Lothar Meisel
(1929-2011)
Inducted 2011
Lothar Meisel was born in Klingenthal, Germany. Lothar had wanted to become a forester growing up, but because of the war he had to give up that dream and became a violin maker. He was the ninth-generation of an unbroken line of father-passing-to-son in the craft of violin making. In January of 1949 he escaped from East Germany and later worked in Birmingham, England where his parents joined him after their escape in 1952. The family moved to Owatonna, Minnesota in 1957 where Lothar started his own business, Meisel Violins.
