The Landauer & Macholl Distillery @museum.de

F: That jaunty little ditty was an advertising jingle for the Heilbronn wine distillery Landauer & Macholl. The business was established by Max Landauer in 1861.

M: Take a look around – does anything strike you as unusual about the bottles?

F: There's a miniature hammer dangling from the bottle necks – the company's trademark. In 1894, the German equivalent of the Trades Description Act came into force. And Max Landauer didn't hesitate, he applied to have the hammer protected as his company's trademark. But why a hammer of all things?

M: It probably has to do with the French cognac house of Martell. The French word for hammer is "mateau". Martell, mateau – sounds quite similar. At least to German ears.

F: As it happened, the trademark proved so successful that people no longer talked about Landauer & Macholl. Instead, the business was commonly known as the Hammer Distillery.

M: The main product of the Heilbronn-based distillery was brandy. The use of the term cognac had been banned in Germany since 1919. If you remember: the First World War had recently ended with a defeat for the German Empire. The Treaty of Versailles was drawn up – and it included a ban on using the term.

F: Nevertheless, the Hammer distillery processed more than 20,000 litres of wine in a single day, most of it imported from Italy. The business grew, expanded and survived the Great Depression largely unscathed. Until 1938 came around.

M: "For your information: please be advised that the Reich Monopoly Administration for Brandy has, at our request, given order that Jewish firms shall no longer be supplied with pure alcohol."

F: That deprived the company of its economic basis. On the 10th of November 1938, Reich Pogrom Night, the SA trashed the Landauer family's house. The family had to sell the business under duress. After they'd paid the duties and taxes, they were ultimately left with – nothing. The Heilbronn factory was completely destroyed during an air raid in December 1944.

M: But after the war, the Landauer family clawed their way back and rebuilt their business. The end finally came in 1981. Environmental regulations, higher taxes and competition from low-cost providers sealed this traditional distillery's fate.