Manger

Manger is a pipe maker founded by Anton Manger in the village of Wollbach in Germany's Lower Franconia region. Production began in the autumn of 1957. The brand is known for making both understated series models and individually hand-shaped freehand pipes under the same roof.

Founding and Growth

The founder was a craftsman trained in wood carving and turning; he entered the trade not through pipe making but by repairing whatever came to hand during the shortages of the postwar years. Since sound pipes were hard to find in Germany at the time, the repair bench quickly turned into a map of demand. Manger built the cutting tools and lathes needed for production himself over many years, and only reached regular production in 1957.

The business did not remain a small village workshop. According to the record, at its peak in the 1970s it employed nineteen people, with daily output reaching several hundred pipes. This scale is also why the brand is counted among the last professional pipe makers in Germany to have grown "from scratch." In the following decades production contracted again, returning to a family scale.