Margarete Steiff

Margarete Steiff (24 July 1847 – 9 May 1909) was a German seamstress who in 1880 founded Margarete Steiff GmbH, more widely known as Steiff, a maker of toy stuffed animals. Born in Giengen, Germany, Margarete contracted polio as a child, leaving her with both legs paralyzed and pain in her right arm. After training as a seamstress, she was able to raise enough money to buy a sewing machine by teaching people to play the zither. She began making clothes, eventually opening her own store in 1877. Around this time, Margarete came across a sewing pattern for a toy elephant, as well as patterns for mice and rabbits. Using felt and lambswool, Margarete made many of these toys as gifts for friends, and later began to sell some. Proving popular, the scale of production steadily increased, as did the variety of toys. In 1902, the company began making a toy bear with moveable joints based on a design by her nephew, Richard Steiff. Taking off in the United States, it was nicknamed after then-U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, becoming the first "teddy bear". Childhood Margarete was the daughter of building contractor Friedrich Steiff and his wife Maria Margarete, née Haehnle. At eighteen months, Margarete contracted a high fever that left her legs paralyzed and right arm difficult to raise. After three years, doctors finally diagnosed her with polio. Her parents were keen that she live a full life and investigated many medical treatments with little success. As a child she was taken to school in a small hand-pulled cart by her sisters and other neighborhood children. In her later reminiscences, she recalls, "All the children gathered around me and I organised games in which I was the center of attention. However, the older children often ran off and then I was left babysitting the tiny tots". Margarete regularly attended school throughout her childhood and in spite of the pain in her right hand, went to the needlework classes of Frau Schelling where she completed her training as a seamstress at the age of 17. She occasionally worked with her sisters, who had opened a women's tailor shop.