Eckstein | 1911
A housemaid throws up her hands in delight: the postman has just handed her a letter worth 500,000 marks. "Einen guten Treffer haben Sie gemacht!" (roughly, "You've hit the jackpot!"), the ad announces, adding that the same luck awaits anyone who tries Eckstein cigarettes.
The company's story begins around 1832, when Abraham Meyer Eckstein opened a small tobacco and cigar workshop in Lauenförde, in northern Germany. It moved to Göttingen in 1842, and in 1891 his son Nathan took it to Dresden, which was becoming the heart of the German cigarette industry.
In this ad, published in 1911 in Die Hamburger Woche, an illustrated weekly from Hamburg, we can see that Da Capo cigarettes were sold singly, for 3 to 10 pfennigs each – the magazine itself cost 15. The ad also boasts of its 1,700 workers and promises "Nur Handarbeit" (hand-made only). One curious detail: it contains a misprint, "Eckstien" instead of Eckstein.
In the 1930s, Eckstein became part of the Reemtsma group, which kept the Eckstein No. 5 brand going for many years.
Back then, a cigarette could promise luck and joy. Today the risks of smoking are known, and in Germany tobacco advertising in the press has been banned since 2006. What remains is a portrait of a time when fortune arrived in the postman's bag.
Text in the ad
Einen guten Treffer
haben Sie gemacht!
wenn Sie Eckstien-Cigaretten probieren
Eckstein's DA CAPO-Cigaretten
von A. M. Eckstein & Söhne, Dresden.
Stück 3 bis 10 Pfg.
Nur Handarbeit.
Seit mehr als 25 Jahren Lieferanten der Königl. Italien. Tabakregie. (1700 Arbeiter.)
Translation:
You've hit the jackpot!
if you try Eckstien cigarettes
Eckstein's DA CAPO cigarettes
by A. M. Eckstein & Söhne, Dresden.
3 to 10 pfennigs each
Hand-made only.
Suppliers to the Royal Italian Tobacco Monopoly for more than 25 years. (1,700 workers.)
- Brand
- Eckstein
- Year
- 1911
- Decade
- 1910s
- Country
- Germany
- Medium
- Magazine
- Themes
- Tobacco
- Original publication
- Die Hamburger Woche, 1911
