German
In 1899 Margarete Steiff registered patents for a dancing bear and a brown bear with a handler.
In 1902 the American President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear cub while hunting in Mississippi and the incident made national news. In the same year Richard Steiff looked for new ideas for toys and saw bears in an American travelling circus. He sketched an idea of an upright bear. In 1903 Rose Michtom designed a stuffed bear toy. Michtom wrote and asked permission from President Roosevelt to name the toy after him. “Teddy” Roosevelt agreed and the "Teddy's Bear" was born. Other makers such as Bing, Hermann, Schuco, Strunz, Joseph Pitrmann, Moritz Pappe and Edward Cramer followed soon after.
Richard Diem founded his teddy bear factory in 1896. This was located in Sonneberg in Thuringen, Germany at this time being the very centre of European bear production. They had their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. Richard Diem died in 1938 of Tuberculosis. 1936: 40thanniversary it was mentioned with “The Owner’s wife Friedrike, nee Wachter is his faithful helper.” Address: Robertstrasse 29. 50 employees, 100 home workers. Richard’s son Arno died in 1946. 1949: advertised “Factory with toys stuffed with soft material.” 1953: advertised – owner: daughter-in-law Liese-Lotte Diem continued to run it until 1976 when the German Democratic Republic (GDR) regime closed down her business finally. She left GDR and died 1989 in Dusseldorf. They made wonderful Teddy Bears which are fairly scare today. Sadly nothing remains of this famous bear maker and his family in his home town.
Teddy Bear Characteristics:
Very good quality plush in golden yellow, grey and blonde mohair. They were well made bears, especially their embroidered noses (some have two stitches extended down each side of vertically stitched nose). They had large glass eyes quite closely set. Each had an inset snout in short mohair as well as paw pads, feet reinforced with cardboard inserts to enable them to stand. Sizes ranged from 25”, 24”, 20” and 14” tall. In the 1950’s they made a Baby Bear with it’s limbs being moved by the wire in it’s arms and legs, 11” tall.
Historically they were mistakenly attributed to Schreyer & Co (Schuco) a toy company in Nuremberg.
Back of the original pendant by Richard Diem:
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