This little stein should be recognized as the stein that started the world’s most unique beer-stein collecting society—Stein Collectors International. Here’s an excerpt from the story Tom was asked to write for the club.

By Tom McClelland for publication in the Stein Collectors International Newsletter

BUYING MY FIRST STEIN
In the summer of 1956, I was nearing the end of a short career in the military. Luckily, fortunately and happily, I had spent my time in West Germany for a year and a half, toiling in G-2, Intelligence, doing top-secret reports for a group of scientists and specially trained army officers.

The United States Army, Europe (USAREUR) headquarters was in Heidelberg, an unbombed city that been declared an open city when the Allies were taking Germany at the end of World War II.

There was no better place to be stationed and no more interesting assignment than working in the intriguing world of military intelligence, which is not, by the way, really an oxymoron.
In my second summer abroad, I had a bicycle for pedaling down the Neckar Valley and into old Heidelberg. On one trip to town I stopped at an antiques shop, admired an old stein and purchased it for 10 marks (about $2.50 at the time). It would be my companion on numerous trips to town. the stein being carried in the bike’s container behind the seat, usually wrapped carelessly in a windbreaker. My stein and I entered many a German gasthaus where I had it filled and emptied countless times.

Surviving peacetime duty in the military was no challenge for me; the stein, however, had to count on luck. It was never handled as a valuable artifact, and it was something of a miracle that it was never cracked or broken. I recall bending the malleable pewter thumblift with no regard for the life of the drinking vessel.

My first stein accompanied me home to California and became my favorite souvenir of army time. It was a personal item. A look at the half-liter stein brought back hazy memories of visits to Heidelberg’s storied drinking stations.

As a civilian I added a few more steins to what would become a collection. I knew nothing about them, but they were admired and cherished. As an assistant tour leader in the summer of 1961, our vagabond bunch of young people visited Heidelberg. I took everyone to a place on the Haupstrasse that I had passed years earlier: Jager’s. The store, hidden down a narrow walkway, dealt in nothing but steins. A small window on the city’s main street was always crammed full of beautiful steins, and carried a placard with information on how to find the actually store.

On this visit I bought a couple of steins, dirt cheap at the time. Though they had Mettlachs for sale, I knew nothing about them and bought none. One of my buys was a two handled pewter piece with no lid. That should be an indication of my knowledge of steins at the time.
A year later I was married and made another sojourn to Heidelberg, this time adding a few more pieces from the Jager’s inventory. I was hooked, but still knew little about the origins of the interesting drinking vessels.

As happens at the start of most collections, it takes one to get started, and a couple of more to call it a collection. My original purchase of the blue salt-glazed stein in 1956 was the slow-acting catalyst that started my collecting. Since I would start Stein Collectors International in 1965, that same little stein should be recognized as the stein that started the world’s most unique beer-stein collecting society—Stein Collectors International.

THE HALF-LITER STEIN THAT STARTED S.C.I.
An ordinary half-liter pottery piece is the first stein I bought, and it becomes the stein that sparked the idea of starting Stein Collectors International. The relief body shows a very young couple walking nowhere in particular. The girls holds a pitcher or urn. The boy hoists a glass or possibly a stein. Relief angels are on each side of a scroll that emanates from the center couple. The German inscription on the scroll reads: Leib was rar ist. Trink was klar ist! The background is similar to a Westerwald blue. A decorative series of relief lines in brown encircles the stein above and below the main decor.

The pointed pewter lid has an inscription, hard to read. A German friend tells me it basically translates to “They served…to their memory.” It is dated 1891-92.
The thumblift, a decorative scroll, is attached with a five-piece hinge. The body is tan colored.

The body is mint. The pewter lid is bent around the edges and has some tearing where the lid attaches to the thumblift. There are no discernable marks on the bottom. My guess is that the stein dates to the era when the lids was engraved: the early 1890s.

It is quite a normal antique from the turn of the century, but because of who bought it, the little German souvenir was instrumental in starting something that would become historically significant.

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