Jean Alfred Kern (12 February 1910 in Vendenheim - 13 October 1989 in Strasbourg) founded the company in 1953, encouraged by Dr Albert Schweitzer, a Nobel Prize winner and philosopher who was also an organist.

[1] In 1961 Alfred Kern built the core of the organ in the church of Gunsbach, designed by Albert Schweitzer, who described this as his "last work".

The great pipe organ of St. George's Church, Haguenau was built in 1988, installed in a case by Eberhard Friedrich Walcker from 1867.

[1] The Dresden Frauenkirche, an eighteenth-century Lutheran Church, was destroyed by fire bombing in February 1945 during World War II.

[3] The company were involved in the restoration of historic organs by builders such as Johann Andreas Silbermann, Robert Clicquot, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll and Joseph Merklin.

[5] In 1981 Alfred Kern & fils undertook a repair of the historical suspended pipe organ on the north side of the central nave in Strasbourg Cathedral.