Die Zinnlaube vol. 14

 Volume 14 of Die Zinnlaube arrived recently, now only published once a year, this is the 2024/25 issue, 112 pages (including the cover) printed in full colour throughout with text in German and English.

Articles include: 

Figures portraying Andreas Hofer and others made by Johann Hilpert

Czech Gymnasts Association flats made by Ernst Heinrichsen

British Life Guards and Prussian Hussars, solids from 1880 by Ammon of Furth

Figures from the Hungarian Uprising of 1848/49 by Sohlke

Characters from fairy tales (more early flats)

Sack of Louvain 1914, rare set from Ernst Heinrichsen

10cm composition figures 1914 from SFJB of Paris

The Death of Marshal Schwerin 1757 

Swedish Kings from Karl XV to Gustav VI

Tin figure exhibition at the German National Museum, Nuremeberg

German infantry battle Franc tireurs in Louvain 1914

The heavy coverage of tin flat toy soldiers won't appeal to everyone but I find the articles are always very refreshing with subjects and figures you will rarely ever see elsewhere.  

100 Beautiful Dioramas

 The latest edition to my bookshelf, building dioramas has always been a prominent feature of the toy soldier collecting scene in Germany and this book illustrates 100 of the best from museum exhibits to examples in private collections.  30mm flat tin figures predominate, as you might expect, but there are plenty that include modern solid figures from 54mm down to 20mm.  

The architectural and landscape features are often the most impressive elements in the displays but what they all have in common is that they are exquisitely executed.  The dioramas are organised in chronological order of historical period depicted from prehistoric times to WW2.

The subject won't appeal to everyone but if your eye is pleased by pretty pictures of miniature figures then it probably will.

Compiled by Dr Egon Krannich and Walter Brock, 114 pages, illustrated throughout with about half the pictures in full colour.  The text is in German but after the Introduction this is mostly limited to a description of the diorama, who made it and where it is, finally there is a directory with brief notes on the diorama builders and other books in the series. ISBN 3-933124-07-7 I bought my copy through Amazon.de

A sample page from the book.

7YW Prussian assault pioneers

Some time back, a 7 Years War siege game we were planning called for an assault on a breach in the walls of a fortified city, so I bodged up these figures for it.

All these conversions started life as 54mm plastic toy soldiers of the American Revolution made by Louis MARX.  The figure on the left was advancing with musket at the ready, on the right he was stabbing down, their muskets have been trimmed away and hats carved off, to be replaced with spare mitre caps from the HaT 7YW Prussian infantry set, then its just a case of assembling and pinning the ladder (a spare form the TIMPO Fort Apache set) to them, their hands have also been built up a bit with milliput.

The sappers with axes are the same two MARX poses used for the ladder carriers, again they've had their muskets trimmed away and headgear replaced with HaT spares, the axes are from the TIMPO Vikings and the leather aprons are cut from cartridge paper stiffened with PVA.  The chap throwing grenade is the British officer from the same American Revolution series, his cane has been cut away and a grenade made from milliput, the fuses are made from old fashioned fuse wire (can you still get that?).

We all have to get our ideas from somewhere and the inspiration for these conversions came from a book illustrating old German Tin Flats, these conversions were previously shown in an article I did for Plastic Warrior magazine but I didn't get to show where the idea came from.

The book is Soldaten des Rokoko by Waldemar Piecha, published in 1982 (ISBN 3-423--02874-2), it contains 72 prints like these, each depicting different Regiments and formations of the Prussian army.  It's a great resource for uniform info and every figure illustrated is unique so it's a goldmine for ideas.  

Tin Flats were relatively cheap and easy to manufacture, the designs were drawn and then engraved into slate, so the mould making process is relatively quick and inexpensive.  Designs were often copied from antiquity as well as period art sources which gives them a sense of the times they depict.  The collecting potential for Flats is enormous, covering every historical period, they are very well documented and books on Flats are by far the largest section of my toy soldier library,  yet they are a section of the hobby that has been virtually bypassed by the world outside of Germany.

1066 Otto Gottstein diorama discovered

On a recent visit to Hastings, land of Jack in the Green, Bonfire Boys, Grey Owl and all things 1066, I happened to mention to Mrs C that when I was a boy I regularly holidayed here with my parents and one year discovered a museum up on the cliffs which had a diorama of the Battle of Hastings. I could remember it clearly in my minds eye, it was massive, built on a table which filled the room and composed of tiny Airfix figures, the whole thing covered in a glass case.  But on subsequent visits I could never find that museum again, had I just imagined the whole thing?

And thus dear reader began the Quest!

We set off from the Pier, scaled the cliffs and with the aid of a map (a map! why didn't I think of using one of those before?) the museum was quickly found, smaller and less imposing than I remembered but it was in the right location, that was a start.  Inside.....no diorama, in fact hardly any mention of the Battle at all! (instead whole rooms devoted to Grey Owl and conservation).  As we gathered up our disappointment and made to leave I noticed a few figures behind glass, 30mm flats, not what we had come in search of and so poorly lit that you could barely make them out.

Descending the cliffs we returned to the Old Town and resumed our holiday, sampling local ales and poking around in the myriad junk shops until we entered what appeared to be a second hand book shop and in a corner at the back we found this:

In a large glass case but looking rather dull and dusty was this diorama of the Battle of Hastings, much smaller than I remembered and comprising 30mm German tin flats not 20mm plastic Airfix figures, sadly this couldn't be the diorama from my childhood.

But it was!  I enquired about it's origin from an elderly gentleman who seemed to be in charge of the shop (sadly I didn't get his name) and he told me that it was indeed the diorama which had originally been housed in Hastings Museum up on the hill, the local borough Council had revamped the museum to make it a more interactive educational resource (oh, and also a venue for weddings and social events) for the community.  In this bright new vision there was no place for a big old box full of tiny tin soldiers so the diorama was broken up and put into storage, in due course the storage area was to be cleared out and the gentleman I was talking to had saved what was left from going in the skip. 

What remains is less than half, probably about a third of the original model, and without the centrepiece vignette of King Harold being shot in the eye by an arrow, which was retained by the museum and was the group of figures mentioned above that I had seen there.  Okay I can see that an old careworn exhibit isn't going to fit in with the needs of the modern world but I still felt it was an act of institutional vandalism, similar to what's been done at the National Army Museum (don't get me started on that)

I went back to take a longer look at the diorama to see how my memory could have been so misplaced, and then in the corner I noticed a small plastic plaque simply engraved D Stokes, London WC1 and I realised I was looking at one of the fifteen famous dioramas commissioned by the legendary collector, Otto Gottstein, for display in 1937 at the Royal United Services Museum in Whitehall.

 I didn't get a photo of the death of King Harold when I was at Hastings Museum, the display was just too dark, fortunately there is a monochrome pic of it in the 1937 catalogue for the RUSI museum exhibition.  And here it is, Harold is centre stage about to throw a spear and with a rather overscale arrow in the eye.

Above, the catalogue for the 1937 exhibition at the Royal United Services Museum in Whitehall together with the biography of Otto Gottstein and his collection (published by edition Krannich 2000, ISBN 3-933124-06-9, text mostly in German) well worth a read, Gottstein was the President of the British Model Soldier Society and also financed Roy Selwyn-Smiths first venture, Selwyn Miniatures, which went on to become the Britains Knights of Agincourt series.

If you happen to be in Hastings do pop into Hastings History House at 21 Courthouse Street, it's the current home of this venerable old diorama as well as the HQ of Old Hastings Preservation Society.  I started to write this post some time ago then realised that as today is the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, I really ought to get it posted.

Postscript.

After the RUSI Museum exhibition was broken up, the 15 dioramas were distributed to new homes far and wide, mostly military museums in the UK, one went to the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall and has subsequently been lost, while no less than four went to the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Canada - someone in Canada please tell us that they are still there!