The Easter bunny is not an ancient thing. Like most of our traditions, it is rather modern in origin. Our own Easter bunny is a chocolate item, mass-produced as part of the commercial Easter. The concept of the “Easter bunny” who brings the chocolate Easter eggs is probably not much older. It arises in the late 19th century and derives from a German folk story, the “Easter hare” or Osterhäse, who does much the same thing. This Osterhäse is first recorded in 1682.[]
If you read social media, you will quickly come across claims that the Easter bunny, and Easter itself, is in fact derived from incredibly ancient pagan ideas. Jacob Grimm in the early 19th century put forward the idea of a supposed goddess Ostara, and the contemporary custom of the Osterhäse soon became attached to this theory. But no evidence that the Osterhäse is so old is known. Indeed there is no evidence of it before 1682.
The older traditions in Germany were somewhat different to modern ideas. In a museum in Munich in Germany there are physical remains of the Osterhäse legend. The Osterhäse is primarily non-edible; early edible examples are of pastry. Then there are moulds for chocolate from 1890 onwards, probably brought back home under American influence. The museum website states:
In the 19th century, the holiday hares were often made of cardboard, wood or fabric. Some had removable heads, inside of which small sweet treats were hidden — forerunners of present-day chocolate rabbits. Toward the end of that century, papier-mâché became the preferred material among bunny-makers. The realistic animals were then dressed in human apparel and set in common situations. The Hasenschule (hare school), for example, contains miniature classrooms peopled with bunnies and tiny egg factories. Mechanical bunnies, rare clockwork rabbits and hares made from tin and wood highlight the museum’s turn-of-the-century offerings. …
The Easter icon also assumes more palatable forms. Though early edible bunnies often consisted of pastry dough with a hard-boiled egg placed in the “stomach,” this hearty hare died a natural death (though the practice has recently been revived by some of Munich’s bakeries,) with the advent of chocolate bunnies. One of the earliest rabbit tin forms on view at the ZAM dates from 1890. Unique porcelain bunny molds, many in the shape of egg cups, stem from the potters of Thuringia, craftsmen who left their mark on the turn-of-the-century chocolate Osterhase.
It is a pity that the site gives no sources. But again there seems nothing unlikely about any of this.
Our own Easter bunny is a modern development of the Osterhäse. It is a modern American invention of the late 19th century. As with so many American innovations, the author packaged up a somewhat older, less definite folk custom into something suitable for mass production and mass promotion. I thought that it might be interesting to track down whatever information there might be about this event.
The story of the Easter bunny starts in the late 19th century in the United States of America, among German-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania. These settlers brought with them this tradition of the Osterhäse, who brought the edible Easter eggs. He was often represented in in the shape of children’s toys, made out of various materials, or even made of cake or pastry. [] But this old-time Osterhäse did not survive the transition to America. There were few hares in Pennsylvania, or so the Somerset Herald averred in 1900. Retellings of German folk-stories therefore replaced him with an “Easter Rabbit”, carrying out much the same job in children’s stories.
Our first mention of such an “Easter rabbit” is in 1883. There we learn that the Easter Rabbit is a novelty. In the Lancaster Daily Intelligencer of March 24, 1883, p.2, a Pennsylvania newspaper, we find, in an article about Easter:
In all ages the festival has been marked by many singular ceremonies, customs and popular sports. Most of these have fallen into disuse in this country, except the religious observances in the churches, the feasting upon eggs at home, and the presentation to friends of prettily colored or elaborately engraved eggs. Children are provided with all the colored eggs they want, and amuse themselves by testing the strength of the shells by striking the smaller ends of the eggs together, it being a rule among the youngsters that the egg that is broken falls a prize to the one that breaks it. Besides the natural eggs that play such a prominent part in Easter feasting, the confectioners reap a rich harvest in the manufacture and sale of candy eggs of various kinds and colors. Of late years, the rabbit appears as an innovation in the Easter customs, and to “bunny” is attributed the laying of the many beautiful eggs which fill the nests that good little boys and girls are apt to find on Easter morning. Some of these little rabbits are real works of art and look very natural indeed.
It isn’t clear whether this is an edible rabbit, but the chocolate eggs are real enough.
There are other references to the “Easter rabbit” in the preceding decade, including a poem in 1886. But all those found in Google Books are descriptions of German folk tales, rather than modern customs. It seems likely that these are simply translations of German material about the Osterhäse.
In “Wide Awake” 34 (1892), p.431 we read an interesting story of a German custom that did NOT reach us. This is “the Easter Tree.” The article refers to edible rabbits or hares – or sometimes lambs – made out of cake:
The Easter-tree is a delightful feature of the Easter season in Germany. It is not so universal as the Christmas-tree; for in Germany there is no household so poor but the Christmas-tree finds a place in it, even though its branches may spread scarcely wider than the flowers of a good-sized bouquet. The Easter-tree is more common in Northeastern Germany than elsewhere, and the tree-frolic is something all young people ought to know about.
For an Easter party, at which the frolic is to take place, a large tree, set upon a good-sized table, stands in the center of the room. The larger the room the better. The tree is hung with Oster Eier (Easter eggs) of every color and size. During the year the children gather many varieties of birds’ eggs and save them for decorating the Easter-tree. Hens’, geese and turkeys’eggs are also colored by boiling them in solutions of dye-stuffs — a strong one to make the deep colors, a weak one for the more delicate shades.
Loops of bright-colored ribbons, always of contrasting shades, are pasted upon the eggs to hang them by, tip downwards. Tinsel ornaments and pendants; curious sugar people ; cake animals, especially lambs and rabbits; Easter hens, and chickens; and dainty chocolate and sugar confections of every conceivable variety are fastened to the boughs, while underneath, upon the table or pedestal, sitting in special state, the wonderful Easter rabbit, or sometimes the Easter lamb, presides over the gifts and favors concealed in the Oster Hase‘s nest.
Hunting the Oster Hase‘s (Easter rabbit’s) nest is usually the great event of Easter morning for German children. The nest is sometimes made of small twigs and greens braided together in proper shape; or, if designed for the house, a pretty nest-shaped basket is lined with some kind of bright-colored material, and prettily decorated upon the outside with nuts and confections, and also with tinsel ornaments. Inside, the Easter eggs, gifts and favors are placed, and above these, instead of the conventional mother-hen, sits the Easter rabbit, generally made of cake or sugar.
Great secrecy attends the making of the nest by the older members of the family. When completed it is hidden either in the garden or house, and in the early morning the children, have a grand frolic “ hunting the Easter Hase’s nest.”…
There was evidently a lot of variation in the customs in Germany at this time. The American custom would be much more focused, and far more commercial.
The earliest use of the term “Easter bunny” that I could find is in 1893, in the Marble Hill Press, Missouri, April 6, p.1, where on Easter Sunday “the little ones were jubilant over the well filled rabbit nests that they found everywhere. That Easter bunny was indeed kind.” But there is no mention of an actual Easter bunny as an item.
In 1900, in the Somerset Herald, April 18, 1900, p.1, we find more details of a well-established custom.
The origin of the American Easter bunny, or rabbit, was the European hare, but the hare is so scarce with us and so little known that it was changed to our more familiar rabbit. Probably, this is due to the confectioners, who adopted them first, and used them most, as they are not usually experts in natural history.
Tradition has it that the connection of the hare and Easter springs from the moon. Inasmuch as the date of Easter waits on the moon, it may be termed a lunar season, and from the earliest time the hare has been a symbol of the moon for several reasons. A few of the many may be given. …The hare myth is one of the most prominent among English popular. Easter customs, being perpetuated in almost every part of the world by innumerable customs for the most part each one purely local. Yet while these different practices are much diversified their foundation is universally the hare.
Among the people of Germany the Easter hare is almost as important a part of their nursery lore as their kindly St. Nicholas. The white hare, that steals in at night to fill the nests of good children with eggs, is just as firmly believed in and eagerly expected by the “kinderleins” as Kris Kingle. They go to bed with the chicken in expectation of his visit, but to sleep, oh, no. Then up at dawn to search for what he has left.
In America the hare, or rabbit figures most conspicuously at the confectioner’s, where he may be found of all sizes and kinds, wheeling his barrow full of eggs, or drawing one large enough to be a triumphal chariot.
The earliest result from a search in Google books is in 1900, in two children’s books. One of these is a poem that “The Easter Bunny is coming to town,” and the trivial use of the term implies that the “Easter bunny” was already in widespread use.
Grimm’s ideas were not unknown either. An article in 1900 links the bunny to Grimm’s “Ostara.”
But let’s now fast forward almost a century. The Somerset Herald article back in 1900 had already highlighted the very conspicuous role of the confectionery trade in promoting the Easter Bunny. In fact it is claimed in various online articles that we know the name of the man who originated the chocolate Easter bunny, along with a photograph of one of his original promotional bunnies.
This story begins to appear very recently indeed. In 1989 there is an article in the New York Times by Anne Driscol, published March 20, 1988, “Part-Timers Find a Sweet Workplace.” This is a profile of a certain Ben Strohecker of Harbor Sweets near Boston.
He says the inspiration for his latest creation, an Easter bunny with an assorted nut and candy center, was equally serendipitous. He says his grandfather, Robert L. Strohecker, earned the title Father of the Easter Bunny Business because of his promotions of chocolate rabbits, including a 5-foot chocolate rabbit sculpture created in 1890. Although a photograph of the elder Strohecker and his sculpture had been hanging for years at Harbor Sweets, it was not until a colleague noticed the photograph elsewhere that the idea for what became the Robert L. Strohecker Assorted Rabbit was born.
No photograph of the 5-foot bunny is included.
The next article is in 2023, in the food section of Slate, by Emily Nussbaum, July 03, 2023, “The American Museum of Natural History’s “Chocolate” show is full of empty calories.”. This reviews a “Chocolate” exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, although again no photograph appears.
Better yet, you’ve got your photo of an immense Easter bunny, circa 1890. Five feet tall, the rabbit possesses the chalky dignity of an Egyptian sarcophagus, and it stands, golemlike, beside it is its creator, Robert L. Strohecker. The label reveals that Strohecker is “the ‘father’ of the chocolate Easter bunny”—pretty much the best epithet one could hope for in this life.
A 2010 article from the Smithsonian Magazine clearly draws upon an internet search.
The tradition of chocolate Easter bunnies dates back to 19th-century America, which borrowed it—and the Easter Bunny in general—from Germany. Sales started to take off around 1890, after a Pennsylvania man named Robert L. Strohecker featured a 5-foot-tall chocolate rabbit in his drugstore as an Easter promotion.
By the turn of the 20th century, newspapers noticed “the growing popularity in the States of the chocolate rabbit” among Easter confections, and by 1925, a catalog from the R.E. Rodda Candy Co. featured guitar-playing bunnies, suggesting that perhaps ordinary chocolate bunnies were old hat by then.
These articles have produced a certain number of descendants.
A detailed 2023 article by Kerry J. Byrne at Fox News (2023) tells us of a first generation German American named Robert L. Strohecker (b. 16 Jan 1864, d. 31 Mar. 1932). He was a salesman for the W. H. Luden confectionery factory in Reading, Pennsylvania, which began in 1879 by selling cough drops. Strohecker sold their products in the region, travelling in a horse-drawn wagon among the German settlers. He is said to be the “Father of the Chocolate Easter Bunny.”
The source for all these claims appears to be a certain Ben Strohecker of Harbor Sweets. Their website tells us:
Our chocolate rabbits are named for Robert L Strohecker, grandfather of Harbor Sweets’ founder Ben Strohecker. Grandpa Strohecker’s early promotions of chocolate rabbits earned him the title of “Father” of the Easter bunny business.
In the photo (circa 1890) Grandpa Strohecker stands next to his 5 foot chocolate rabbit. The chocolate rabbit was constructed at Luden’s factory in Reading, PA where Grandpa Strohecker was connected with William H Luden in the manufacture of candy. The chocolate rabbit was displayed in the window of the local department store. (The names of those who got a nibble are lost to history!)
A picture is displayed:
There seems no real reason to doubt this story, but all the same, one would prefer some corroboration of it. We’re being offered a story about events of a century earlier from the mouth of one man with a commercial interest in telling it. Is there anybody in the USA who could undertake some detective work here?
I did wonder whether a 19th century entrepreneur could have a grandson active in business in 1988. Robert L. Strohecker was b. 1864, d. 1932; Ben Strohecker was aged 60 in 1988, so born 1928 (he died in 2016). So that at least looks possible.
It is certainly correct that Robert Lincoln Strohecker worked for William H. Luden in Reading, Pennsylvania, because we have his obituary which tells us so. Strohecker’s obituary appeared in the Reading Times April 1, 1932, telling of his death aged 68 the previous day, and that he worked for Luden for 43 years, thus from 1889. There is sadly no mention of the chocolate bunny.
It is also the case that in 1902 W. H. Luden was one of three local companies manufacturing chocolate Easter eggs in the area. A detailed description of the process is given in the Reading Eagle in March 23, 1902, p.10: “Home Firms Busy on Easter Goods,” which describes “the growing popularity in the States of the chocolate rabbit” and describes this as characteristic of the USA, and distinctive from other nations.
Our modern custom is decidedly commercial, and the marketing activities of a factory in Pennsylvania prior to 1902 would very much fit this profile. It also correlates with the newspaper reports. Whatever the role of this Robert L. Strohecker, there must have been men exactly like this active at the time in this way. And they built a monster industry.
There seems no doubt that the modern Easter bunny, then, is the product of the confectionery industry around 1890. It drew upon older, vaguer traditions of an “Easter Hare” – or other animals – among German immigrants. These ideas were translated into English and given sharp marketing. The pepped-up and commercialised Easter Bunny went out and conquered the world.
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