In 1859, when tin smith Theodor Friedrich Wilhelm Märklin (1817-1866) made his decision to start producing doll's house accessories of lacquered tinplate, you can be sure he had no idea he was founding a firm of world renown. It's possible the idea came from his second wife Caroline (1826-1893), whom he had married the same year he made his fateful decision in the royal Württemberg borough of Göppingen, where he had lived since 1840. At any rate Caroline, a disciple of political economist Friedrich List, brought great energy and a brilliant talent for organization into building up the business. Just a few years later they had to move into bigger living and working premises because of demand for their products.

The death - in an accident - of the firm's founder in 1866 was a severe blow, and only the hard work and determination of his widow kept the company from collapse. She wanted to keep the business going for her three sons and so, for twenty years, she put up with extreme hardship. Caroline remarried in 1868, but the help she had hoped for in bearing the burden never came.

Unhappily for her, the children seemed to have no interest in the toy business. It was not until after the death of his stepfather that one of the sons, Eugen Märklin (1861-1947) picked up the threads - albeit only as a side-line, since he had a well-paid job elsewhere, as had his brothers. Finally though, on 1st March 1888, he decided with his brother Karl to found an unlimited trading company, and to incorporate their parents' business in this.

The years that followed, like those that had gone, were not free from worries about the company's existence. But optimism, an inherited determination and far-sighted business sense enabled Eugen Märklin to over-come the difficult times. It has to be noted, too, that without the hard work and encouraging help of his wife, the early phase of building up the business would not have gone so successfully. It was during this time that Eugen Märklin made the astute and- in the best sense -fateful decision in 1891 to take over the Ludwig Lutz tinplate toy factory in Ellwangen, a company whose products had been prized for decades at home and abroad because of their beauty. (Gradually, because of old-fashioned production and marketing methods, Lutz had become unable to compete effectively). The era of hand-made products was over. Eugen Märklin offered the Lutz work force the chance of resettling in Göppingen and thus keeping their jobs -something which showed a sense of social responsibility which in those days was far from being a matter of course. The know-how which long-serving and experienced staff specialists brought with them was, of course, a benefit to the company. Eugen Märklin clearly recognized not only the weaknesses of Lutz production methods but also their strong points, and for his own business he found a middle road between cheap mechanical mass production with lithographic printing and costly, hand-made production by craftsmen. And that's how it stayed - give or take occasional changes in stress on certain products - until the end of the tinplate era.

Extending the product range with Lutz articles affected first and foremost technical toys. For a while these continued to be produced as before, but soon they became "märklinized". The take-over of the Ellwangen firm played no small part in the rapid rise of the Göppingen company which, from 1892 onwards, called itself "Märklin Bros. & Co.". By then another associate had been won over - Emil Friz of Plochingen, who became a joint owner along with Eugen Märklin

Märklin had caused a stir at the Leipzig Spring Fair by putting on show a clock-work-driven train that ran on rails. True, there had already been toy trains which ran on their own tracks. Märklin's success lay in the novelty of offering a whole layout system which could be added to piece by piece and with rails of a gauge which enabled a degree of standardization - an idea which other manufacturers soon latched onto.

A printed catalogue from 1895 still clearly shows a preponderance of traditional Märklin products - that is "Equipment for children's kitchens etc.". Five years later the range of railroad and other technical toy products had greatly broadened. Already in those days stress was being placed on a generous choice of accessories - something kept for decades- This broad choice has proved a major reason behind the world wide popularity of the Märklin railroad.

The business's rapid expansion meant that it had to move in 1895 into larger premises -Marktgasse 21. Five years later these had already proved too small and so a new building with 6,000 square meters of floor space on the various stories was built in Stuttgarter Strasse. The company moved in to the new facilities in 1900. The high investment needed to increase production meant more capital had to be pumped into the firm. Thus, on May 1st 1907, Richard Safft came as a further partner to the company which, from 1908, traded under the name "Märklin Bros. & Cie".

Since the turn of the century large printed catalogues were produced every four or five years - each with annual supplements -which were sent out not to customers but to dealers. Customer catalogues were not introduced until 1924. A look at the 1904 and 1909 editions shows the explosive growth in range of products. As Eugen Märklin was to describe later, his partner Emil Friz had the ambition of becoming "the first and biggest toy factory in the world".

As has already been mentioned, before the First World War and also later, Märklin by no means produced just model railroads. There is hardly an article from the realm of technical toys and doll's accessories which you could imagine not having been produced by Märklin over the past 140 years.

A special problem lay in the seasonal nature of the toy trade, something which has always existed. It was for this reason that Eugen Märklin had already been producing and distributing household products before 1891, and why later a certain part of the company's range consisted of "summer articles". In 1928 there was even a summer catalogue.

In 1911 a six-story, 110 meter-long company headquarters was built along the Stuttgarter Strasse. Today it is still one of Göppingen's most imposing buildings. By 1914 the number of employees had risen to 600. Then came the First World War - an event which proved for Märklin, like many another firms, a painful break. Many of the specialist staff were called up, and only a few returned. Production was perforce switched to "wartime articles" and the firm's spectacular growth - particularly in the export field -was brought to an abrupt halt. Suddenly access to foreign markets was cut and there was no customer for part of the products which had been made specially to the requirements of the target countries.

Faced with this predicament it proved a boon that - in contrast to other toy manufacturers - the firm had not neglected the home market and thus survived the difficult post-war era relatively well. Even so, various changes of course proved necessary after 1920 in both the business and the technical fields. The switch from an unlimited trading company to a limited liability company - originally planned for tax purposes - was deemed a necessity after the death of Emil Friz in 1922. It. was not until four years later that his son-in-law, Max Scheerer, became the firm's third managing director. In 1923 Eugen Märklin's son Fritz joined the company, and in 1935 took over his father's position when the latter retired after 50 years

The end of the war brought with it, too, the need for a change of direction in policy concerning what sort of models were produced. Paring down of the range meant the wide II and III gauge railroads disappeared. The development of the company's electric railroads really got going in 1925 when the 20-volt system was introduced. The model designers turned increasingly for their inspiration to the German Reichsbahn (German State Railroad) founded in 1920 for its locomotives and rolling stock, and also the whole field of accessories.

Noted toy historian Gustav Reder has called the years after 1925 those of the "Märklin Awakening" - meaning an ever-clearer tendency towards producing true-to-life models, the first steps on the road to real model railroads. Märklin's "Reichsbahn era" between 1927 and 1939 brought a whole fresh impetus. By 1929 the number of employees had risen to 900. At the beginning of the 1930s the Bing company ceased toy production, automatically making Märklin the market leader as the Nuremberg company of Karl Bub - with its cheap mass production - was not seen as a serious competitor.