Germany
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Here's Freund and Dorothea in traditional dress. These dolls have a lovely weight and feel and pose well on a toy horse or bicycle. |
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By Elizabeth Apgar Triano
Collectors confer a certain cachet to German-made dolls. Just consider all the ads for the older, German-made American Girl, Goetz, and Lissi dolls. These ads stress their German origin with the implication that they are better than the versions being made today in Asia. Ironically, this special value placed on German-made dolls is coming at a time when very few dolls are actually made in Germany (or the U.S.) anymore. In the past five or six years, doll companies have felt increasing pressure to keep their prices competitive and so, to save on labor costs, nearly all of them have moved the manufacturing to Asia. But one German doll company, Engel-Puppen GmbH, is successfully bucking this trend.
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Xenia, 18 inches, is a very well made doll with a soft body, sleep eyes, and a choice of either rooted hair or a kanekalon wig. |
Engel-Puppen, the oldest doll factory in operation in northern Bavaria, continues to make its dolls in Roedental, Germany. According to company president Markus Engel, Engel-Puppen means "Angel Dolls," and he says Engel-Puppen, whose trademark depicts a crowned angel, intends to continue to make its "angels" in Germany. "Making dolls in Germany," says Markus, "is more than a tradition. It's part of our philosophy."
Engel-Puppen is one of the few surviving doll companies in the city of Roedental, but in the first three decades of the 20th century, Roedental was home to so many doll companies that it was dubbed the "Stadt der Keramik und der Puppen", or the "City of Ceramics and Dolls."
Fast forward to 2005 and study the current catalog at the company's Web site. You cannot help but be amazed by EP's extensive inventory. You can choose from play dolls in vinyl, decorative dolls in original German costumes, and porcelain artist dolls in limited editions as well as parts, clothing, and accessories. EP dolls include a fine range of 17-inch to 23-inch soft-bodied dolls representing children, and these are named and arranged by face mold — Dorothea, Freund, Xenia, Henriette, Fatou, Cornelia, Lesley, Gerlinde, Theresa, and Susanne. EP makes baby dolls, too, including newborns and drink-and-wet versions. An international collection offers soft-bodied dolls representing children from Europe, Africa, and Asia. All have sleep eyes and are available with either washable kanekalon wigs or rooted hair, and some are multi-jointed. Many are dressed in a traditional European look, with layers of detailed garments, but some also come in modern dress.
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This 18-inch doll, dressed in traditional Greek costume, has a soft body and sleep eyes, and comes from the company's international collection. |
Though tiny in the U.S., the souvenir doll market is apparently alive and well in western Europe, for scores of hand-crafted dolls in authentic regional costume look out from the company's shiny catalog in the Völk and Wilhelm-Trachten lines. The Wilhelm-Trachten line offers not only dolls dressed in Bavarian and Black Forest costumes, but also in the dress of Oberammergau, Ostfriesland, and other lesser-known areas of Germany. A few little ladies called Weinköniginnen depict "German Wine Queens." The Wilhelm-Trachten doll line dates to the early 1950s, when Heinrich Wilhelm and his wife, Emilie, began to make dolls depicting the traditional costume of the Black Forest region of Germany and then expanded to include dolls dressed to represent regions all over Germany and its neighboring countries. The Völk line dates back to 1893, when Hans Völk and his wife, Martha, began making paperboard and papier-mâché dolls. EP acquired both companies and now continues to manufacture those dolls in the traditional manner.
EP has been making and distributing Hummel dolls, but its license with W. Goebel Prozellanfrabrik, the manufacturer of the famous Hummel figurines, expires at the end of this year. After Dec. 31, EP will no longer make the hand-painted Hummel dolls. But, even without the Hummel dolls, Engel-Puppen produces about 600 dolls offered in nearly limitless combinations of hair and eye color and costume. And each one is made in Germany. "We offer a huge variety of dolls," agrees Markus, "and we are committed to making them here in Germany. We're not only upholding a century-old tradition, but we're also able to offer quality and flexibility. I think we've been able to succeed because of the personal engagement of my family: my father, who takes care of a big part of our U.S. sales, and my sister, Susanne Oppel, our chief dress designer. Susanne's mind is always awake finding new ideas for dress designs."
Despite the wide array of dolls, finding an EP doll to buy in the U.S. can be a challenge. You can order from the Engel-Puppen web site, though you need to factor the shipping cost from Germany into your total. You can also find new EP dolls at Der Teddybar, the store offering German toys, dolls, and teddy bears, in the German village section of Epcot at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.; at Oma's Doll Shop in Cape May, N.J.; Alesia's Dolls & Gifts; Deutsches Haus; and Collectible German Dolls. (These last two sources are also good ways to keep track of the coming and goings of all the German doll companies.) In the U.S., you can find more EP dolls on the secondary market, such as auction sites like eBay, and the doll message boards. On the secondary market, expect to pay about $50 for some of the soft-bodied dolls while the new multi-jointed and ball-jointed dolls fetch as much as $300.
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For Christmas 2005, Engel-Puppen will offer Santa Lucia, a 20-inch soft body vinyl doll with head, arms, and legs in vinyl and body in fabric. Limited to 50. |
Happily, Markus, Susanne, and their father Helmut are completely comitted to making quality dolls in Germany. Markus credits top-notch and committed employees, his family's involvement, the variety of dolls offered, the small size of the company, and the flexibilty of local production for EP's ability to remain and prosper in Germany. "Not only do we feel a social responsibility to our employees and to a century-old tradition of dollmaking in this area of Germany, but we want to make our dolls here." And for that, collectors can rejoice.
Markus Engel, the president of Engel-Puppen, his sister, Susanne Engel Oppel, chief dress designer for Engel-Puppen, and their father, Helmut, the former president, have been involved in the doll business all their lives. When Helmut was a child in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he helped his mother, a home worker, make shoes and dresses for dolls. After he finished school, Helmut went to work for Drei-M, one of the biggest doll companies in Germany at that time. He worked there for 25 years before getting the opportunity to acquire the Edmund Knoch doll company in 1975 from Otto Knoch, whose father began the company in 1896. By the time Otto took over upon Edmund's death in 1934, the company had grown to 30 employees, including home workers.
But World War II derailed the business. Somehow Otto and his wife, Helga, got back on track after the war, despite a divided Germany. Though 15 years younger than her husband, Helga Knoch died first in 1975, prompting Otto to retire; their son, Lothar, an attorney, was not interested in the business. So Otto offered it to Helmut. Helmut rented the company for three years before buying it, moving the manufacturing to a new building, and changed the company's name to Helmut Engel. In 1983, Susanne Engel joined the company and eventually became the chief dress designer. In 1999, Helmut Engel passed on the reins of Engel-Puppen to his son. As president, Susanne as dress designer, and their father Helmut is fully involved in the business, too.
