Herrnhuter Sterne GmbH

What they do

Herrnhuter Sterne makes one product, in many sizes and colours: the Herrnhut star, a three-dimensional star with 25 points, 17 square and 8 triangular, plus a free 26th opening for the lamp fitting. Paper stars for indoors are still folded and glued by hand at the manufactory in Herrnhut, a small town in eastern Saxony near the Polish and Czech borders. Plastic versions for outdoor use have machine-made points. The site also runs a visitor manufactory where guests can watch stars being made.

Why it matters

The star is the ancestor of a whole family of Christmas stars, and the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) features it among its notable East German brands. The story begins in the early 19th century, when a mathematics teacher at a boarding school of the Moravian Church (the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine) used paper stars to teach geometry. Sources point to the school in Niesky, about 50 km from Herrnhut. Pieter Hendrik Verbeek, a Herrnhut book and music dealer, began selling assembled stars in 1897 and applied in 1925 for a patent on a frameless star that could be packed flat and posted.

The 20th century was turbulent. The Nazi state halted production in 1940. In 1950 the East German authorities nationalised the firm as a VEB, and for years most stars went for export, so East German families often found them only under the counter. Production returned to the church in 1967, and in 1991 the manufactory restarted as a GmbH with 23 employees.

Products to know

• Paper stars from small window sizes upwards, in classic red, white and yellow plus annual special colours.
• Weather-resistant plastic stars, up to 1.30 metres across.
• Collector editions, for example stars made from sheet music or book pages.

The German angle

Herrnhut is the spiritual home of the worldwide Moravian Church, founded in 1722, and the star travelled with Moravian missionaries across the world. Today the manufactory reports sales in the hundreds of thousands each year: the DPMA cites about 700,000 stars from 140 staff, and a 2026 epd report gives around 850,000 stars a year exported to 60 countries. Figures vary by source and year, but all agree the work remains hand-made in Saxony.

Sources

• DPMA: The Herrnhut star
• evangelisch.de: Die Sternemacher aus Herrnhut
• Sonntagsblatt: Nur echt mit 25 Zacken
• Wikipedia: Moravian star