Oldenkott

Oldenkott is a brand with roots reaching back to 18th-century Dutch tobacco trading, which by the mid-20th century had become Germany's largest pipe manufacturer. Its name today is best known for the series briar pipe production sustained for sixty years in the small town of Rees, in the Lower Rhine region.

From Tobacco to Pipes

The family's tobacco business ran along two separate branches. Records show Henricus Oldenkott working tobacco in Weesp in 1740; Hermannus Oldenkott, who lived 1730–1792, set up his own factory in Amsterdam in 1760. The German extension of this second branch was opened in Ahaus in 1819 by one of his sons. The two branches operated independently of each other for a long time.

The turning point came in 1838: August Kersten of Rees bought the factories in Elten and Weesp and took over the business, but kept the Oldenkott name. Under the Kersten family's management the German branch grew quickly and became one of the country's leading tobacco companies; in 1921 one of the most modern facilities of its day was built in Rees. The Dutch operation passed in 1923 to the Amersfoort-based firm Sopla, and production was withdrawn from Amsterdam; in 1929 the company in Rees absorbed the other branch's facilities in Neuss and Ahaus.

In 1932 the company decided to place its own pipes alongside its tobacco. This step would go on to define Oldenkott's core identity in the years ahead.