Here, Renate provides a brief background on the Schellhorn’s involvement in the toy industry and manufacturing.
In 1900, when my father, the eldest1 of four siblings, was just one year old, Sonneberg was already known far beyond the borders as the Christ Child’s workshop for all kinds of toys. In grandfather’s old account books you could even read that they were already exporting to America and Australia. So it is not surprising that capable manufacturers took part in the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 with their “Sonneberg Group”. They even received the highest award for this, the “Grand Prix”.
Much has happened in the old homeland since those days. The doll factories are deserted and nothing of the once magnificent buildings can be found in the flourishing city today. We encounter grey, crumbling facades at every turn2. The new regime cares little for the city’s former beauty. But in the toy museum, for whose white paint they seem to have a few pots of paint left over, the Sonneberg group still stands and is admired by hordes of children and adults who are brought here every day from all parts of the German Democratic Republic so that they can admire the achievements of real socialism.
- Otto was actually the second child, his sister, my grandmother was the oldest.
↩︎ - Here Renate is describing the state of Sonneberg as it was in 1981 under communist rule. In my first visit to Sonneberg in the early 1990s, just after the wall came down, the city was still in a state of complete disrepair. It was disheartening.
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