I have in my possession, for several years now, what looks to me to be
an original Concert Zither, manufactured by the 'Zither & Saitenfabrik
von Johann Jobst' in Graz, Sporgasse, according to its label.

It's a beautiful instrument, with 5 melody and 37 accompanying strings.
All the strings are of the wound variety, except for the first two
melody strings.  The melody strings can be tuned and are strung over
a fretted 'board' which is attached to the top of the sound box.  There
is lots of banding and other inlays made of ivory.

There is a highly incised silver plate covering the tuning machines
which also shows a number, possibly serial number, and the name of the
maker or manufacturer, 'Joh. Jobst i. Graz'.

Some of us may remember the movie, "The Third Man", starring Orson
Wells, in which background music was provided by Anton Karas, who
masterly played the concert zither like nobody else.

I had the good fortune to listen to his playing in person in his
cafe-restaurant in Vienna, called "The Third Man".  As an aside, I
should mention that soon after the movie came out there  were at least
seven such establishments, all claiming to be the original one (for
tourists, of course).  This is how I obtained this instrument:

While visiting an antique show in the middle 'eighties in a shopping
mall in Cleveland, and as usual I was asking around for anything
related to mechanical music, one of the dealers pointed to a man
standing a few yards away who, according to this dealer, was trying to
sell an 'autoharp' to him.  He was not interested and suggested I take
a look at it.

I did and bought this 'autoharp', which I immediately recognized to be
a zither.  I could not understand the seller very well because he
haltingly spoke in a language I did not know but was interspersed with
a few German words.

I offered him some money by showing him a few bills.  He quickly
grabbed the money and before I had a chance to ask some questions he
was gone.

When I inspected the zither the following day, I realized that this was
not just the average run-of-the-mill, mass produced instrument and
wondered what its history was.  The more I thought about it, the more
I became concerned that this instrument might have been stolen from
somewhere.

I contacted the police department and expressed my concerns.  They
claimed to have no report of any such theft, but would contact me if
one came in.  I did not hear from them again.

I am presently 'down sizing' my inventory of mechanical music related
items, or at least am trying to.  (Boy, is that hard!)  So, this zither
came to my attention again and I still wonder if it could have been a
stolen item.  So, I am asking hereby if any of the MMD readers
recognizes this Concert Zither from my description and can associate
it with a possible theft of which they may have knowledge.  If so,
I will be happy to arrange for its return.

I purposely omitted mentioning the (serial) number and some other
details for obvious reasons.  Please contact me if you have any info.

Albert de Boer
Hawaii