Germany Pavilion at EPCOT: Architecture, Caramel, and So Much More



Germany Pavilion at EPCOT: Architecture, Caramel, and So Much More

Hello and welcome back to the Where In The Park Podcast. This is Kevin, and on this episode, we're continuing our journey around the World Showcase. We started this series in January with an episode all about why we even have an EPCOT theme park with a World Showcase, and have done deep dives into the details found in the Mexico, Norway, and China pavilions. Continuing our clockwise trek around the park, we are going to walk past the Outpost, or the Refreshment Outpost, or African Outpost, or simply the remains of a once planned Equatorial Africa pavilion that never was... So, the next country that we are going to discuss here is Germany.

Okay, so Germany was one of the countries that had long been included in the list of countries for the World Showcase, even back when it was its own EPCOT "satellite" project that was supposed to go where the Ticket and Transportation Center is located today, across the lake from the Magic Kingdom. There was art in the 1976 Annual Report from Disney that showed concept for a Rhine River Cruise, with the caption on the art explaining that it would be presented to potential German sponsors. But, I'll get back to that in a little bit.

Snow White's Wishing Well

As far as what you see these days as you walk toward the pavilion from that Outpost area? You come across the back of the Karamell-Küche shop, and if you're lucky, you'll spot Snow White ready to take photos by her wishing well. We found an AllEars.net article from July 31st, 2009 that refers to it as being newly added, so we'll assume that they're right and that it showed up on, or shortly before, that date.

Snow White is, of course, the main character from the world's first animated feature film, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It is based on a German fairy tale that was published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm, which is why it's here in the Germany pavilion. The version of the well found here isn't quite as ornate as the versions found at the Disneyland parks in Anaheim, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, and does not include the Snow White Grotto like you will find at those parks.

The Architecture Is Inspired by More Than One German Town

But, as you continue past that section and really enter the pavilion, you will find buildings stylized on designs from the 13th to 17th centuries. Many online sources point out that the designs are based on structures found in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and some just leave it at that. Don't get me wrong, many of the iconic details in the pavilion are from Rothenburg, but this is the Where In The Park Podcast, so you know I'm going to be digging in further. Just as in previous episodes in this series, I have taken our 2010 copy of The Imagineering Field Guide to Epcot off the shelf, and the Imagineers who wrote that book point out that the buildings are inspired by locations all around Germany, which the designers have quoted "woven into a backdrop that is more evocative than literal." This means I won't be able to do a building-to-building comparison of everything in the pavilion, but I'll try to point out what the Imagineers were going for along the way.

Karamell-Küche: The Story Behind EPCOT's Famous Caramel Shop

Like I had already mentioned, the first building you will come across walking clockwise around the World Showcase is the Karamell-Küche. This shop received this name in September of 2010, when it replaced the Glas und Porzellan shop, which was sponsored by Goebel, a German company mostly known for producing Hummel figurines, which they had stopped production of in 2008. The Karamell-Küche, which translates to the Caramel Kitchen, is sponsored by Werther's Original. Both Goebel and Storck (pronounced "shtoark"), that's the name of the company that produces Werther's Original, are family-owned German companies, with Goebel having been founded in 1871 in Oeslau (ERSS-low), which these days is known as Rödental (RUR-den-tahl), while Storck was founded in Werther (VEHR-tur) in 1903 as the Werther's Sugar Confectionery Factory. Actually, I should point out that the town name is spelled the same as the candy we all know, and the candy is known in Germany by the VEHR-tur name, but that candy we in the US know as Werther's Original wasn't even sold as a named product until 1969, and it wasn't available in the United States until 1977.

As for the shop in EPCOT, it spreads across two house-inspired facades that closely match an original publicized piece of concept art, and they do not appear to be directly related to Goebel or Werther's. The first building is a smaller one-floor house, while the second has two floors. Of course, this is just for looks, when you walk inside, you won't be able to go upstairs. The smaller house has beaver-tail roof tiles in various shades of red, and has oriel windows on the left and right of the front door. Along the top of those windows are glass rondels, and there are a few more that show up on the sign above the door as well. The history of rondel stained glass, as well as those oriel windows, goes back to the Middle Ages. As for the glass, it was traditionally created with blown glass, but rondels can also be spun. Either way, they were often used because humans hadn't yet figured out how to create large sheets of glass, so they would create windows by piecing together several smaller round pieces of glass to be able to let light in while keeping the weather out. Some sources say the artform started in France, while others say Italy. Either way, they were also popular as windows in Germany.

The Seashell Window That Inspired Disney Parks

As for the taller building, similar to many buildings in Germany, it is half-timbered, starting after the first floor. There is also a timbered-framed bay window with a turret roof on the building here with some large wood-carved scallop seashells underneath each window section. This is based on a similar feature found on a building at Klingengasse 9, or 9 Klingen Lane, in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and is known as Feuerleinserker, or Feuerleins Oriel. That window has a few more details not found in the park, and there are some details on the EPCOT version that aren't over there in Germany, but if you did a rough sketch of that window and only included the seashells, I see how you could pretty it up to the window that is in the park.

There is actually a similarly-styled window found at Disneyland in California, on the front of the Red Rose Tavern, which was formerly Pinocchio's Village Haus, as well as at Disneyland in Paris, on the Au Chalet de la Marionnette restaurant, which is a Pinocchio-themed restaurant that looks very similar to the original California version. The Pinocchio Village Haus at Magic Kingdom has a different look to it, but it does also have a timbered-framed bay window with a turret above it, and seashells underneath it. And, actually, the Magic Kingdom building pre-dates the other three, where it was there on opening day in 1971, while Epcot's premiered when the park opened 1982, Disneyland in California in 1983 with the New Fantasyland addition, and Paris in 1992 when that park opened.

Why Disney's Pinocchio Looks More German Than Italian

Now, some of you might be thinking, that's weird, Pinocchio is an Italian story, so why did Imagineers put a similar design at their Pinocchio restaurants to what is found at the Germany pavilion? Well, the 1940 animated film had a Bavarian look to it because Walt Disney decided it should take place in an Alpine village in northern Italy named South Tyrol. According to an article by the late Jim Korkis, the concept artist for the film, Gustaf Tenggren, actually went to Rothenburg to sketch concept art for the film, so the look in the film is more German than Italian.

But yeah, either way, I couldn't find a seashell design underneath windows in the feature film, but I did find a piece of concept art by Tenggren for Pinocchio that sold at auction back in 2020 that includes a sketch of this building. And, I actually noted down that whole thing about prettying up a rough sketch to look like this window before finding the actual rough sketch. He hints at the seashells in the sketch and leaves out some of the other details that didn't make it into the parks, and the only reason why I'm confident that it's the same building is because I found an etching that another artist had done at almost the exact same angle as Tenggren's sketch, but with all of the details in place, and that one is clearly marked that it's in Rothenburg, and it's clearly the same building that's still there today.

Hidden Details Inside Karamell-Küche

Each house facade in the park has its own door that leads into the caramel shop. Above the first door you come across, there is a sign that has a painting above the name of the shop that includes some white buildings with red roofs among several trees. While the second door has a relief of two pitchers pouring white liquid together. Each of these works of art are actually based on the art found on Werther's Original packaging since at least 1985. (You can usually find vintage tins from 1985 on Ebay.)

You can also see more art of the town inside the shop, only larger, included on a mural collage labeled "The Werther's Original Story." Below the art of the town is text that reads

"Willkommen in Werther, Deutschland  / Welcome to Werther, Germany / Population 11,500."

That's right, this is Werther, a small town in northern Germany, and it is surrounded by Teutoburg Forest. Now, when I first read the population, I assumed they were referring to back when the candy was invented, but according to the most recent census from 2024, they actually have a population estimated at 11,051. The population between 2001 and 2011 went from 11,740 to 11,367, so I'm going to guess that the caption was fairly accurate when it was installed in 2010 at its 11,500. But yeah, according to a German genealogy wiki, back in the early 1900s, the population hovered around 2,000 people.

On the top-left of that mural is a painting of a large red-and-white half-timbered building, which includes the caption "The Original Caramel Kitchen." It explains that the Werther's story began in 1909 in the kitchen of a "quaint German home." The building is today known as the Storck house, and it is where Werther's Original was created by Gustav Nebel, an employee at August Stork's confectionary factory, in 1909, which was six years after the Storck company was founded. The building is said to have been built by Joh. Friedr. Bolenius around 1760, with Storck taking over the property in 1903 as his residence, as well as an office building for his newly formed business. Today, the building is still standing, and is one of the buildings of the Ravensberg adult education center, which it has operated as since 1985.

The art on the bottom-left of the mural depicts a young man stirring some caramel while a chef overlooks, and it is labeled "A Family Tradition." There was an ad that came out from Werther's the same year this was installed that has a similar looking actor wearing a matching chef's outfit. I'm not sure if this is supposed to represent August Storck looking over Gustav Nebel's work, or if it's Nebel training a young man to make caramel. I also haven't been able to find anything connecting that inventor of Werther's Original to the Storck family other than his employment. But, yeah, sure, in a town of two to eleven-thousand people, I'm confident everyone's family in one way or another.

Then, on the top-right, the painting includes ingredients found in Werther's Original candies. According to the caption, which has the title "The Secret," the best ingredients include "real butter, fresh cream, white and brown sugar, a pinch of salt, and lots and lots of stirring." Also represented in the art are vanilla beans and chunks of chocolate. The actual recipe for Werther's Original is a trade secret, but most people online guessing at the recipe almost always include vanilla extract. And, while chocolate hasn't traditionally been a Werther's Original ingredient, from my research, the first chocolate-covered versions were released in 2010, but only in the United Kingdom. That was also the same year this art was installed in EPCOT, so maybe they were hinting at their plans to release chocolate varieties globally. When the shop opened, they did offer many items with chocolate along with caramel, like they do today. Also, chocolate is the main ingredient in Riesen, the first branded candy produced in Germany, which is also a Storck brand.

And well, the "taller building" side of the Karamelle-Kuche shop actually has a walkway into the next shop, die Weihnachts ecke, which translates to The Christmas Corner.

The Christmas Corner Isn't as German as You Might Think

This building, and the one next to it, weren't actually included on the original concept art. They were blocked from view by the larger building of the Karamel-Kuche. The outside of the facade that includes the entrance to the Christmas Corner is just off-white with another beaver tail-tile red roof. To the right is a tower with an onion dome, which in German is referred to as Zwiebelturm, and is usually found on religious buildings in Southern Germany. Looking through a few hundred photos of German churches with a single tower with an onion dome on top, I'm going to say the one I think this looks closest to is the Church of Saint-Coloman, in the village of Schwangau. I like to think that one was the inspiration because of the color, interesting angles of the smaller part of the building, the circular upper windows and the arched lower windows, and that it's next to an onion topped tower. But, I also like that it's actually not far from Neuschwanstein Castle, which is famously the inspiration for many of the features on the original Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland in California. Also, that church in Germany has trees on each of side of the building, while the one in the park has trees on either side as well. Is it a one-to-one match, no, I mean, the trees in Germany are two different full size trees, whereas in the park we have two spiral topiary trees... But, the Imagineers were clear that they were trying to avoid exact matches here, so I can see this being a loose interpretation.

Either way, above the door is where you'll find the sign for the Christmas Corner, which this location has been named since 1990. From park opening until 1990 this location was named Porzellanhaus, and it sold porcelain items. As for today, it sells Christmas items. The current sign includes an oval with art showing a German living room on what I assume i s Christmas Eve, and just a few minutes until midnight. There is a Christmas tree decorated with red ornaments, silver bells, gold and silver garland, and several lit candles, and there's a star tree topper. There's a fireplace with three stockings on the mantel, each is red with blue stripes, and they have a piece of holly along the white cuffs. Christmas trees originated in Germany in the 16th century, with stars soon becoming a common tree topper, while lit candles on trees being a tradition since the 17th century. Also, holly is a plant native to Germany.

On top of the mantel is a clock with the name "BRIAN" running clockwise, replacing the numbers that would normally be on a clock, starting from the seven o'clock position up to 11, and then the name "LILLY" running clockwise from the one o'clock spot down. I couldn't find any details on this, so I don't know if it refers to a Brian Lilly, a Lilly Brian, or a Brian and Lilly team? If you know more, please share with us.

Behind the clock is a wreath, and according to a Time.com article from 2018, the tradition of decorating with wreaths during Christmas is often credited to a German Lutheran pastor named Johann Hinrich Wichern. He used evergreen trees as the base for his wreaths, but he laid them horizontally and used four candles to turn the wreaths into a symbol of the Advent. The idea is that you would light one candle each week leading up to Christmas. The art here actually includes three lit green candles with what looks like wreaths lying at their bases, two are on the mantel, and one is on the side table next to the tree. Just a heads up, for safety reasons, I recommend not trying to recreate this fire hazard of a scene at your house.

Also on the wall are three black oval frames with silhouettes of the three members of the family, matching the number of three stockings on the mantel. If you would like silhouettes made for your family while you're at EPCOT, you'll have to go over to the France pavilion.

Under the tree, there are some gifts that are still wrapped, as well as a red wagon with a doll, a drum, what appears to be a Pixar ball for some reason, and a rocking horse. I am not sure what connection any of those have with Germany, if any, but toys under the tree at Christmas is on brand for the holiday.

The room also has a large area rug that might include a manger with a blue star above it? It's not really clear what's going on there, it is more of a sketch compared with the detailed relief of the rest of the piece. If you know more, let us know about that, too.

It's inside this shop where you will find all kinds of Christmas decor for sale, including a lot of ornaments. One of the more memorable items in the shop are the pickle ornaments. These days, they have a tree or two dedicated to pickle ornaments with a few signs on them explaining the tradition of said ornament type. It starts with "According to German tradition..." and the gist is that kids are supposed to find the pickle ornament hidden on their Christmas tree, and whoever finds it first will not only have good luck, but they will also receive an extra little gift from St. Nicholas.

I watched a YouTube video by a German-American woman who vlogged her first trip to EPCOT, where she wanted to show whether or not it was authentically German. And in it, she mentioned the pickle ornaments, and said she had never heard of this tradition, and she checked with family members back in Germany, and none of them had heard of it either. It turns out, it's actually a fake "German Tradition" that was most likely invented by a marketing team at a Woolsworth Department Store in New York City in the late 1800s trying to sell German pickle ornaments. The story is that they had ornaments of all kinds of produce that they had received from a German ornament manufacturer, and the pickles were the worst sellers, so they made up the tradition and sales picked up. There have been surveys that show that far more Americans practice the German pickle ornament hiding tradition than people who live in Germany. So yeah, sorry if I ruined it for you, but it is just an American tradition based on German ornaments.

Stein Haus and Germany's Beer Stein Tradition

Continuing on, the next building is another half-timbered building, this time with two balconies and a ground floor with stone work on its facade. On the upper balcony, you will get to see Donald Duck being chased by a German doll with a mallet if you funnel the time energies through the glockenspiel on the Disney's DuckTales World Showcase Adventure. The sign on this building lets you know that this is currently the home of Stein Haus. From when the park opened until 2019, this was a candy shop named Süssigkeiten, which is a German word meaning "sweets." That original location was sponsored by Bahlsen of America, Inc., which is a snacks and sweets company that was founded in 1889. One of their biggest claims to fame includes winning a gold medal for their Leibniz butter biscuits at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which is a fair that we covered in detail on our episode about the history of the Ferris Wheel.

These days, it has a painted representation of a German beer stein on its sign, and inside the shop, they sell actual beer steins. The one on the sign has a blue flower with five rounded petals, along with four small leaves under the flower, and four larger leaves on stems protruding from the flower. If you know which specific flower this is supposed to be, let us know. I spent a good thirty minutes trying to figure it out, and I'm pretty sure it's just a generic pretty flower. The style of art on this sign is known as Bauernmalerei, and is a folk art associated with Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The word is actually a compound word, combining "bauern" which means peasant or farmer, and "malerei" which just means painting. In reality, peasants and farmers didn't actually have time to paint, but the name still stuck, though it is also sometimes just referred to as Bavarian Folk Art.

As for the word stein, it is short of the German word Steinzeugkrug, which literally translates to Stoneware Jug. The hinged pewter lids commonly associated with steins first appeared around 1348, when the Bubonic plaque hit Germany. It was believed, at the time, that the plague was being spread by flies, so strict laws were put in place making it where drink containers had to have lids.

Wine, Crystal, and Frankfurt Architecture

After Stein Haus is a beige building with a black-tile roof. It has an arched doorway, and one of those bay windows with a turret roof on the center of the second floor, but this time without seashells. Painted above the door is the word Weinkeller, which is German for Wine Cellar, and this is in fact a wine shop/tasting bar.

Now, the next building has a stair-stepped roofline, which is similar to a few of the buildings in Rothenburg, but the details along the rooflines make it pretty clear that it's based on the Römer building in Frankfurt. That building has served as the city hall of Frankfurt for over 600 years. The facade in the pavilion has two heraldic reliefs, the one on the left might be an owl, the one on the right appears to be an eagle with its tongue out, wings spread open, and it's wearing a crown. The building in Frankfurt also has two heraldic reliefs found underneath windows, they are proportionally larger that the versions in the park, with the shield on the left including an eagle with its wings spread, while the one of the right is very similar to the first, except that eagle has two heads. The tongues are sticking out of these eagle heads too, but not as prominently as the one in the park. Either way, inside the building you will find Kunstarbeit in Kristall, which translates to Art Work in Crystal, and it is a shop featuring glasswork by the Arribas Brothers. We covered them in our episode about the Mexico pavilion, where they have another shop inside the pyramid over there. At the top of the sign here is a unique CA logo, which I believe is a reference to Crystal Arts, a term often used by the Arribas Brothers, and is the name of their shop on Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland in California.

Biergarten: EPCOT's German Town Square

The next building has an archway entrance to the Biergarten Restaurant. This is the left side of the main show building for the pavilion, and it was represented on the original concept art. 

Before I continue on about this building, I want to share that above and behind this building are some details that look like they belong to a castle. The Imagineering Field Guide points out that these castle designs are based on Eltz Castle near Koblenz and Stahleck Fortress on the Rhine near Bacharach. Looking at photos of those castles, I guess... Sure? It's very possible that they were inspired by those castles to translate into the generic "medieval castle" look that was eventually built. Personally, I think it has more elements found at Hohenzollern Castle in Bisingen, in Baden-Württemberg. We'll include photos of all three on our podcast blog at WhereInThePark.com/podcast so you can decide for yourself.

Okay, back to the Biergarten building... I believe this building and clocktower combination are inspired by a few different clock towers in Germany, including one in Rothenburg just a few steps away from that window with seashells on it. There is another tower at what is known as The Plönlein, a nice looking area with half-timbered houses, shops with ornate signage, and is another area that inspired scenes from Pinocchio. There is also a clock tower known as the Schwabentor Swabian Gate, which is in Freiburg, that also may have been part of the inspiration. The clock tower in the park is unique, though, with a cuckoo bird that comes out on the hour above the clock, and young boy and girl figures that "strike" a bell with mallets. The boy and girl were very loosely inspired by a Glockenspiel that plays at a clock in Munich, specifically the Rathaus Glockenspiel Bells at Marienplatz. Honestly, though, we have seen the bird, but we have never seen the boy and girl animation. It's possible that it's no longer working, if you have seen it recently, let us know! There is another piece of concept art that I have found that looks like it was a design from way back when the entire pavilion was going to be indoors, and it shows a clock tower with two archways very similar to what is in the park today. The section where this bell and doors are located for the boy and girl to come out from shows a group of guys with trumpets and a drum, which would have made it much more similar to that Glockenspeil in Munich.

To the left and right of the tower, there are several coats of arms painted on the walls, similar to how they appeared in that concept art. They weren't there when the park first opened, but versions of the crests have been on the building since at least the mid to late eighties. They represent the sixteen German states, or Bundesländer, and there are eight on each wall section.

The Sixteen German State Crests

If you listened to this podcast episode, you'll know that I skipped the following part because it's not a great listen, but it's a fairly interesting read when accompanied by photos, so here we go.

Starting on the top-left, the yellow crest with three black lions represents Baden-Württemberg, the white crest with a black bear is Berlin, the red crest with a white castle is Hamburg, the blue-and-white checker pattern is the "lozenge" type flag of Bavaria, and the crest with black bull heads with crowns on yellow and red eagles on white is for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The red crest with the white key on it is for Bremen, the blue crest with the red and white striped lion surrounded by white stars is for Thuringia, and the red crest with the white horse is for Lower Saxony.

The wall to the right of the tower, above the entrance to the Sommerfest quick service food location, starts with a blue shield with a red and white striped lion (without stars this time) representing Hesse, and a crest with a red cross on a silver background on the left, a yellow lion on black in the middle, and a silver wheel on a red background on the right, which is the coat of arms for Rhineland-Palatinate. The next crest has a silver lion on a blue background on the top-left, a red cross on a silver background on the top-right, three silver alerions on a red band going through some yellow on the bottom-left - an alerion is just a term for a bird on heraldry, and a yellow lion on black on the bottom-right, and all four of those are on one crest for Saarland. The next row of crests starts with one that has a white river, representing the Rhine, on what looks like a blue background in our photos, but the official crest is on green, on the left half, and then a white horse on a red background on the right half, with a small section on the bottom depicting a red and yellow flower, the rose of Lippe, on a white background for North Rhine-Westphalia. 

The next coat of arms has a top-half that is yellow and black striped with a green crancelin (it looks like a crown) going across it from the top-left to the bottom-right, then there is a black bird on the top-right of that section, the bottom half of the crest is white with a black bear walking across a red castle top, and these images combine for the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The next crest is a large red eagle on a white background for Brandenburg, and actually, the body position and tongue on this eagle is very similar to the carved crest on the Römer-inspired building I was talking about earlier. The next coat of arms is black and yellow striped with another one of those green crancelin crowns going across it from the top-left to the bottom-right, this one is for Saxony by itself. And, finally, the last coat of arms has a yellow background with blue lions on the left, and a white nettle leaf on a red background on the right, for Schleswig-Holstein.

And now you know more about that.

As for the inside of the Biergarten restaurant, it is designed to look like a platz, or town square, in a medieval Rothenburg at night. And, yeah, as far as I can tell, they nailed it.

The Rhine River Cruise That Never Happened

I had mentioned that the archway on the right is for the Sommerfest eatery, and if you've ever walked over there, you may have noticed that is seems like a pretty grand entrance for such a small window quick service location. Well, I had also mentioned at the beginning of the episode that Imagineers had drawn up a sketch for a Rhine River Cruise attraction for this pavilion, which later became designs for a Germany River Cruise, and, well, it turns out this was supposed to be that ride's entrance. There's a mural back in this area with a red ribbon that reads Herzlich Willkommen, which just means something like "warm welcome." The art has tree covered hillsides with two castles, the larger one looks like Reichsburg Cochem (RYKSH-burg KOKH-uhm), and the smaller one might just be completely made up. Either way, this art was reportedly put up sometime between when the park opened in 1982 and 1987, to cover some wooden doors that would have lead into the queue area for the attraction. 

If you want to learn everything there is to know about this ride that was never built, we recommend visiting imagineeringdisney.com and checking out their Rhine River Cruise Mysteries post from 2012. The TLDR is that the ride was going to take you down the most famous rivers of Germany, including the Rhine, Tauber, Ruhr, and Isar (EE-zahr), where guests would sail past miniature versions of sites you would see in those areas. The queue area was built, but the show building for an actual attraction never was. There was once a plan to build the ride in phase 2, but EPCOT wasn't a financial success when it first opened, and they couldn't get a sponsor to pay for the ride, so it was canceled. I'm hoping they'll eventually add something great to this section of the pavilion in my lifetime.

The Legend of Saint George and the Dragon

Before continuing on, I should point out the fountain in the middle of the square here. Versions of this fountain appeared in at least two pieces of concept art, and it is based on one found in Rothenburg according to the Imagineering Field Guide. Tom Bricker over at the Disney Tourist Blog, though, pointed out that on his visit to Germany, he and his wife saw many versions of Saint George battling a dragon, and that he wasn't confident that the one in Rothenburg was the only inspiration for the one in EPCOT. Also, that German-American YouTuber I mentioned earlier pointed out that the cartoonish colors on this statue are very un-German. Either way, Saint George battling the dragon is a famous story in Germany and often depicted in plazas throughout the country. 

There isn't a whole lot known about Saint George, the person, other than that he was a Roman soldier who lived during the late 3rd and early 4th centuries that had lived in Cappadocia, which is an area that is now part of the nation of Turkey. The statue on the fountain depicts a scene from a story where Saint George slays a dragon that had been attacking a town for years. There is art from the 9th century of George and the dragon, but the first known writing of that story is from the 12th century, in a prologue to the Greek Passion of George. It was retold in The Golden Legend, a set of stories about saints' lives that came out in the 13th century, which was a very popular text of its time. According to an article at the National Catholic Register, the story in the Golden Legend is set in Silena, Libya, a mythical town that was created for the story, while at article at St. George Greek Orthodox Church says it takes place in the area of Atalia, which is modern-day Antalya, Turkey. He became a saint after dying a martyr for his Christian beliefs in either the city of Diospolis or Lydda, current day Lod in Israel, under Roman Emperor Diocletian.

So, why is Saint George a popular figure in Germany? Well, he's actually popular throughout Europe, and is considered the patron saint of England. There are also at least fifteen U.S. cities named after him. The reason why he gained popularity in Europe ties back to his story in that thirteenth-century Golden Legend book, as well as a link to the military, but also because, unlike many other saints famous in Europe, he had never been to Europe, and his burial location was unknown. This, apparently, is important because, at the time, areas liked to claim saints as their own, but Saint George was kind of a public domain saint, where any town could throw a festival or feast in his honor without worrying about another town getting upset about it. On top of that, during the Black Death of the 14th century, Saint George was included as one of the "Fourteen Holy Helpers," a group of saints prayed to for protection and healing against epidemic outbreaks.

Continuing on, the next building is another half-timbered building, and this one has a red wood doorway up on what looks like a third floor, and it seems like it goes to nowhere. This is actually a common design on half-timbered houses, where it would be used as a loading door to get heavy items into the attic. If you do a Google Street View of that same Klingengasse (KLING-en-gah-suh) road in Rothenburg that I had mentioned earlier, you will find multiple houses with a door similar to this way up near their pointed rooflines.

Steiff Bears and the Return of Der Teddybar

As for the building in the park, it has a sign letting you know that it is Der Teddybar Toy Shop. This shop actually opened with the park and features stuffed animals by a company named Steiff. This German company was founded by Margarete Steiff, a woman who had been born with polio, who opened a felt clothing shop when she was around thirty years old. She designed her first "toy" three years later in 1880, an elephant that she had intended to be used as a pin cushion. In 1893 she registered her toy factory for commercial use, and they began selling their toys at Harrods of London in 1895. Her nephew, Richard Steiff, joined the company in 1897, and he would design their first bear plush in 1902. This bear became their first sales success in the USA. In 1906, then president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that had been tied to a leash during a hunting trip, and a cartoonist named Cliffort K. Berryman created a drawing that appeared in the Washington Post of Roosevelt refusing to shoot a cute bear, which lead to Steiff's bear doll becoming known as a Teddy Bear, which lead to the company selling almost a million teddy bears in 1907. Der Teddybar Toy Shop had remained closed for over six years after its closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, only opening briefly last year as an Annual Passholder Photo location to meet-and-greet with the character Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. When I started working on this episode, it was still closed, but as of July 19th, here in 2026, it has finally reopened.

Germany's Famous Cuckoo Clocks

During its closure, you could still find Steiff products on the shelves next-door at Volkunst, clocks and crafts. This building has a cuckoo clock hanging above its door, and a stained glass window of a person using a mallet on a small wooden house, which I'm guessing is also for a clock. Inside you can purchase a cuckoo clock, and possibly some stuffed animals. As I'm recording this, though, the shop will still likely be under refurbishment, because according to an article on the Disney Food Blog from July 13th, the majority of the store is closed because of work being done on backstage restrooms. In that same article, they mentioned that they had heard that Der Teddybar might reopen "when things get busier," and less than a week later it opened. 

As for why there's a cuckoo clock-themed shop at the Germany pavilion, that type of clock was actually invented in the Black Forest in Germany, likely during the 18th century. It is, however, debated who exactly created the first one, and whether it was during the 1730s or 1740s. Either way, it happened in Germany.

Das Kaufhaus and the Historic Merchants' Hall

Immediately after the clock shop is a building with two stair-step roof lines on its left and right, and two bay windows with turret roofs with glass rondels for windows. This location is openly inspired by a real world location, a historical merchants' hall in Freiburg known as Kaufhaus. Now, if you look up photos of this building, the version in the park is kind of the opposite of that Saint George statue on the fountain. By that, I mean the real location is brightly painted, mostly red, with various colors here and there, and kind of wildly colorful with the tiles on the roof of those bay windows. We're talking red, yellow, green, orange, white, blue, and purple tiles.

The building in the park mostly just has earth tones, which beige paint instead of red, a dark brown wooden balcony, and those colorful tiles are swapped with various shades of red, though none of them as bright as the red on real building. A part of me wondered if this building had just been updated to its current look after Imagineers finalized their designs back in 1982, but I found a book from 1980 that has a color photo and it was just as brightly colored back then.

The original building was built between 1520 and 1532, and had some updates over the next few hundred years, including sections rebuilt after bomb damage in 1774, and general remodeling as time went on. The current look has likely been in place since around 1924.

As for the details on this building in the park, it does have some of those crests that I had mentioned earlier on the left and right sides of the building, but those sides had to be designed with some imagination, because the location in Germany has buildings closely stacked on the left and right of it. Above the balcony on the face of the building are three of the four original Habsburg (Hapsburg) emperors. According to the Imagineering Field Guide, these are Philip I, Charles V, and Ferdinand I, with Maximilian I not making the cut just because he didn't fit on their smaller building. The location in Germany has all four. These men ruled Austria-Hungary and were part of a royal family that had ruled from 1273 to 1918. They are on the building in Germany because Freiburg is in the southwest of the country, and was known as "Further Austria." The city had pledged allegiance to the Habsburgs in 1368, and was ruled by them until 1805.

Their statues in the park closely match the real life versions. Philip I, the guy on the left, has three circles on the top-center of his crown, which many people point to as a hidden Mickey. A similar design is on the real figure, but the bottom circle is a little more pronounced on the Disney version. Also, there is a Wikipedia entry for an artist named Hans Sixt, where these figures are listed as one of his main works. He was a wood sculptor from the 16th-century from Stauffen, but the majority of the art he created can be found in Freiburg, where he did most of this work.

As for what is inside of the building, it is a retail shop fittingly named Das Kaufhaus, from the name of the building it was designed after. Inside the shop, you can find official EPCOT Germany Pavilion merchandise. There is a wide walkway connecting this shop to the back of clock shop located next door.

Finishing up the main part of the pavilion, there is a restroom that extends from the back of the Das Kaufhaus building. It has a few stone archways along the ground floor, with beaver tail roof tiles in various shades of red, similar to other buildings in the pavilion. As I'm recording this, it is behind construction walls as they're doing some work on it.

The Germany Pavilion's Miniature Train Village

Immediately after the restrooms is a large model train display. For you enthusiasts out there, the trains used here are G-scale models from Lehmann Gross Bahn, also known as LGB. That company can trace its origins back to a German toy company from Brandenburg founded in 1881 by men named Ernst Paul Lehmann and Jean Eichner. The company wouldn't begin making model trains until 1968, in Nuremberg. Today they are considered the most popular garden railway model in Europe. The display in the park was installed as a temporary addition for the EPCOT Flower and Garden Festival back in 1995, but it was popular and worked as a nice transition between Germany and Italy, so they decided to keep it going. 

If you are wondering if all of the scale model buildings were meticulously designed by Imagineers, it actually turns out most, if not all, of the models are from kits by two German companies. You can do Ebay photo searches to find most of the buildings located here, and you can buy them to build for your own display at home. They aren't exactly cheap, most models are roughly between $200 and $800 each. The models are from the German brands named PIKO and POLA, and are sold as G-Scale kits (that's a 1:22.5 scale). PIKO was founded in 1949 as a state-owned business in the German Democratic Republic in East Germany, while POLA was founded in 1957 by Horst Pollak from Schweinfurt. A few years after Mr. Gorbachev tore down that wall in Berlin, 36.32 the East German PIKO brand was sold to Dr. René F Wilfer in 1992, a man who had been a director of POLA since 1986. In 1997, just two years after this display was installed, the POLA line was sold to another German company named Faller, a company that still sells POLA G-Scale models today. PIKO is also still around, and René Wilfer and his family still own the company.

The PIKO 62230 Clear Water Station and PIKO 62209 Grizzly Flats Station models are very similar looking to one another, and are located not too far from each other in the display in the park. The Grizzly Flats version is generally acknowledged as being based on a station found in the 1948 Disney film "So Dear To My Heart," which is also the inspiration for the train station in New Orleans Square at Disneyland in California. The name, Grizzly Flats, is actually a reference to Disney Imagineering Legend Ward Kimball, he had received the original station from the film's set as a gift, he had been to one to decide on the design for the film, and he had his own full-sized "Grizzly Flats Railroad" installed in his backyard. The building itself was based on a real station, a Flag Stop Depot, which used to be located in South-East Pennsylvania at the Pottsville Branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. It was documented in an 1893 book named "Buildings and Structures of American Railroads" as being designed by Mr. F. E. Schall. But yeah, I point all of that out because it is not based on a German structure, but it is a Disney-related building that is sold as a kit by a German company, so that's why it's here at EPCOT in the Germany pavilion.

POLA Kit 990 Church Building
Piko G Scale 62030 Neustadt Station
PIKO CLEAR WATER STATION
PIKO G Scale Grain Elevator
PIKO G-Scale ~ Little Red School House
Piko 62209 G Scale Grizzly Flats

A fun thing that Disney Imagineering does with this area is that it updates it with miniature banners to match any festivals that are occurring in the park, whether it's Food and Wine, Flower and Garden, Festival of the Holidays, or Festival of the Arts. They hang from the sides of what appear to be modified LGB #50500 street lampposts, yeah, those lamps are made by the same company that makes the trains, not the models.

And, finally, according to the real size street signs nearby, the whole train display takes place on the Romantic Road, spanning from Fussen on the left, to Wurzburg on the right. These are real city names, and the over 400 kilometer train ride between the two is actually known as the Romantic Road in Germany. Along this road, you will find the town of Rothenburg, which, again, inspired so much of the pavilion.

Final Thoughts on EPCOT's Germany Pavilion

And well, I guess that wraps up everything interesting that I have found out about the Germany pavilion. Is there anything I missed? Do you have a favorite memory from this pavilion? Have you been to both EPCOT and the real world locations in Germany? Join our free private Facebook group, Where In The Park Explorers, and share with us!

If you had a good time, please subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and if you have fifteen seconds, please leave a review for this podcast at Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help other theme park fans find us.

And, for now, this is Kevin, signing off from the Where In The Park Podcast. Until next time, we'll see you somewhere in the park.

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