came to a standstill as early as 1942 due to the war.

By then, the opus numbers had long since exceeded 3000, and with up to 200 employees, Rieger was one of the largest organ building companies of the time.

Joseph Glatter-Götz (Junior) had already started designing and building small mechanical slider chest organs in 1936, which could now form the intellectual foundation for further development.

However, it was only participation in the 1949 trade fair in Dornbirn/Vorarlberg that brought the decisive breakthrough. Famous musicians like Hindemith and Karajan now became aware of Rieger. The first exports to the USA were achieved with instruments ranging from four to 21 registers. This success was followed by Germany, later Switzerland and finally Austria. The share of exports overseas rose continuously as a result.

Joseph Glatter-Götz (Junior) enriched post-war organ building not only through significant technical improvements (actions, combination systems, pallets, double stop-actions in 1965, electronic combination systems in 1968). He was also one of the few organ builders of this time who consistently found stylistically meaningful solutions for organ case designs.

The extremely simple workshops, scattered throughout the village of Schwarzach, were finally combined into a spacious new workshop building in 1972. After an extensive restructuring of the company in 1993, the building housing the company headquarters was repeatedly expanded and the equipment improved in the following years.

Ten years later, in 2003, there was a generational change at Rieger Orgelbau in Schwarzach. Wendelin Eberle (* 1963), who had been with the company since 1978, took over the overall responsibility with 38 employees at that time. In the meantime, the workforce has grown to over 60 people from all over the world. One reason for this increase in personnel is the endeavour to produce as many details of an organ as possible in-house, as well as the permanent establishment of an in-house restoration department.

Due to a clearly changed prioritisation of sound and stylistic characteristics as well as technical novelties that benefit the immediate artistic practice (proportional action and stop action, quarter-tone piano, adjustable wind pressure, etc.), organ building as a whole received innovative impulses from Wendelin Eberle and his competent team, which can be seen in numerous outstanding instruments of the last twenty years - representative of all - especially in renowned concert hall instruments or cathedral organs.