Article: The invention and uses of folk art in Germany: wooden toys from the Erzgebirge mountains.(Research Article)

Abstract

This article attempts to historicise the concept of "folk art" using the example of wooden toys from the Erzgebirge mountains to show that it was invented by cultural elites as a marketing concept at the beginning of the twentieth century in order to support a domestic industy caught in structural crisis.

Introduction

Today the Erzgebirge mountains are situated on both sides of the German-Czech border. In the German part that belongs to the state of Saxony, wooden toys have been produced since the eighteenth century. [1] Historians and ethnographers have often explained the emergence of this home industry in terms of the "healthy ...

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