The Gundolf family since 1967

A chronology in the family's own words

Everything in this guide about the family's history comes from the family's own pages and from Innsbruck's tourist board, and it is worth reading that way. The family's chronology begins in 1773, when it says the mountain farmer and musician Franz Gundolf founded the first village brass band in Häselgehr in the Lech Valley. It says his grandson Franz Paulo Gundolf was born in 1869, built his own zither and sang and played in an Innsbruck guesthouse in the evenings. The chronology presents the family as musicians for many generations before the stage show began.

Kurt Gundolf and the bells

The chronology says Franz Paulo's son Kurt was born in 1905, and that Franz Paulo and his wife Rudolfine had eight children, all able to play several instruments. Kurt became a bell founder, where it says his musical ear helped him tune bells, and for 25 years he was soloist on the flügelhorn with the Innsbruck city brass band, the Wiltener Stadtkapelle. In 1950, it says, Kurt and his brothers Otto, Erich and Oskar formed the Gundolf band. The family describes the whole household as musical, with all eight children able to play numerous instruments and to perform at shows and festivals as well as at home.

1967: the Alpenbühne

The family says Kurt's sons Franz, Konrad and Ernst founded the present Alpenbühne Geschwister Gundolf in 1967, and that with their father and the sisters Fini and Edith they performed as a family ensemble at the historic Stiftskeller in Innsbruck. The ticket page and Innsbruck's tourist board both date the evenings to 1967. The family says the group grew with first-class singers, musicians and dancers performing at many locations in the city.

Touring from 1971

According to the family, invitations from 1971 took the Gundolf family abroad, with tours through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Holland, Sweden and Denmark, followed by trips to South Africa, the United States, Canada, the USSR, Egypt, Japan and Korea. It adds that the family has appeared on radio and television in many countries, which is why it calls itself musical ambassadors of Innsbruck and Tyrol, a phrase repeated on the ticket page. The chronology lists the cities it played, from Cape Town and Cairo to New York, Tokyo and Seoul.

What the family says about its standing

The family's chronology says that in 1985 the institute of traditional folk music in Innsbruck confirmed its Tyrolean evenings as true to the tradition and rated the programme culturally valuable, and that in 2007 Ernst Gundolf received a golden medal for special merits from Innsbruck's tourist board on behalf of the family. These are the family's own statements, so read them as claims by the family rather than as an independent verdict.

From the Stiftskeller to the Alpensaal

The chronology says the family built the venue Sandwirt am Inn in Innsbruck in 1989, sold the restaurant in 2018 and, after a transitional period, found a new home in the former exhibition hall at Messe Innsbruck. It says the Tyrolean evenings would take place in the new Alpensaal from the 2020 summer season, and the family's page now says it performs exclusively there. Photographs of the family on Wikimedia Commons from 2015 therefore show it before that move.

The third generation

The family says it celebrated 50 years of the Alpenbühne Geschwister Gundolf in 2017, with the musical tradition carried on by the third generation as a family business. A reviewer on the ticket page noticed the generations on stage, and the family says it preserves a piece of popular culture. The programme itself is the best evidence of what that means in practice, and the guide to the Tyrolean evening describes it half by half.

Read next: Tyrolean evening in Innsbruck