May 2010 marked the 20th anniversary of the reopening of Faber-Castell’s trading relations with what was then still East Germany. This milestone in the history of the company was cause for celebrations on 10 and 11 June, when Count Anton Wolfgang von Faber-Castell invited wholesalers and pioneers to company headquarters in Stein near Nuremberg. The climax of the get-together was a candlelight dinner in the family castle, giving those who had paved the way in 1990 an opportunity to review the events of that time.
After the Berlin Wall fell, and shortly before reunification of the two Germanys, it was decided that ordinary people living in the former Communist country should again be able to buy quality products by Faber-Castell. Hans Schiller had been familiar with East Germany from the Leipzig trade fairs in the early post-war years and was designated to build up business there. In May 1990, with a troop of highly motivated colleagues from Stein, he crossed the border with the aim of fulfilling a mission.
For a whole week the team toured the stationery shops with suitcases full of samples. Their goal was that the most important items in the range should be on display at least in every city and county town, if possible in every district. That turned out to be a major logistics exercise and at the same time an adventure into largely unknown territory.
In the course of two weeks starting in late June that year, the entire sales team then visited some 600 dealers between Rostock on the Baltic coast and Plauen near the Czech border, from Magdeburg in the west to Cottbus in the east. Now, 20 years on, Faber-Castell and its trading partners in the eastern part Germany can only agree with what many have said: we belong together, and now we’ve grown together.