In August 2018, I received a message from Mr Adrian Mattes, the great-grandson of Georg Levy, founder of the Gely company, who was looking for information about his great-grandfather’s toy manufacturing business.
This marked the start of a correspondence; he told me what his mother had recently told him about the life of Georg Levy, who had been stripped of his business in Nuremberg by the Nazis in 1936, but managed to flee Germany, taking his family to Great Britain where he began a new life.
Adrian Mattes intended to write a “family book,” and we exchanged our respective documentation.
During his career, Georg Levy produced charming toy aeroplanes and aeroplane sets, initially as penny toys
BIPLAN AIR MAIL
1925, lithographed sheet metal, push toy, 6.5 x 9 cm
MONOPLAN AIR MAIL
1925, lithographed sheet metal, push toy, 6.5 x 9 cm
AIR MAIL, 119
Airplane game featuring the monoplane 119
1925–1930, lithographed sheet metal, clockwork mechanism, the airplane and train rotate, 10 x 27 cm
D 1929
1929, lithographed sheet metal, clockwork mechanism, the ship’s propeller propels the seaplane across the water, 25.5 x 25.5 cm
G.L.164
Early 1930s, lithographed sheet metal, push toy, 17 x 16 cm
L 167
Early 1930s, lithographed sheet metal, spring-driven mechanism that rolls along the floor, 24.0 x 22.0 cm
L 193
Monoplane
Early 1930s, lithographed sheet metal, push toy, 24.5 x 23.5 cm
Biplane
Early 1930s, lithographed sheet metal, push toy, 24.5 x 21.5 cm
Fate brought a promising venture to a premature end and put a stop to the production of toys that would certainly have filled us with wonder.
I wanted to pay tribute to Georg Levy and his family.
In the mid-1920s, in Germany, during those happy days between the two wars, Georg Levy is on the right
Georg Levy and his wife celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, surrounded by their family, in London just after the war.