Sonneberg

Sonneberg is a town in Thuringia, Germany, which is the seat of the Sonneberg district. The Toy Story Begins Historical accounts place the origins of Sonneberg’s toy-making industry in the late Middle Ages. Merchants from Nuremberg, a city in northern Bavaria, traveled a route near Sonneberg, over the crest of the Thuringian Forest, transporting “Nuremberg goods” (including toys), to fellow trade city Leipzig. Before making their trek over the mountain range, the merchants would change escorts and rest. Through this interchange, similar products began being produced in Sonneberg.

Sonneberg
Town
Town hall
Coat of arms
Location of Sonneberg within Sonneberg district
Sonneberg Show map of Germany Sonneberg Show map of Thuringia
Coordinates: 50°21′N 11°10′E
Country	Germany
State	Thuringia
District	Sonneberg
Government
• Mayor (2016–22)	Dr. Heiko Voigt[1] (CDU)
Area
• Total	84.69 km2 (32.70 sq mi)
Elevation	400 m (1,300 ft)
Population  (2020-12-31)[2]
• Total	23,229
• Density	270/km2 (710/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
Postal codes	96515
Dialling codes	03675, 036762, 036703
Vehicle registration	SON, NH
Website	www.sonneberg.de

By 1735, for the first time, a description of the city noted “all kinds of children’s goods”— swords, pistols, shotguns, pipes, violins, bowling games, nutcrackers, rattles, cuckoos “and the like more”— next to commodities of wood. Around 1740, toymakers developed a more attractive material for their merchandise using black flour and glue water. This doughy substance allowed craftsmen to freely form figures or mold parts. Though this new method of toy production allowed for greater diversity, the delicate material had a limited shelf life and was often ingested by mice and mites during shipments overseas.[3]

historic Christmas sleigh of 1900 Paris Exposition(Archiv Stadt Sonneberg)

In 1789 the Sonneberg merchants were granted the right to sell toys and later glassware from the region exclusively. One hundred years later an incomparable German-American success story begins: Franklin Winfield Woolworth placed his first major order with the glassblowers from Lauscha and the surrounding area. From now on the USA is the largest sales market for „the Kugls“ from the southern Thuringian Forest. Traditionally, the Santa Claus known to us today originated from the legend of St. Nicholas, who fills the children‘s cleaned boots with nuts or fruit on December 6. At the Paris World Fair in 1900, Santa Claus was presented to the public for the first time, sitting on a gift sleigh and pulled by reindeer. Representatives of the city of Sonneberg used this idea to advertise their quality toys such as dolls or teddy bears.[4]

In its heyday at the turn of the 20th century, Sonneberg was the world's leading toy producer. Mothers and fathers, son and daughters, crammed into home workshops and, with their neighbours, made up production lines that churned out every fifth toy in the world. One house would make dolls' wigs, the next along stuffed the bodies and another would craft their faces. It is renowned as a center of toy production and was dubbed the "toy capital of the world" or "workshop of Santa Claus" in the 1920s; during this time, US trade giants Kresge and Woolworth built large warehouses here for exportation. It is the home of the German Toy Museum and PIKO, a model railway manufacturer which became one of the few such enterprises in the Warsaw Pact countries and as such supplied model trains depicting railway stock of all the Soviet bloc countries.

When Sonneberg was swallowed up into the German Democratic Republic, the communist authorities merged its many toymakers into powerful co-operatives that made up 95% of the country's toy industry, exporting dolls, building blocks, trains and plastic trucks far and wide across the Soviet bloc and beyond. Little of that is left today. Rows of majestic villas and teddy-bear-shaped statues in the town square are testament to centuries of export might, but only a handful of toymakers remain.

In divided post-war Germany, Sonneberg found itself within the borders of East Germany, cut off from its large neighbouring town of Coburg, Bavaria in West Germany and could only face north economically. It was served by an unnaturally winding railway route and thus became somewhat isolated from the rest of East Germany. Sonneberg Hauptbahnhof is served by the Coburg–Sonneberg line.

After the reunification those giant toymakers were no longer sustainable and collapsed very quickly. If you look at the massive scale of production in the past and the renowned toymakers, what we see is a story of decline. But in the place of Sonneberg's toymakers are industrial estates almost full to capacity with car parts manufacturers, mechanical engineering plants and plastics specialists. At 4.2%, Sonneberg's unemployment rate is among the lowest in the country and has halved in the past five years.[5]

A Hydrogen Research Institute is 2021 established. The institute that opened in Sonneberg in February is dedicated to hydrogen research. The use of hydrogen as an engine in rail transport, where road electrification is expensive, has great potential, in buses, in the movement of heavy goods, in garbage trucks and road sweepers and in heat generation in industry. A new research facility is being constructed in the town of Sonnberg, south of Thuringia. It’s about developing standards, building supply chains and logistics and making technology suitable for everyday use.