I am deeply saddened to report the passing of Franz Oehrlein during
the night of the past Monday to Tuesday.  He was a honorary member of
the German GSM Society.

Very early Franz began to build barrel organs with moving scenes in the
front, telling a little story like Ignaz Bruder's organs did it in the
19th century.  Later he earned a reputation among collectors when he
developed his famous musician automata.

To obtain most manlike movements of the automated figures he studied
anatomy and worked together with professors of the high school of arts at
Mainz [Kunsthochschule Mainz], where he lived.  Franz even experimented
for days and weeks with different make-ups for either the organ player or
the elegant white-dressed flute-player playing a duet with a bird on
a balustrade.

Those who met him in his workshop will never forget the shelves filled
with most different dummies of heads, hands, arms and legs in the
function of finding the final result or giving him an inspiration for
a new automated figure.

He always built the automata in a very limited edition, most of them
only four times.  During the last years he destroyed all his prototypes,
small experimental scenes and tools to avoid that anyone else after him
could build again more of his automata.  We will keep Franz in our
memory.

Hans Schmitz
Stuttgart, Germany