Design Berlin (db)

Design Berlin, commonly abbreviated db, is one of the few pipe brands in Germany producing on a large scale. Though it takes its name from Berlin, its current workshop is in the town of Schweina in Thuringia; in terms of production volume it is considered second in the country, behind Vauen. The brand is known for having abandoned its cheap everyday-pipe line of its early years in favor of an identity focused on shape and craftsmanship.

Founding in Postwar Berlin

The core of the brand is the small business Hubert Hartmann, who made a living repairing pipes after the war years, founded in early 1948. When Hartmann applied for a production license, he was among the first German pipe workshops the Allied administration authorized. He brought in craftsmen largely from the Ruhla and Schweina area — the old center of German pipe making; since this region remained in the Soviet occupation zone, the incoming craftsmen also carried with them an entire body of accumulated craft knowledge.

The product range of the first twenty years was unambitious. The bulk of production consisted of small, cheap pipes with nylon mouthpieces known in German as "Mutzenpfeifen"; these were mostly everyday tools meant for smoking finely-cut (shag) tobacco.

Danish Influence and the db Signature

The person who changed the direction was the maker and designer Lothar Schirwitz, who joined the workshop in 1954. Taking on responsibility for production at the end of the sixties, Schirwitz both raised craftsmanship standards and brought the shapes closer to the Danish school approach. In line with the German smoker's habit, a 9 mm chamber was drilled into the bodies, and the brand has kept this choice in filter systems ever since. To name the changing identity, the "db - Design Berlin" signature was adopted around 1975.

The brand's technical hallmark is the twin channel opened into the mouthpiece to cool the smoke. The single-piece freehand pipes Schirwitz produced, meanwhile, bear his own name's stamp and form a separate cluster within db production. Traces of this technical signature can be seen in other brands as well: according to records, the German rights to the "Karl Erik" name remained with Design Berlin for a time after 2000, and Karl Erik pipes of that period were released with db's twin-channel mouthpiece.

Chain of Ownership

In the early eighties the brand passed to the Berlin-based Dr. Manfred Obermann company; management was then taken over by Planta Tabak-Manufaktur, and the name took the form "Pfeifenstudio db - Design Berlin." Thanks to Planta's foreign connections, presence in export markets, particularly the United Kingdom and the United States, expanded. Planta's tobacco production in Berlin ended in summer 2019, and the brand portfolio passed the same year to the Danish company Mac Baren.

Production in Schweina

1993 is the year that changed the brand's production geography: following the reunification of the two Germanys, VEB Pfeifen und Holzerzeugnisse Bad Liebenstein (known as Howal), which had closed in 1990, was acquired. This facility traces its origin to the factory Carl Sebastian Reich founded in Schweina in 1887; at its fiftieth anniversary in 1937 it is recorded as having been Germany's largest pipe factory. Series production thus moved to Schweina. Design work and one-off pieces continued for a while longer at the old workshop in Berlin-Kreuzberg before they too were moved to the same site; the position Schirwitz left was first filled by Rudolf Apelt and then by Martin Schmalz.

According to records, around twelve people work at the Schweina workshop, and roughly 30,000 pipes are produced per year. Special models are regularly added alongside numerous production lines; the brand's recent tendency has been toward trying new and freer forms that resonate with younger smokers.