1. The Glass Christmas decorations, a craft destroyed by automation

Glass Christmas decorations were invented in 1848 in Lauscha, Thuringia. The concept gained quick success, and Christmas balls production rapidly spread to all of the German-dialect speaking glassworkers communities, including in Lorraine, where production started in Goetzenbrrucke in 1858, and further expanded when the village, previously a French territory, fell under German control in 1871. In the early 1900's, Goetzenbrucke's production expanded, consisting of Chritmas balls, but also larger glass spheres used to make spectacles and watch glasses.

One of the few pictures of the glass craftsmen of Goetzenbrucke performing their skills. The man on the left is one of the elder glass craftsmen who transmitted some of these techniques to the younger generations in the late 1990’s. Courtesy: the Centre International d'Arts Verriers.

The village exported silver-coated decorative glass spheres as far away as Thailand and India, where Maharajahs bought them to decorate their palaces. But in the 1950's production declined in the face of machine-made Christmas decorations; and the factory's hot shop closed in 1964. Lauscha's workshops met the same fate in a communist system: in the 1960's, the RDA government replaced them with automated factories, costing a great number or jobs and skills which were lost in the process.