Jewish Invention Myths: The Teddy Bear
Fewer jewish invention myths are as commonly believed as the Teddy Bear.
The traditional narrative is well explained by Aish as follows:
‘Did you know that the teddy bear owes its existence to a Jewish couple?
Morris Michtom, a Brooklyn candy shop owner, and his wife, Rose, created a stuffed toy bear in honor of Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. It all began when Roosevelt went on a hunting trip in 1902 but failed to locate a single bear. His assistants reportedly cornered and tied a black bear to a tree for the American president to shoot.
A big game hunter, Roosevelt refused to kill the bear because it would be unsportsmanlike, according to the National Park Service. A political cartoonist turned the fateful hunting trip into satire. When the Michtoms saw the cartoon, they decided to make a new toy and call it “Teddy’s Bear.” Their invention was wildly popular.’ (1)
This is narrative crediting Morris and Rose Michtom in 1902 with inventing the Teddy Bear is echoed by Stephen Pollard at the ‘Jewish Chronicle’, (2) while other entities that should know better also echo this narrative such as the US National Park Service (3) and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. (4)
This however is wrong.
It is true that Morris and Rose Michtom created a soft plushie style bear in mid to late November 1902 and that they coined the term ‘Teddy’s Bear’ after Clifford Berryman’s political cartoon in the Washington Post on 16th November 1902 poking fun at Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt.
However, the first ‘Teddy Bear’ was actually created months earlier in 1902 by Richard Steiff in Stuttgart, Germany and is more akin to what we would now think of as ‘Teddy Bear’ given it was jointed and could be moved around/played with. (5) Steiff’s design ‘Bear 55 PB’ was based on sketches he’d made of bears in the Nilsche Tiergarten in Stuttgart in 1894 some eight years earlier. (6)
Given that the two different ‘Teddy Bears’ were actually invented months apart on different sides of the Atlantic and it is almost certain that Morris and Rose Michtom didn’t know about Steiff’s invention since Steiff’s toy bears were recorded as to have been sold at the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903 (7) and the Mictoms were certainly the ones who came up with the name ‘Teddy Bear’. (8)
It is traditional to give Richard Steiff as well as Morris and Rose Michtom joint credit for the invention of the ‘Teddy Bear’ (9) and I also think this is fair.
However, it is also important to stress that if we are being technical then it was Richard Steiff who invented the ‘Teddy Bear’ first and Morris and Rose Michtom invented the name ‘Teddy Bear’.
So thus, we can see it is simply dishonest to credit Morris and Rose Michtom solely with inventing the ‘Teddy Bear’ because technically the non-jewish German Richard Steiff of Stuttgart invented the ‘Teddy Bear’ before the Michtoms did.
Scratch another ‘jewish invention’ myth!
References
(1) https://aish.com/10-big-jewish-inventions/
(2) https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/did-you-know-that-jews-invented-everything-g0z36e86
(3) https://www.nps.gov/thrb/learn/historyculture/storyofteddybear.htm
(4) https://carnegiemnh.org/history-of-teddy-bears/
(5) https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-teddy-bear; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-teddy-bear-once-seen-dangerous-influence-young-children-180983234/
(6) https://corporate.steiff.com/en/steiff-teddy/history/
(7) https://web.archive.org/web/20110723184018/http://www.teddybearandfriends.com/archive/articles/history.html
(8) https://www.therestisnoise.com/2010/07/berg-festival.html
(9) https://web.archive.org/web/20110723184018/http://www.teddybearandfriends.com/archive/articles/history.html; https://corporate.steiff.com/en/steiff-teddy/history/