Background
Harry Wahl was the grandson of Vyborg-based industrialist Paul Wahl (1797–1872).
Harry Wahl was the grandson of Vyborg-based industrialist Paul Wahl (1797–1872).
The Wahl family had made its fortune by various businesses, many of which were connected to the construction of the Saimaa Canal around the 1850s. In the 1930s, Harry Wahl owned one of the most significant collections of violins and other string instruments in Europe, including several made by Antonio Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati. When the Russians occupied Vyborg in 1940, the Wahl family secured 32 of the best instruments in their possession while the rest were left with the Russians.
Harry Wahl died the same year 1940, and most of his wealth, real estate in the Vyborg area, had to be left behind as his family evacuated to Finland.
There, they had to sell the instruments at low prices to start new lives, and the collection was spread around the world. One of the violins, a 1702 Stradivarius called the Irish, was auctioned in Japan in 1986 and purchased by the Finnish Pohjola Bank Art Foundation, and is now the only violin in Harry Wahl’s original collection located in Finland.