future needs memories.
Sue Everett
After many hours of taping at home for details, Sue was still ‘hungry’ for more information. She wrote to many people overseas including in England, USA and Germany as well as various embassies.
Adrian and Sue went on a long trip around Australia once again to find out more details. Her efforts speak for themselves.
Sincere thanks for your interest and for being such a caring daughter-in-law.
Ernie Everett (Lutz Eichbaum)
The Early Years
Ludwig Ernst Eichbaum was born on 27 April 1923, the only child of Friedrich and Gretl Eichbaum. His father was born on 16 December 1888 in Gunzenhausen, Bavaria, Germany and his mother, fourteen years his junior, on 2 November 1902 in the German city of Coburg. Lutz lived all his childhood in Nuremberg, an almost thousand-year-old, Gothic and very picturesque Bavarian city, in a mixed denominational and popular residential area. His home at Rudolfstrasse 29 comprised the whole ground floor in a narrow four-storey building which was entirely owned by his maternal grandmother. The neighbouring buildings were similar and looked as if they were all glued together in a tightly jammed row. Lutz and his family were the only Jewish family living there, the three upper floors being let out to their various tenants. His maternal grandmother, Selma, who lived with Lutz and his parents, occupied two adjoining rooms, a bedroom and a lounge, also situated on the ground floor. Selma was only thirteen years older than his father, and when still in her forties had lost her husband to illness before Lutz was born.
The large attic beneath the roofline accommodated the drying washing from all of the residents and there was a large cellar beneath the house where the family and tenants kept coal for their heating requirements; the winters could be very long and cold, and it usually snowed. A pulley lift enabled everyone to transfer their coal and firewood up from the cellar to all floors. Lutz was always happy to volunteer to clear the snow from the footpath at the front of the house; he used a long-handled wooden spade to push the snow away from the walkways and into the gutter.
There was no garden out the front and not much more than a yard out the back containing a large brick fireplace. There was just room for a small chicken run where the Eichbaum family kept several fowl; it was Lutz’s daily task to feed the chickens and collect their eggs. He quite enjoyed this responsibility and became adept at the latter, learning how to keep out of the way of a particularly aggressive fowl. On warm weekend days his parents would sit outside in deckchairs and read the newspapers. Lutz would endeavour to divert their attention by trying to engage them in more playful activities. When Lutz was older, he delighted in owning a ‘Brownie’ box camera and would surreptitiously take pictures of his parents in their more amusing states of repose or concentration. Their happy family life then seemed indestructible in their unknowingness of what lay ahead.
The Eichbaum family hired a maid, Kuni, who lived with them in a room down the end of the hall. It was not unusual at that time for families of moderate incomes to have live-in help and Kuni became part of the family. She was a young woman with an easygoing nature and Lutz was fond of her. She laid out his clothes for him each morning before undertaking household chores and preparing the family meals, which allowed his mother to have a lot of spare time to spend with him, having only one child to care for and no need to do paid work. Lutz remembered that Kuni always wore a sparkling white apron when visitors came to the house and a dish was placed near the front door in which appreciative visitors could deposit a few coins as a tip. On her day off her boyfriend would call for her at the house and Lutz would look forward to her later telling him about the film she had just seen. She left their employment when Lutz was almost thirteen because of Nazi edicts that no Jewish family was allowed to employ Aryan female domestic help under the age of 45 years; Kuni was of the Catholic faith. The family didn’t replace Kuni and most of these tasks would have been taken over by his mother and grandmother, as Lutz was never even expected to take care of or select his own clothing until he was forced to leave home at sixteen years of age.
Lutz was a good-looking child with a friendly, open and sometimes mischievous face and good-hearted nature. He was always just under average in stature and had fair, wavy hair which earned him the nickname of ‘Curly’ from some of his school friends. Gretl was the more sociable and fun-loving of his two parents and Lutz was particularly close to her. Unlike Lutz, she had naturally dark hair and features and was the taller of his two parents; his father was bald from the earliest time Lutz remembers him and always wore thick, round metal-framed glasses. Gretl affectionately called her husband Fritz. He had served in the German Army during World War I as an acting field hospital inspector attached to a military field hospital (No. 20), not a combatant role, probably due to his defective eyesight. His father hardly ever made reference to his wartime experiences, except to inform his family that he still possessed a small handgun, which he had kept from the last war. It was more recently discovered through the Bavarian State War Archives that Friedrich Eichbaum, at the age of 26, received the Military Cross 2nd Class with Swords, the Prussian Iron Cross 2nd Class and Official Honours 3rd Class for special service to his country.
Fritz worked with his only brother, Zion, a bachelor, in a self-employed importing/exporting toy business. They lived comfortably and well, considering there was still a substantial amount of unemployment in Germany due to the Depression, which followed the slump in the world economy in 1929. Germany was hit particularly badly as the nation was still making reparations from World War I. Fritz was therefore able to employ cheap labour in the packing room. Lutz enjoyed the benefit of having his father work in the toy industry and was never short of playthings. One of his treats was to go to his father’s place of work and look at all the new arrivals displayed on the long shelves in the office; he remembers playing with toy cars and trucks and an electric train set. Fritz would usually walk the fifteen minutes home for lunch each day with his family and would sometimes invite prospective buyers (from England, Switzerland and Germany) to their home for dinner.
In the 1920s and 1930s Lutz’s father and uncle, as well as many of their acquaintances, were involved in the toy industry in Nuremberg, either in production or exporting goods. Lutz’s father bought the toy export business previously owned by Hans Krauss Nachfolger and retained the same business name. The office and packing rooms were situated in Kreuzlinger Strasse where they occupied some ground floor rooms. Several employees worked in the packing area. Each year Lutz’s father would travel to Leipzig to the internationally renowned Toy Fair (the venue later changing to Nuremberg itself). The following explains the context of the industry in which Lutz’s family members were involved.
Nuremberg and the toy industry
Nuremberg has more than 600 years of history in toy production and in the fourteenth century was one of the most politically, culturally and economically powerful cities in Europe, situated at the crossroads of important trade routes. It played a major role as the ‘birthplace of technol-ogy’, initially as a cottage industry, before producing goods in industrial quantities using master craftsmen to manufacture innovative toys of higher quality, and unskilled workers to make cheaper goods. There developed a distinct division of labour between labourers and organised craftsmen who set up guild-like organisations with more rigid trade rules.
Finger-length dolls were first made out of white unfired clay, the Tockenmacher or doll-maker gradually developing these into larger finer figures made of alabaster and tragacanth (a resinous secretion obtained from certain plants). By the eighteenth century doll makers began to specialise in the use of papier-mâché (head, arms and legs attached to stuffed bodies).
During this time wooden toys were also developed and these, along with dolls, were provided in large quantities for export. These wooden items, illustrated in a 1798 catalogue produced by prominent department store
