Lehmann (Ernst Paul Lehmann)

Ernst Paul Lehmann produced delightfully whimsical tin clockwork toys exported worldwide, known for clever mechanical actions and cheerful lithography. EPL Lehmann toys are among the most beloved antique tin toys, frequently commanding premium prices at auction. This is the same firm as the Ernest Lehmann record listed separately in this encyclopedia. The Brandenburg works was expropriated in 1945 and the family rebuilt in Nuremberg, where the business became LGB.

Ernst Paul Lehmann, who founded the works at Brandenburg an der Havel in 1881; the firm also appears in this encyclopedia as Ernest Lehmann, and both records describe the same company.

Lehmann built its reputation on light, cheap, extremely inventive lithographed tinplate. Its principle was to get the maximum apparent action from the minimum mechanism: a flywheel, a light spring, an eccentric wheel, and a toy that lurched, tumbled, waddled or chased in a way that looked far more complicated than it was.

The named character toys are the catalogue's spine — Naughty Boy, Paddy and the Pig, Tut-Tut, Balky Mule, the Am Pol polar explorers, Quack-Quack, Uncle Sam, the Alabama Coon Jigger. Some of these subjects trade in racial caricature that was routine in 1900 and is not now; the toys remain historically significant and are collected as period objects, but buyers should know what the titles refer to.

The company exported worldwide under the "EPL" trademark and patented aggressively. The Brandenburg works was expropriated in the Soviet zone after 1945, and the family rebuilt in Nuremberg, where the business eventually became LGB — the large-scale garden railway maker — giving the Lehmann name a continuous life from 1881 to the present under two unrelated product identities.