Extra Credit Questions

[Eva Elisabeth]

While I as a child had zero interest in dolls (not any cute and cuddly) I was addicted to stuffed toy animals, precisely the Steiff ones. Luckily my father (although not running it himself anymore) owned a toy shop...

And THE soft toy animal is the teddy bear, as y'all know named after Teddy Roosevelt. On a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902, the president failed to make a kill and so his hosts caught a bear, presenting it to him as a target. He refused to shoot it, saying: "Spare the bear". This subsequent Washington Post cartoon:
   
...inspired Russian immigrant Morris Michtom of Brooklyn to create a toy bear, "Teddy's bear".

At the same time, the German Steiff firm, unaware of Michtom's bear, created a similar "teddy" bear, too, and shipping the first supply to the US in early 1903 ended up in the great teddy bear shipwreck mystery:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14231337

BTW, Hermann Berg was the brother of composer Alban Berg (the one with the twelve-tone technique).

When the Titanic sank in 1912, Steiff produced this black furry fellow, and another cute and practical novelty of those days was the hot water bottle teddy:
       

Final BTW - Margarete Steiff had suffered from polio in childhood - absolutely admirable how she nevertheless made her way in life, and especially as a female in those days: