German toys in antebellum America

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2002 by Mary Audrey Apple

Before American toymaking industries were firmly established in the second half of the nineteenth century, commercially made children's toys (1) were imported from England, France, and Germany, with Germany the acknowledged leader. (2) The growth of the German toymaking industry its production and export patterns on the Continent, and its rising dominance in the world market from its beginnings in the sixteenth century until World War I have been well documented. (3) However, there are few documents available about German toys in the United States before 1850.

An exception is the Lewis Page letter book of 1829 to l833. (4) The only known record of an American toy importer, it provides a rich foundation for the study of the importation of German toys at that time. This New York City merchant's correspondence with his major European supplier, the Lindner firm of Sonneberg in Thuringia; the occasional orders he placed with other suppliers; and letters to his delinquent wholesale customers reveal business practices that place the industry in the mainstream of transcontinental trade. His references to other New York stores indicate that selling toys had developed into a competitive business in the city by the 1830s. A comparison of his orders to the illustrations in the first toy catalogue issued by the Lindner firm in 1831 (5) offers a rare visual record of many of the German toys imported into the United States before the Civil War.

Often called Nuremberg toys, these German imports appear in American advertisements, customs papers, and occasionally in inventories and paintings from the earliest years of the Republic. An advertisement placed by the Philadelphia store of Hewes and Anthony on May 12, 1784, lists "A Quantity of Nuremberg Goods, consisting of small Looking-Glasses, Snuff-Boxes, Toys, etc." (6) In 1798 James Thomson of Richmond, Virginia, offered "Nurenburg Goods Among which are a great variety of Children's Toys." (7) The Moravian elders in Salem, North Carolina, approved Nuremberg toys for sale in the community's "small wares stall," and their agent shipped a box of "Nuhrnberg toys" from Philadelphia to the Salem shop later that year. (8) A box of toys arrived in Marblehead, Massachusetts, from Hamburg in 1807 and another from Bremen in l819. (9) The Baltimore store of Brune and Dannernann advertised "A few boxes of Nuremberg Toys" in December 1817. (10)

In Nuremberg, craftsmen working in wood, glass, clay, and metal were producing children's toys, among other miniature objects for export, by the end of the sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century the city had earned its reputation as a center of manufacturing and distribution for wooden toys such as the brightly painted dolls, hobbyhorses, trumpets, and dollhouses that were exported to other European countries. However, Nuremberg merchants were not wholly dependent on local products. The city's location along major north-south and eastwest trade routes offered access to far-flung areas of toy production. (11)

Toys were brought to the city by wagon, cart, or in wooden backpacks called Kraxen to be consolidated and shipped by powerful Verleger--a term translated as agent, wholesaler, and middleman. Although records show that some toymakers sold their own wares at the large trade fairs held in Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Dresden, this practice did not become common. The makers simply did not have the time or financial resources to promote their own products. The Verleger, many of whom were originally craftsmen or members of the families of craftsmen, assumed the functions of marketing and selling. Although Nuremberg maintained its reputation as the toy capital of the world and German toys continued to be called "Numberger ware," the city's merchants experienced increasing competition from the outlying areas such as the town of Sonneberg in Thuringia.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century Sonneberg had become a major center for the production and export of toys. A well-developed business mirrored the trade practices of the period, supplying customers in the Americas as well as Europe through an established distribution network. In 1803, for example, a Sonneberg shipment destined for Virginia included sixteen dozen squeak toys, six dozen little whistles, and five dozen slates. It was shipped for Friedrich Romain in Kassel to his son in Virginia. (12) Sonneberg agents ordered and purchased toys from local toymaking families as well as from those in the Erzgebirge in Saxony and the Austrian valley of Groden (now Val Gardena, Italy). Like their counterparts, they established warehouses where toys were collected, crated, weighed, sealed, and loaded onto wagons for transport to Nuremberg or directly to ports like Hamburg, more than 250 miles from Sonneberg. Accidents along the way were not uncommon, and merchandise could disappear before it ever reached por t in Germany. (13)

In addition to exhibiting at the large trade fairs, firms sent salesmen, samples, and eventually catalogues of their wares to prospective customers. The first known toy catalogue was issued in 1792-1793 by the Nuremberg Verleger Hieronimus Georg Bestelmeier, which continued to issue a catalogue through the 1850s. German toymakers' catalogues show that many of the toys exported to the United States remained popular throughout the nineteenth century. (14)