Shopping Cart
Total: $0.00
Note: If you are a wholesaler or merchant please contact our Customer Care team with your company details and order so we can offer you our most competitive discount terms.
Liquid error (snippets/sidebar-cart line 10): Cannot render sections inside sections
Toy Forts and Real Wars
Toy Forts and Real Wars
- Social Media
- -
- Oct, 18 , 24
Along with books on military history, Schiffer publishes on various other subjects, one of our oldest categories being antiques & collectibles. Within the greater antiques & collectibles subject, there are several books on military toys; the meeting point of two distinct lines of publication.
Toy Forts & Castles: European-Made Toys of the 19th & 20th Centuries is authored by Allen Hickling, an architect and research scientist. The book captures Allen’s immense passion for and knowledge of toy forts, with detailed descriptions of specific models, corporate histories of manufacturers, and more. It also captures several instances in which the production of toy forts is interrupted by real wars.
Here are several examples from the book’s record of the Moritz Gottschalk factory:
So, armed with the name, the organization, and the culture of the production of quality toys that went with them, Wilhelm Gottschalk – son of Moritz – was already waiting to lead the enterprise to new heights.
Major changes in production followed and the growth continued, even accelerated, until the First World War. Serving in the military, Wilhelm, who was nothing if not a patriot, was killed during the first few months. His wife Lina inherited the business and carried it on as if little had happened, except that things had to slow down because of the war.
After the war, Lina married Kurt Wagner, who had been with the company since 1881; between them they maintained the tradition of producing quality toys. They had no easy task. They had to survive the aftermath of the war, raging national inflation, world recession, and the coming of the Third Reich – all in the space of fifteen years.
In 1934, Kurt’s son Alfred Wagner, who had been working for the company since 1913, took over the leadership. He led it up to the Second World War, and in 1942 the factory was given over to producing transport boxes for the armed services.
Immediately after the war, the factory was expropriated by the Soviet army and the grounds were used as soldiers’ quarters.
Toy Forts & Castles is available on our website. Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!
- Tags :
- vintage
← Older Post Newer Post →
Recent Post
Archive
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
Translation missing: en.general.search.loading
x