Vintage porcelain dolls dressed in Victorian costumes, exquisite playhouses with furnished rooms—from miniature velvet sofas to lace tablecloths—and an array of baking utensils in the kitchen. It’s a make-believe world that transports one to childhood. Welcome to the Toy Museum in Nuremberg, Germany, located in a heritage building in Karlstrasse, in the centre of the old town. Most people know Nuremberg because of its post-war trials, but not many are aware of its centuries-old toy-making tradition and the international toy fair that it hosts every year.
Also read: Scrolling through West Bengal’s Santiniketan
It was the city’s metal workers, whose ability to mass-produce toys made Nuremberg a hub. Toymaking began there in the Middle Ages, and the first dollmaker was mentioned in the tax records as far back as 1400 AD. Small figures made from alabaster and clay called Kruseler dolls or dockes—the oldest from the city—are displayed at the museum. These used to be sold here and taken by people along trade routes.
The Nuremberg Toy Museum has more than 87,000 exhibits and spans a collection from pewter and wood to plastic and tin toys. It features the collection of a local couple, Lydia Bayer and her husband, Paul, who began collecting toys around 1920, and their daughter, who has a doctorate in art history with a focus on doll-houses. The city took over their collection in 1966, after Lydia’s death.
A poster greets you as you enter the museum—‘Toys are political because they are made by people’. It hangs beside the small, intricate figurines that make up the Noah’s Ark exhibit, crafted in 1895. On the ground floor are the earliest toys in the collection—handmade, rustic toys in clay and wood, paper dolls and wooden tops, stacking blocks to wind-up metal toys, clowns and snails.
On the first floor are dollhouses of all sizes, with elaborately finished rooms, play kitchen with life-like crockery, baking dishes, tiny China sets, cutlery and even laundry hanging on a line. The doll parlours on display range from the Biedermeier period to Art Nouveau. In a room with a beautiful Rococo ceiling, stand historical figurines of soldiers and knights, made of tin, paper, celluloid and plastic. There is a section that displays optical toys, exquisite pop-up theatres and back-lit dioramas—a throwback to the time when shadow plays, paper theatres and kaleidoscopes entertained the children.
On the second floor, rests a huge collection of mechanical metal toys from the German maker EP Lehmann, founded in 1881. The company made wind-up tin playthings, from animals to carousels, which were cheaper than iron. The next floor has gargantuan metal ones like cars as well as model railways and steam engines. There is a replica of the Omaha Union station in Nebraska, US, with 300 figurines and plywood locomotives, interconnecting tracks and tunnels, made by a German geologist, in the post-war period between 1950 and 1974.
The top floor of the museum boasts a collection created in 1945—from teddy bears to Meccano construction sets, Playmobil figures, to Scrabble sets and Lego. One interesting exhibit is objects that are not actually toys, but are considered so by kids. Among those on display are a crushed Coke can, which reminds one of a football and a plastic chocolate tray, which could be a kid’s knight of armour.