Two weeks after some idle internet research reveals that not only are those little wooden Christmas tree decorations still made in Germany, but in the Erzgebirge mountains there’s a village called Seiffen devoted to making them, I’m on a flight to Dresden.
I love Christmas, and the regions of Saxony and Thuringia in Germany, are, it seems, the centre of all things Christmassy.
In Seiffen, apparently, you can walk down a main street lined with old-fashioned shops selling nothing but nutcrackers, candles and decorations, and inside find entire families working in a workshop in the rear, painting and gluing away as if they were an illustration in some old Christmas annual. The image is so enticing I can’t wait until December to visit.
In the arrivals hall at Dresden I meet the owlish-looking Dr Pforr, a 76-year-old retired mining engineer and part-time guide who is going to translate for me. “Ven you are a pensionist it is not good always to be inside the house looking at the television,” he says, taking my case and mimicking someone slumped moronically in an armchair.
And after half an hour of driving along smooth, empty roads as the light fades, mist descends and dark forest closes in on either side, which is all very satisfying, I’m in the fairylit forest of decorated trees that is Stracoland.
“Where every day is Christmas Day!” says Dr Pforr, translating for the manageress. Frau Strassburger, a jolly middle-aged woman in black ankle boots and blow-dried magenta hair who is supervising the erection of a real 20ft Christmas tree in the middle of the shop, breaks off to show us around.
Clearly, Christmas traditions were not lost in the dark days of communism. Stracoland serves as a showcase for all the Christmas ornaments and decorations still made in Saxony.
Little wooden figures by the hundred fill shelf after shelf — flights of tiny wooden angels, squadrons of 19th-century soldiers, parades of miners. Giant wooden nutcrackers glare at mechanical polar bears, a talking Santa Claus bends to look at a long list of toys.
Among the twinkling tree lights, there’s even a Mrs Claus, whom I almost mistake for an exhausted elderly customer having a rest behind the Advent calendars.
There are Christmas baubles by the zillion (invented 400 years ago, in Thüringen, west of Saxony) and endless candle arches, candle “pyramids” – on which the heat of the candles makes the sails at the top and then the figures below rotate – and candle-holders in the shapes of angels and Erzgebirge miners. Many of the items, says Frau Strassburger, do indeed come from the toy workshops of Seiffen, but some are made right here.
In a workshop at the back a young man at a lathe is swiftly turning a three-inch length of pine into a tiny Christmas tree. “Production: 90 an hour!” translates Dr Pforr, nodding approval. Nearby, a middle-aged woman dourly glues bobbles on to the spokes of a wooden star. “Fifty an hour! The best-seller!”
“Tradition, tradition, tradition. That is what we Germans love,” says Dr Pforr, as we move upstairs to a candlelit restaurant overlooking the shop. “Particularly here in Saxony. In the GDR years everything was made for export and until the change in 1990 it was not possible for us to find our beloved Christmas items. The Chinese, of course, make a problem now. They copy us and sell more cheaply. But if you like the best quality you must buy from Saxony.” He examines the menu. “Ah. Wild mushroom soup. Will I be dead within the hour?”
Since I have to cram all the Christmassiness I can find into just two days, I have a packed itinerary. I’m staying in medieval Freiberg, roughly midway between Dresden and Seiffen, and at 8pm I’m taking my seat for the weekly recital on the magnificent Gottfried Silbermann organ at Freiberg’s St Marien cathedral.
“Very splendid at Christmas,” whispers Dr Pforr, as Bach fills the huge space. “And in December, concerts throughout the day for visitors to the Christmas market.”
Breakfast next day at the Hotel Silberhof — a cosy Jugendstil building — is by candlelight: pumpernickel toast and homemade bilberry jam in the company of South Korean businessmen visiting Freiberg’s Siemens factory.
Then, in a heavy mist that lifts occasionally to reveal vast prairie-like fields created during the GDR years, we set off for the Erzgebirge Mountains and Seiffen. En route, in Neuhausen, we stop at the world’s largest (and possibly only, but it’s in Guinness World Records ) nutcracker museum.
Maybe it’s because it is a dank day, but it feels rather forlorn. In a building at the back, a few visitors huddle in a gloomy former chair factory, now turned into a museum.
“In the GDR there were some good things and many bad, and among the good was that everyone had a job,” comments Dr P. “Now, it is very different. Some areas of Saxony have 20 per cent unemployment.”
Among the 4,000 nutcrackers, my favourite is a squirrel, made from silver mined in the Erzgebirge Mountains. Silver — and tin — first brought people to the area in the 13th century, and although the last mine did not close until 1849, the ore started to run out in the mid-17th century — and it was this that brought about the wooden-toy industry.
The desperate miners turned to wood-carving — traditionally an occupation for the long winter nights — as an alternative occupation.
At first they concentrated on candleholders, both to meet household demands and because of miners’ traditional “longing for light” — men went down the mines at 3am, worked in the dark all day, and in winter didn’t see daylight for months on end.
In 1690, an impoverished wood-carver from Seiffen pushed a wheelbarrowful of candlesticks and little toys all the way to a fair in Leipzig; within a century, wooden toys from Seiffen had become famous, sold all over the world.
Seiffen is touristy but lives up to my expectations — a long, Alpine-village-like main street and glowing windows emerging from the mist, all filled with the now familiar five staples of candle arches, pyramids, nutcrackers and wooden candlesticks depicting angels and miners.
Our first stop is the toy museum, which tells the whole story. Enchanting. Some of the best figures on display have been made by Walter Werner, a 77-year-old carpenter and local historian.
At his workshop across the road, one of the 100-plus toy-making businesses in the town, his wife and son are painting the components of tiny wooden soldiers. I delightedly examine the tiny models he made to illustrate his book on Seiffen, complete with a scene showing a miniature family decorating microscopic Christmas angels.
As dusk falls, we drive on to Olbernhau, the “Gate to Toyland”, an open-air museum with shops, wood-carving workshops, restaurants and hotels, and I meet someone who seems to point to a rather unrosy future for Seiffen.
Merko Lempik did three years’ training at Seiffen’s toy-making school, yet at 31 has never been able to find a job. “It is families who make the toys and run the toy-making businesses in Seiffen, and they cannot afford to hire outsiders.
There is nothing else to do in this area. That is why so many young people move away from here. I don’t want to move, so I do this just as a hobby,” he says, hoop-turning a perfect ring of tiny wooden horses.
There’s so much more I want to see — each medieval town here looks more alluring than the last, and there are none of the grim East German blocks I had expected.
Next morning, though, back in Dresden, I have just two hours left. I buy a Christstollen — the dense marzipan and raisin cake invented in Dresden — from one of the most beautiful shops I’ve ever seen, a 19th-century pictorially tiled dairy called Pfunds Molkerei.
Although Germany’s best known Christmas markets - Nuremberg, Munich, Berlin, Cologne, etc - are in what was the West, the markets in the less well-known but beautifully preserved medieval towns and cities of former East Germany are often more atmospheric. While it’s enjoyable not to hear other British voices, it can also be a drawback that English is not widely spoken in these places. Until reunification in 1990, Russian was the second language taught in schools. Since then, however, English has once again been put on the curriculum, so you will find that young people invariably speak a little.
Most Popular Ever
