Adolphe Sax
Antoine-Joseph Sax was born on 6 November 1814, in Dinant, in what is now Belgium, to Charles-Joseph Sax and his wife. While his given name was Antoine-Joseph, he was referred to as Adolphe from childhood. His father and mother were instrument designers themselves, who made several changes to the design of the French horn. Adolphe began to make his own instruments at an early age, entering two of his flutes and a clarinet into a competition at the age of 15. He subsequently studied performance on those two instruments as well as voice at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.
Franz Xaver Dorsch
Dorsch was born in Illertissen in the Allgäu region of Bavaria. He served in the German Army during the First World War from 1 June 1917 to 2 January 1919, leaving with the rank of sergeant. After demobilising he joined the paramilitary Freikorps and participated in the crushing of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919. Later that year he enrolled as a student of civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, now the University of Stuttgart, and qualified as an architect in 1928. From 1929 to 1933 he worked with Fritz Todt, later to become the founder of the Organisation Todt, at the Munich engineering firm of Sager und Wörner.