Vintage Dunhill Tobaccos Made in Germany

Vintage Dunhill tobaccos made in Germany are an oddity collectors occasionally run into while sorting through old tins: the bottom of a tin from a brand synonymous with London bears the words "Hergestellt in Deutschland" — "made in Germany." These tins are not counterfeits; Dunhill tobacco blends were produced under license in Germany for a long period.

The Firm Holding the License: Joh. Wilh. Von Eicken

The organization that undertook the production is Joh. Wilh. von Eicken, whose roots go back to 1770. Johann Wilhelm von Eicken began in the tobacco trade in Mülheim an der Ruhr; the firm bought a tobacco factory in Hamburg in 1886, on the eve of that city joining the customs union. The logic behind the Dunhill license rested on a similar customs calculation. During the Second World War the production facilities and the family residence were destroyed in the 1943 air raids; the firm was only able to return to tobacco production, with official permission, in 1948. The business, which moved its headquarters to Lübeck in 1982, remains in the same family's hands today, now in its eighth generation of leadership.

How the License Came About

According to the information available, first contact between the two firms goes back to 1926, while the license itself dates to 1938. The reason given is commercial: tobacco brought from England was subject to an import duty, which made the product expensive for the German buyer. Having the tobacco produced in Germany eliminated that cost. In the years that followed the picture grew still heavier. Nazi Germany was running one of modern history's first comprehensive anti-smoking campaigns; a ban on smoking on trams spread to roughly sixty cities by 1941, and the tobacco tax was sharply raised that same year. Records indicate that in 1938 Dunhill's agent office in London tried to register the brand names in Germany and ran into trouble when the local representative it had chosen was barred from practicing on the grounds of being Jewish. It is stated that, because leaf tobacco could not be obtained during the war years, the licensed production effectively came to a halt.

Dating the Tins and the End of the License

The two best-known German-made tins are Standard Mixture and London Mixture. Beyond the German-language wording on the tin's underside, the German tax band and the crest on the lid also offer dating clues: according to Dunhill researcher John Loring's criteria, the crest bearing George VI's "the late king" reference points to the 1954-1962 range. Exactly when licensed production ended is not certain; it is said to have wound down in the mid-1970s once original British tins became easily available on the German market. According to the records, by the time production of the blends shifted to Murray, Sons & Co. in Belfast in 1981, the von Eicken version had already become history.

How closely the German versions matched the original London recipes is a matter of debate. The producer's side stated that the recipe was kept close to the original, while some German smokers of the era are reported to have found a noticeable difference between the two tins. Today these tins are prized less for smoking than as documentary fragments testifying to a little-known offshoot of the classic Latakia-forward English blend tradition. Because of the pull of the Dunhill name, the brand's products are also known to have been counterfeited in the past; for the most well-known example on the pipe side, see the entry on the fake Dunhills of the 1980s.