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From Wedding Anniversary to Puppentour SONNEBERG. Mary and Josh Lytle from Tucson, Arizona, are on their way with their Puppentour again this year. Their trip, which begins this Friday in Paris, will also lead to Sonneberg, on the "German Toy Road," by May 25th. On their route through Thuringia, they visit not only the German Toy Museum, but also the Marolin factory in Steinach, as well as the factory museum of Schildkröt-Puppen in Rauenstein. It is a sweetly won tradition of Mary and Josh Lytle to explore the Thuringian doll world with their Puppentour. Everything began quite differently. On the occasion of their 20th wedding anniversary, Josh and Mary Lytle, who with her daughter Janet operates a doll restoration studio, flew over the Atlantic, rented a car, and for three weeks, drove through Germany. The visit of toy and doll museums was not planned for their trip, because they had no notion where and whether there were such in Germany. But when they visited a doll museum in Stein am Rhein, they were so inspired by it that they bought a doll- and toy-museum travel guide. They thereupon visited all museums of this type on their travel route. They believed that other doll lovers would also be interested in visiting such museums. Thus the idea of the Puppentour was born. In 1995, Mary Lytle and her husband Josh organized their first tour of toy museums, doll factories, festivals, and flea markets. Since then, the travel route has constantly expanded, and now destinations in France, Austria, Switzerland, and Czech Republic are included in the itinerary. Since the interest in the USA has become so great, the Puppentour has taken place two times per year since 1999. 18 of the 26 passengers on the coming journey have already participated one to four times before. The German Toy museum, which was founded in 1901 as an industry and trade museum of Meininger Oberlandes by teacher Paul Kuntze, is the oldest special museum for toys in Germany and thus truly worth the journey. But also, the guests will be impressed with the Marolin factory with their Christmas and Easter decorations of papier mâché and the Schildkröt-Puppen factory and its factory museum. For here, more than 900 dolls from an over 100 year old production of dolls under this mark are displayed. Because the participants are doll lovers, collectors, and doll-, toy- or miniature-restorers, they are interested in the history and the daily lives of the doll manufacturers and Sonneberg families, that one hundred years before produced toys in home work, and want to experience details of the work of the presser, turner, carver, stuffer, and eye-, wig-, and joint-maker, as well as today's doll artists and manufacturers. The participants of the Puppentour from the USA will certainly gladly remember Thuringia and its dolls. And one thing is sure, Mary and Josh Lytle will come again to Sonneberg in September this year with their next Puppentour. |
