Steiff, Margarete (1847–1909)

German entrepreneur who invented the teddy bear. Name variations: Gretel Steiff. Born Margarete Steiff in Giengen on the Brenz, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, in 1847; died in 1909; sister of Fritz Steiff.

Born in Germany in 1847, Margarete Steiff, known as Gretel, contacted polio when she was 18 months old. The disease left her body paralyzed, except her left hand and arm. Steiff enrolled in a local sewing school and excelled at needlework. In 1872, she opened a dressmaking business; with its success, she opened a factory in 1877.

Throughout the years, Steiff had made toy cloth elephants and pin cushions for friends. In 1879, she added fluffy material to an elephant from a pattern she had seen in the fashion magazine Modewelt, and the Steiff toy animals were born. Within a year, her brother Fritz Steiff noticed that her crafts were in demand, and three years later her nephew Richard began to design other animals. In 1904, sister and brother founded their family toy business, Margarete Steiff GmbH, in Giengen. Steiff's most popular toy was the teddy bear, which started a craze that has not ceased. Teddy bears gained huge popularity at the turn of the 20th century, especially with the help of their namesake, Teddy Roosevelt. By 1907, Steiff shipped a million of them to America alone. When Margarete Steiff died two years later at age 62, she left the company to her nieces and nephews. Her nephew Hans-Otto Steiff ran the company as its president from 1951 to 1984 and remained on the board until his death on December 31, 1994. That same month, a Steiff bear—now a collectors' item—had been sold for a record $171,000 at a Christie's auction in London.