Clover games

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clover games

logo
legal form
founding 1884
resolution 1997
Seat Fuerth, Germany

Klee Spiele was a German games publisher from Fürth . Klee is now a trademark of Franckh Kosmos Verlag.

history

Founding time

In 1884, the businessman Ludwig Kleefeld founded the Nuremberg game factory L. Kleefeld & Co. in Fürth, where various board , card , activity and cube games were produced. From 1907 Leopold Bromeisl , Kleefeld's son-in-law, ran the business.

Promotion and move to Nuremberg

When his brother Moritz Bromeisl also joined the company in 1915, they managed to rise to the top group in the German toy industry. In 1926 the company moved to Nuremberg . Kleefeld employed up to 180 people there. Besides games also were magic boxes , table tennis , Tischcroquet , to cut out and jumping jacks manufactured. Games were also exported; games in English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese can still be found today.

Aryanization of the company in the Third Reich

The company's catalog in 1937 comprised several hundred articles on 52 pages. In early 1938, the game Monopoly was also part of the Klee program. Tributes such as “enemy fliers in sight” did not bring the company owners anything, they were forced to give up Klee. In 1939, Max Herbart from Steinach , the owner of the Christian Herbart Klee company, which had existed since 1888, took over . The well-known shamrock as a trademark was retained, the letters CH were added in the shamrock. In addition to the old Kleespiele, in which only the company name (company) and the logo were changed, titles such as “Jump up, march march!”, “Sport, the training of the people”, “United against the enemy” were added. Leopold Bromeisl emigrated to Rotterdam, where he was tracked down by the Gestapo in 1942. He and his wife perished in the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland.

New beginning after the war

Moritz Bromeisl survived the Second World War . The company had suffered greatly from the war. After restoring the company, he rebuilt it and ran it until his death. Since the old printing plates were still there, many successful pre-war games were reissued unchanged. After Moritz Bromeisl's death in 1951, the widow Auguste Bromeisl and her brother-in-law Leonhard Kreppner ran the business.

Merger with various partners

current logo

In 1966 Herbert Kreppner , the son of Leonhard Kreppner, took over the company, which he managed until 1997. Herbert Kreppner linked the company with its Nuremberg competitor Spear in 1978 . When Spear gave up its Nuremberg location in 1984, the company moved back to its founding place in Fürth and changed the company from Nuremberg game factory L. Kleefeld & Co. to Klee-Spiele GmbH . After separating from Spear, Schmidt Spiele was a new co-owner and partner. When Schmidt Spiele ran into economic difficulties in 1997 and was taken over by the Blatz Group , Klee was threatened with death. The managing director and co-owner Ernst Pohle acquired the remaining shares from the bankruptcy administrator and found a new partner in Franckh-Kosmos . Klee is now a games brand from Franckh-Kosmos.

Web links