The story
German entrepreneur, Franz Xaver Schmid, founded the publishing house in Munich in 1860, which produced toys and cards. The company was then run as the United Munich Playing Card Factories (Vereinigte Münchener Spielkarten-Fabriken) in 1915. During the Second World War the company relocated its headquarters to Prien am Chiemsee. The manufacture and production of board games and puzzles started there in 1955. In 1977 the site was expanded and there was a branch in the United States.
In 1991, the playing card programme of F.X. Schmid was integrated into the production of the ASS Altenburger in Thuringia. ASS Altenburger was thus involved in its market expansion. In 1996, the company ran into economic difficulties and in 1997 merged with Ravensburger. There, initially under the name FX, an attempt was made to establish its own image as "games for young adults". In 2000, the game series was discontinued in the wake of the decline in sales on the game market. Since about 2002, the F.X. Schmid brand has been used by Ravensburger for children's books. Playing cards for popular games such as Skat and Schafkopf are still produced under the brand name of F.X. Schmid and is the last manufacturer of German Tarock playing cards. The cards are of the Tarot Nouveau pattern, depicting genre scenes, and are produced for the Baden game of Cego.
From Wikipedia’s article on F.X. Schmid, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3