Machine Shop @museum.de

The cigar business continued to flourish until the end of the Weimar Republic. In 1929, there were 263 tobacco processing plants between Offenburg and Emmendingen. They employed around 13 thousand people. That means ten per cent of all employees in the German cigar industry came from this region. At this point, other European countries were beginning to modernise the production processes involved in cigar making. Sweden and the Netherlands, in particular, were exporting machines that rationalised the processes and replaced workers.

From 1933, the Nazis banned such machines in Germany by law. The priority was to save jobs, especially given the propaganda benefit from that policy.

The law banning the machinery remained in force until the 1950s. That meant when it came to production, German tobacco companies were no longer able to keep up with the competition at a European level. In 1955, the Association of Cigar Producers in Upper Baden only had 77 members involved in production. Over the next two years, 58 of them accepted government help to wind up their businesses and shut down their plants. The remaining firms needed a few more years to catch up economically. Above all, there was shortage of skilled workers and production machinery. The industry initially had to resort to second-hand machinery from other European countries.

But the production processes weren’t the only aspects of the tobacco industry to be experiencing change. Smoking habits also changed after the Second World War. The cigarette had long since out-competed the cigar, and now, light cigarettes were preferred. Thanks to the generosity of US soldiers, the Germans discovered the advantages of American cigarettes made from light tobacco during the occupation.

This display case was made in the 1960s at the Roth-Händle firm’s workshop for apprentice mechanical engineers. It shows the sequence of processes involved in making cigarettes.

But even cigarette production couldn’t survive in the region over the long term. In 2007, after becoming part of the Reemtsma Group, Roth-Händle also closed down permanently.