Maker record
Ernst Heinrichsen
Ernst Heinrichsen is a Nuremberg, Germany, maker of tin figures, including flat figures and groups depicting subjects such as market life, military history, and civilian scenes. The firm opened in 1839 and became a leading producer of tin figures in the city. Its work ranged from small figures to elaborate scenes, including a miniature Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt produced around 1930. Heinrichsen’s figures were made both as children’s toys and for collectors.
- Founded
- 1839
- Countries
- Germany
- Locations
- Nuremberg, Germany
- Founders
- Ernst Heinrichsen
The story of Ernst Heinrichsen
The Ernst Heinrichsen tin-figure works opened in Nuremberg in 1839. The firm developed a broad range of figures and groups, including military subjects and civilian scenes. A tin market group attributed to Heinrichsen by the Bavarian National Museum dates to around 1830/1840 and is recorded as made in Nuremberg. The firm’s most successful periods included the 1850s and 1870s.
The range expanded beyond military figures to include plants, animals, foreign cultures, historical personalities and events, fairy-tale scenes, festivals, and leisure activities. As tin figures lost ground as children’s toys to less expensive composition figures, Heinrichsen drew on its large catalogue and issued series for collectors. A surviving 78-page list from 1914 covered military history. Around 1930, the firm produced a miniature Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt with more than 30 stalls and miniature visitors.
Ernst Wilhelm Heinrichsen, the founder’s grandson and the third-generation proprietor, died in 1938. The firm then held about 16,000 moulds, accumulated over roughly a century. Later family ownership maintained production of individual figures and series based on original designs. The firm’s story therefore continued beyond the end of its most active creative period in the late 1930s.