Anchor stone construction kit
The Anker brick building set is an early world-famous classic of German children's toys , manufactured in the Anker factory (Rudolstadt) .
Structure and idea
Anchor building blocks are molded parts with very small dimensional tolerances that are pressed and baked from sand , whiting chalk and linseed oil . They are made in the three colors red, yellow and blue, corresponding to the three building materials brick, sandstone and slate (roof). The building blocks have a smooth surface, are heavy in the hand and do not require knobs or glue. Keeping the buildings together is based solely on the statics .
The idea of the construction kit is based on the didactic approach of the game gifts of the pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel and develops them into an architecture model game. Thanks to a system of supplementary sets that build on one another with the accompanying instructions, the anchor construction set is the prototype of the system toy.
history
The building blocks were invented by the brothers Gustav and Otto Lilienthal , who initially also made them themselves. The boxes were sold under the Georgens brand name . The building. However, they failed as entrepreneurs because they did not have a viable marketing concept . They sold the invention to the entrepreneur Friedrich Adolf Richter , who had the building blocks patented , which the Lilienthal brothers had previously failed to do. From 1882 Richter produced the building blocks in his pharmaceutical factory in Rudolstadt . The success of the product was followed by a lengthy legal battle between the inventors and the entrepreneur, which Richter finally won.
In the “Kunstanstalt” in Rudolstadt, artists, illustrators and architects developed the plans and building templates for the construction kits. A sophisticated expansion and supplement system was created that allowed the boxes to be combined as desired. The “anchor” had been an official trademark since 1895, and the “anchor stone building sets” won numerous international awards. Around the turn of the century, almost 40,000 construction sets left the plant for well-heeled customers from all over the world, from St. Petersburg to New York . When Richter died in 1910, there were offices across Europe, the United States, and Japan. In Austria-Hungary, the toy company F. Ad. Richter & Cie. kuk supplier to the court and chamber of the emperor and the members of the imperial family as well as supplier to other European courts. For Austria there was a factory in Vienna for 40 years . It was located in the Hietzing district in the Wenzgasse / Larochegasse area, on the area of today's sports field and sports hall 1 of the Wenzgasse high school .
After long years of complicated disputes over Friedrich Adolf Richter's legacy, inflation after the First World War led to the complete loss of the company's reserves. In 1921 the company was fundamentally reorganized and split into two state stock companies. In the GDR, the company and the brand were converted into the state- owned company "VEB Anker-Steinbaukasten" in 1953 . The building blocks were manufactured in Rudolstadt until the 1960s, and production officially ended on December 31, 1963. Between 1880 and its closure in 1963, around five billion anchor blocks are said to have been sold.
The resumption of production took place in 1995 by the Anker Steinbaukasten GmbH . The anchor stone lover Georg Plenge, supported by funds from the EU and the state of Thuringia, was able to start production of a basic construction kit with 26 employees this year. Bill Clinton conveyed his enthusiasm for the anchor stones to the company in writing: "Just wonderful". Celebrities such as Albert Einstein , Erich Kästner , Walter Benjamin and Walter Gropius have trained their creativity with the colored stones.
The first system toy
The modular series is based on a system of basic and supplementary sets. The basic sets 4 or 6 can be expanded to the next higher set by purchasing additional sets (marked with an "A") according to the following principle: 6 + 6A = box 8; 8 + 8A = box 10 etc. There are no odd box numbers in the modern box series. In order to create a building according to the plans of a supplementary set, the possession of all the preceding basic and supplementary sets is required, so the supplementary set 16A contains the plan booklet of the box 18, which contains the stone stock of the boxes 6, 6A, 8A, 10A, 12A, 14A and 16A used.
The boxes from Richter's time are significantly more complex in systematics, as Richter sold numerous, also parallel variants of box series. As the number of boxes increases, so does the complexity of the building and thus also of the construction plans. A building from Box 14 takes four to six hours to build.
Leaflets
Each kit comes with two booklets with plans. One booklet contains perspective views of the buildings, the second the floor plans and sectional views. The “game idea” of the boxes is to convert the plans into buildings. Today's plan books are unchanged reprints of the original plan books from before and around 1900. They do not reproduce real existing buildings, but prototypical forms of construction: "the" pavilion, "the" observation tower, "the" chapel, "the" cathedral.
Members of the “Club of Anchor Friends” expand the range with their own plans and sectional drawings. Some of the new plans reflect real models, such as the Torre de Belém and the Frauenkirche in Dresden.
Kingstones
Kingstones were marketed under the name Ankerstones until they were renamed under trademark law. The stones are made of marble powder. They are neither historically comparable with anchor stones, nor is the material comparable with that of anchor stones.
literature
- George Hardy: Richter's anchor brick construction kit . Online version (PDF; 6.7 MB). ISBN 0-9656288-0-9 .
- Manuela Runge , Bernd Lukasch : Inventor life - the brothers Otto and Gustav Lilienthal . Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8270-0536-1 .
- Anker stone construction kit - stones for high-flyers . In: Oliver Carlo Errichiello, Arnd Zschiesche : Success Secret East. Survival strategies from the best brands - and what managers can learn from them . Gabler-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-8349-1615-0 , pp. 105-108.
Digital copies
- JF Procházka: Topographic-statistical schematism of large estates in the kingdom of Bohemia, at the same time address book of all the workers employed by the same officials of the forest personnel, etc . Self-published by JF Procházka, Prague 1891, advertisement section page 181 Digitized version
Web links
- Homepage for anchor friends who have problems with the construction plans or are looking for new models
- www.ankerstein.de - manufacturer of the construction kits
- www.ankerstein.ch - Homepage with very extensive information, including the "CVA anchor archive" with all historical building plans
- George Hardy's homepage - English
- Club van Ankervrienden
Individual evidence
- ↑ On the history of the construction kit. Otto Lilienthal Museum , accessed on September 30, 2018 . .
- ↑ Ferdinand Werner : The long way to new building . Volume 1: Concrete: 43 men invent the future . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2016. ISBN 978-3-88462-372-5 , pp. 302f.
- ↑ G. Knerr: Technical toys , in: Deutsches Museum . Guide to the Collections , ed. from the Deutsches Museum. CH Beck, Munich, 2nd edition 1987, ISBN 3-406-32092-9 , pp. 243-248, here pp. 245 f.
- ↑ Ferdinand Werner : The long way to new building . Volume 1: Concrete: 43 men invent the future . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2016. ISBN 978-3-88462-372-5 , p. 303.
- ^ The way to the children's room in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on February 10, 2013, pp. 62 and 63.
- ↑ Homepage anchor .