Treasures and Curiosities @museum.de

This little triangular bag is something very special, and it found its way into our museum by a lucky chance. The bag contains a type of tobacco called Knaster - or sometimes Kanaster. This is not the “Knaster” brand of smoking herbs, but ready-cut pipe tobacco and one of Europe’s oldest tobacco products. The word Knaster crops up in documents as early as the 17th century. It’s borrowed from Dutch. Knaster was grown mainly in the provinces of Utrecht and Guelders. This little bag with a picture of the Three Kings also comes from the Netherlands. The inscription translates as: “Cut and filled by: Johannes Jotzselaar, fourth house from the Zont Footbridge, at the sign of the Three Kings in Amsterdam”. It’s probably the oldest surviving bag of this kind. It was inside the mansard roof of a building, probably left there by accident and only discovered during restoration work.

The cigars on display in the same case survived in similar fashion. They’d been bricked up inside the foundation stone of a cigar factory in the city of Offenburg.

Whether status symbol, personal brand or an old, guilty pleasure – tobacco often seemed an essential prop in politics. A cigarette, a pipe or a cigar served as an important accessory on the political scene. One diehard in this respect was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Till the day he died, he was invariably seen smoking a cigarette when he took part in round-table discussions on television. Schmidt bequeathed a personally signed box of Reyno brand menthol cigarettes to the museum during his lifetime.

In the front of the box of Reyno cigarettes, you can see the weathered bowl of a broken clay pipe. This was found during a diving expedition in Battle Harbour, Canada. The item hints at an old tradition. Sailors were not permitted to smoke while at sea. The risk of causing a fire aboard ship or setting off the stored ammunition was too great. So in some regions, the sailors traditionally broke their pipes and threw them into the harbour basin when they came aboard. It was a way of drawing a line under the issue for the time being. They didn’t actually have to do without their tobacco, though – snuff and chewing tobacco served as alternatives.

In the last of the flat showcases on the right-hand side, you’ll find an old tobacco tin from the firm of Lotzbeck from Lahr on display. It features a nice example of an early advertising slogan, a simple three-line verse, the original in German rhymes, of course

Drink what is clear! Speak what is true! Take snuff that’s from Lahr!