The ‘Ether Wave Violin’ or ‘Aetherwellengeige’ Erich Zitzmann-Zirini, Germany 1934

Aetherwellengeige
The ‘Ether Wave Violin’ or Aetherwellengeige shown here in a 1952 Film

The ‘Aetherwellengeige’ was one of many instruments inspired by Leon Termen’s Theremin using the same heterodyning principle and body capacitance to generate a variable tone from two thryatron vacuum tubes (other instruments were the Sonar (1933) , Neo Violena (1927), Electronde (1927), Emicon (1932) and Croix Sonore (1929) amongst others) . This version was built by the amateur electronic engineer and musician Erich Zitzmann-Zirini in Berlin in 1934 after he had witnessed the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra using Termen’s Theremin in 1927. Zitzmann-Zirini appeared with his instrument in the 1934 Funkausstellung ‘Orchestra of the Future’

"Sounds from the air from the self-made Ether Wave Violin"
Poster “Sounds from the air from the self-made Ether Wave Violin”

Zitzmann-Zirini used his one-off instrument as the centrepiece of his career in vaudeville, circus, radio, and TV shows, he renamed his instrument the ‘musical Sputnik’ after Gagarin’s space flight in the 1960s.


Sources:

André Ruschkowski ‘Soundscapes’, pp. 23 (1st edition, Berlin 1990)

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