Doll & Co.
Doll & Co. was a German toy manufacturer founded in Nuremberg in 1898 . The company's product range mainly comprised steam engines and model railways . In 1938 the company was Aryanized and taken over by its competitor Fleischmann .
history
In 1898 John Sondheim and the tinsmith Peter Doll founded a toy manufacturing company in Nuremberg. In the early phase, the company concentrated on the production of immobile steam engines. Foreign sales markets were found in Great Britain and Ireland and outside Europe in the United States . Production was initially located in rented rooms on Bergstrasse in the Burgviertel , later the company built its own factory building with a residential building at Kirchenweg 13, which still exists today.
Shortly before the outbreak of World War I , a nephew of Sondheim, Max Bein, joined the company. From then on, Doll got a creative boost and developed various market innovations, in particular clockworks . After the war, in the 1920s, the steam engine production line was revived. In addition, model trains were built, a steam-powered type of toy car and an equally powered truck .
In 1938 the company came under the focus of the Nuremberg Race Laws , as the company founders were of Jewish origin and the Nazi regime demanded the Aryanization of the company. At that time, Doll had 250 employees. Max Bein had to sell the company for a fraction of its value. The family was able to save itself from the Holocaust . The daughters were sent to England on a Kindertransport in 1939 ; when the war broke out, the parents managed to escape via Holland to the United States at the last moment, where the family reunited near Boston in October 1940 .
The Fleischmann company took over Doll and was able to supplement the previous product range with 0-gauge model railways and steam engines. The “Doll” brand was retained until 1949 and thus beyond the Second World War . The founders of the Doll company rejected a later return offer from Fleischmann and instead had their shares paid out.
The logo was "DC" in red on a green or white oval area.
Railways
The railways were almost exclusively manufactured in nominal size 0 and of high quality.
literature
- Gustav Reder : With clockwork, steam and electricity. From toys to model trains . Publisher: Alba Publication, Düsseldorf 1970 (2nd edition 1988). ISBN 978-3-8709-4455-1 .
- Rudger Huber: tin toys. Cars - Motorcycles, Weltbild 1995. ISBN 3-8289-0794-6 .
- Jim G. Tobias: ... and we were Germans !. Jewish emigrants remember. A reader. ANTOGO Verlag Nürnberg, 2009. (Chapter: Elizabeth Miller , p. 84 ff.). ISBN 978-3-938286-38-8 .
Individual evidence
- ^ The Train Collectors Association, Western Division, Doll & Cie.
- ^ Entry on Doll & Co at www.albert-gieseler.de , accessed on November 19, 2013
- ↑ From 1938 to 2008 the building housed the headquarters of the Fleischmann company. By the end of 2013, the historic factory buildings were converted for residential purposes and free areas on the property were provided with new buildings.
- ↑ Interview with a contemporary witness with Bein's daughter Elizabeth Miller in the Nuremberg Video Archive of Remembrance , accessed on November 17, 2013
- ↑ Article "Fleischmann" in nuernberginfos.de
- ^ Logo of the Doll company
