Standing wooden nutcrackers in the form of soldiers and kings were shown in the Sonneberg and Erzgebirge regions by 1800. In both places, carving of nut crackers arose from the earlier tradition of carving religious figure.
In 1830, the term “Nussknacker” appeared in the dictionary of the Brothers Grimm. It was defined as “often in the form of a misshaped little man, in whose mouth the nut, by means of a leaver or screw, is cracked open”.
In 1872 Wilhelm Füchtner, known as the “father of the nutcracker,” made the first commercial production of nutcrackers using the lathe to create many of the same design.
The Nutcracker ballet with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, December 18, 1892. Since the late 1960s this ballet has enjoyed enormous popularity.
