Reform toys

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Reform toys were produced from 1902 as toys made of natural materials and stimulating the imagination with the design idea of ​​promoting the creativity and artistic development of young people. This development was against the background of the art education movement at the beginning of the 20th century and a deep dissatisfaction with the quality of the then massively industrially produced toys. The designs for reform toys came from well-known artists such as the siblings Fritz , Erich and Gertrud Kleinhempel , Richard Riemerschmid , Hermann Urban , Fedor Flinzer and the writer Frank Wedekind .

history

As part of the art education movement around the turn of the century, toys were assigned a central role in preserving and promoting children's creativity. The representatives of the art education movement believed that in the medium term they would be able to overcome the existing cultural and art crisis through suitable educational measures for the child. The child's imagination became the concern of teachers and art educators around 1900. The then predominantly naturalistically designed and industrially manufactured toys came under criticism. The social pedagogue Lili Droescher formulated her book The Art in the Life of the Child in 1902 :

“Because of their artistic nature, the child does not want to have the things themselves, but the symbols of things as toys. The former are indifferent to him because their possessions kill imagination. "

Also around the turn of the century, the reform movement in the arts and crafts developed as a counter-movement to the industrial mass production that had arisen since the middle of the 19th century using stylistic features of historicism . Art educators, visual artists, architects, arts and crafts schools and reform-oriented companies began to design and produce reform toys from 1902.

From Dresden, the toys created by artists went on sale under the name "Dresden Toys". The Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau and the workshops for German household goods owned by Theophil Müller were among the first companies to manufacture reform toys . The offer included a. from the Kleinhempel siblings a steam roller, a nutcracker "Hofmarschall" and an elephant on wheels, from Richard Riemerschmid a rocking horse and from Hermann Urban a dachshund on wheels. Right from the start, the offer met with a great response from leading art magazines and daily newspapers.

In Grünhainichen , the toy publisher CF Drechsel offered reform toys based on designs by the Kleinhempel siblings, the folklorist Oskar Seyffert , and the Dresden architects Karl Schmidt, Heinrich Tscharmann and Ernst Kühn . In Meissen which produced carpentry of Julius Zocher 1905 portable pull-along animals designed by Richard Kuöhl and a Flora Domino and Dresdner horticulture box .

Reform toys gained international popularity before the First World War . For the man-made toys, the artistically designed and produced in small series reform toys but did not constitute a serious competition because as a customer only the wealthy layer of the educated middle class came into question.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Evelin Priebe: Kandinsky and the art education movement . Cuvillier, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86955-553-9 ( digital copy [PDF]).
  2. ↑ Lili Droescher (ed.): The art in the life of the child: a manual for parents and educators . Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1902, p. 160 .