Eyland

Eyland is a small family brand that produced pipes through the 1960s in the town of Rees on Germany's Lower Rhine. Since it survived only about seven years, it is almost unknown outside the country; it is nonetheless remembered in local pipe history for showing how a small workshop could carve out a place right next to a large factory — and how easily it could lose it.

The Couple Who Founded the Workshop

Behind the business were Ernst and Elisabeth Lanius, both of whom came to pipemaking from outside the trade. Ernst Lanius was born in Oberwesel and worked as a sales representative for the firm Dobbelmann; his wife Elisabeth worked in the same firm's accounting department and was the daughter of Heinrich Nienhaus, Rees's first postwar municipal director. The birth years given are 1932 for Ernst and 1924 for Elisabeth; this information rests on a single source. The couple founded their own business under the name "E. Lanius Rees/Rhein," and official records list its field of activity as wholesale tobacco goods. The brand registration is said to have taken place on 12 June 1963, though this date has not been confirmed by an independent registration record.

The choice of name served two purposes at once. "Eyland" tied the brand to the town via "Reeser Eyland," the name given to the island on the Rhine; the "Made by Eyland" wording on the packaging, meanwhile, read like "Made in England." The second was a useful association, since English-made pipes carried high prestige on the German market in those years. Bull and goat figures, taken from the founders' zodiac signs, were also used as the firm's emblem.