In 1912, in the German town of Sonneberg, a young maker named Bernhard Hermann began producing teddy bears and plush animals. He named the company after his own initials, BE HA. At the time Sonneberg was the toy capital of the world, home to thousands of small workshops, and Hermann's firm was one of many. It was also one of the few that would still exist a century later.
(A 5-way jointed bear. In basket a Mouse from the Teddy Hermann Collection.)
Getting Out
Sonneberg's luck ran out after the Second World War. The town fell inside the Soviet occupation zone, and Bernhard Hermann, seeing what was coming, chose Hirschaid in the American zone as the company's new home to avoid having the business taken from him. He sent his son Werner ahead in 1948. By 1953 the family had made it across and the move was complete. His brother Max did the same thing, to Coburg.
The firms that stayed did not survive as families. Through the 1950s the private workshops of the world's toy capital were merged into cooperatives, and by 1972 the last of them had been nationalised outright and folded into a single state combine. The names disappeared.
It was at Hirschaid that the red seal appeared at the neck of every bear, "Hermann Teddy Original," the mark collectors recognise today.
How a Bear Is Made
The heritage collector bears are still made at the Hirschaid workshop. They are worked in mohair, jointed by hand, and some are finished with glass eyes and a growler voice that sounds when the bear is tipped forward. The everyday collection is made from softer, hard-wearing fabrics, meant for a child's daily company rather than a shelf.
What has never changed is how the bears are built. Proper joints, securely set eyes, dense and even filling, and careful stitching are what let a well-made bear survive a childhood and pass to the next one. That is the quiet difference between a toy that is replaced and one that is kept.
Four Generations On
Today the company is run by the fourth generation of the same family. More than a hundred years after Bernhard Hermann stitched his initials into his first bears, they are still made the way they were meant to be: to be held, to be mended when they need it, and to be handed down.