Nestlé | 1953

“Rein muß sie sein!” (It must be pure!) is, according to this ad from November 1953, the first Nestlé commandment. The copy takes the reader on a tour: inspectors checking every cow and pasture, churns sterilised every day, and a “white stream” flowing through sieves, coolers and gleaming pipes before being sealed and sterilised once more in the can.

Behind the Swiss company is a German. Heinrich Nestle, a pharmacist born in Frankfurt am Main in 1814, settled in Vevey, Switzerland, and became Henri Nestlé. In 1867 he launched his infant food, Farine Lactée. In south German dialect, Nestle means “little nest”, and the nest became the company’s emblem: you can see it on the can.

Condensed milk came from his great rival, the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company, founded in 1866 in Cham by the American brothers Charles and George Page. The two merged in 1905.

In 1953 few German homes had a refrigerator, and canned milk kept for months in the cupboard. Fifty years later, in 2003, Nestlé sold its German condensed-milk brands, such as Bärenmarke and Glücksklee, to the dairy group Hochwald.

Text in the ad

Rein muß sie sein!
DAS ERSTE NESTLE GEBOT
Nestle-Inspektoren überwachen unablässig jede Kuh, jeden Stall und jede Weide aller Landwirte, die Frischmilch liefern. In doppelt gekennzeichneten Nestle-Kannen, die ihnen jeden Tag gründlich gewaschen, sterilisiert und getrocknet zur Verfügung gestellt werden, wird die Milch in die Nestle-Werke geschafft – wahre Wunderwerke der Technik! Ununterbrochen fließt dort der weiße Strom durch sinnreich angeordnete Gruppen feiner Siebe und Filter, durch Kühler und blitzblanke Röhren von einem riesigen Kessel in den anderen. Immer wieder wird die Milch auf makellose Sauberkeit kontrolliert, schließlich pasteurisiert, kondensiert, homogenisiert – und zuguterletzt, in der Dose, nochmals sterilisiert!
Diese Milch ist – nach menschlichem Ermessen – „reine Milch“! Und nur solche Milch ist so gut, daß sie auch die höchsten Ansprüche in geradezu idealer Weise erfüllt – wie die IDEAL MILCH
… sie kommt von NESTLE, daher ist sie gut!
Nestle Ideal Milch · evaporierte ungezuckerte Vollmilch

Translation:
It must be pure!
THE FIRST NESTLÉ COMMANDMENT
Nestlé inspectors constantly watch over every cow, every barn and every pasture of all the farmers who deliver fresh milk. In double-marked Nestlé churns, thoroughly washed, sterilised and dried for them every day, the milk is taken to the Nestlé works – true marvels of technology! There the white stream flows without pause through cleverly arranged groups of fine sieves and filters, through coolers and gleaming pipes, from one huge vat to the next. Again and again the milk is checked for spotless cleanliness, then pasteurised, condensed, homogenised – and finally, in the can, sterilised once more!
This milk is – as far as humanly possible – “pure milk”! And only such milk is good enough to meet the highest demands in an almost ideal way – like IDEAL MILK
… it comes from Nestlé, that’s why it’s good!
Nestlé Ideal Milch · evaporated unsweetened whole milk

Brand

Nestlé

Year

1953

Decade

1950s

Country

Germany

Medium

Magazine

Themes

Food