Alexander Schuke Potsdam Orgelbau

The organ builder Gottlieb Heise founded the company in Potsdam in 1820, with a workshop in a courtyeard of a complex of buildings in the historic Dutch Quarter. In 1848, his pupil Carl Ludwig Gesell took over, first together with Gustav Schulz who soon founded his own workshop. His son Carl Eduard Gesell became head of the company in 1868. When he died without children in 1994, Alexander Schuke bought the company and made it one of the best-known organ building workshops in Brandenburg. When he died in 1933, his two sons, Karl Schuke and Hans-Joachim Schuke led the company jointly.

During World War II, Hans-Joachim Schuke was a Soviet prisoner of war. In 1950 the brothers decided to found a second workshop in West Berlin because of deteriorating conditions, both politically and economically, for manufacturing in the GDR. Hans-Joachim Schuke led the Potsdam section, while Karl Schuke moved to the new Karl Schuke Berliner Orgelbauwerkstatt. In 1972, the Potsdam branch became a state-owned Volkseigener Betrieb VEB Potsdamer Schuke-Orgelbau.

After German reunification, Matthias Schuke, in the third generation and working in the company from 1974, was able to reprivatise the workshop in 1990. He named it after his grandfather Alexander Schuke Potsdam Orgelbau. He moved the company to new premises in Werder (Havel) in 2004.

Schuke erhielt wichtige Aufträge für den Neubau von Orgeln für den Dom zu Erfurt, den Dom zu Magdeburg, den Dom zu Kaliningrad und auch für den Dom zu Zamora in Mexiko. Im 20. Jahrhundert In October 2018, Matthias Schuke passed leadership to his sons Johannes und Michael Schuke.

Musicologists appreciated the "romantic and symphonic sound" of Schuke organs, caused by diligent choice of material for the pipes and the production in their own workshop.