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Albin PreisslerWell documented
Albin Preissler calls itself Seiffen's oldest Advent-light manufacturer, and the founding story explains why the company exists at all: Hugo Albin Preißler had worked as a lighting-factory foreman until a First World War injury forced him into self-employment as a woodturner in 1919. The company's four-candle "Preißler-Leuchter," featuring the Seiffen church, is still a signature piece.
Three generations have run the business since — Hugo Albin, then his son Albin Rudolph from 1953, then granddaughter Steffi Preißler and her husband Hartmut Bauer since 1991 — all working from the Hauptstraße 187 property the family bought in 1932.
The full story: a war injury, a chosen craft, three generations
Hugo Albin Preißler's path into woodturning wasn't a family inheritance — it was a pivot forced by circumstance. He'd worked as a Werkmeister, a foreman, in a lighting/lamp factory, until a First World War injury made that work impossible and pushed him toward self-employment as a Drechsler in 1919, alongside his wife Frieda. The property at Hauptstraße 187, purchased in 1932, remains company headquarters over a century later.
The second generation, Albin Rudolph Preißler, took over in 1953 — squarely inside the DDR period — and refocused the business entirely on Erzgebirge Christmas folk art: candle arches, pyramids, nutcrackers, smokers, angels, miners, carolers, and nativity scenes, worked in ash, maple, and beech. We couldn't verify whether the firm was ever folded into a state cooperative during the DDR years or ran as a private Handwerksbetrieb the whole time — the "Inh." (owner) naming convention the business still uses today is at least consistent with continuous private ownership, though it doesn't prove it. The third generation, granddaughter Steffi Preißler and her husband Hartmut Bauer, took over in 1991, the year after reunification, and have kept expanding the product line — new arch designs, broader pyramid ranges, an advent wreath stand — while keeping the flagship Preißler-Leuchter, with its trademark Seiffen church motif, at the center of the catalog.
Historical details above reflect publicly available sources as of 2026 and are presented in good faith; company-specific dates for small family workshops are sometimes thinly documented, and we've noted where regional context (rather than firm-specific record) is being described.