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4711

Aus dem Audiowalk Once upon a time... Exciting audio tour through the history of Cologne | Köln

Once upon a time... Exciting audio tour through the history of Cologne
34 Stationen
90:04 min Audio
7.23 km directions_walk favorite 9
4711

Did “4711” really invent the real cologne, which has been said to have miraculous and healing powers for 300 years, or were product pirates at work here?

It is certain that Wilhelm Mülhens, the company founder, used the name of the “Farina” family, which had been producing scented and medicinal water in Cologne since 1709, in his company name from 1803 onwards.

Because Napoleon decreed in 1810 that the recipes for ingestible medicinal water should be disclosed, the Mülhens family only produced scented water from then on.

He is said to have received the recipe as a gift from a member of the Farina family.

For several decades, the Farina family therefore brought plagiarism proceedings against Mülhens, which Farina finally won in 1881: “Farina” was no longer allowed to appear in the company name. Since then, the brand “4711”, as the very first house number of the company headquarters in Cologne’s Glockengasse, has stood for many things that are supposed to smell very good.

The house was originally located elsewhere on the street and was given the number 12 in 1811 when the French occupiers began to stringently number the streets.

In 1854, the company moved to Glockengasse 26-28, and after its destruction in the Second World War, the company headquarters were built at its current location at Glockengasse 4.

In the 20th century, “4711” really took off and produced some of the best perfumes of the time, with the perfumes making it to imperial and royal courts all over the world.

During the economic miracle, sales of “4711” or “Tosca” to the average consumer also took off. The Mülhens family did not cover themselves in glory during the Nazi era or in the post-war period: This led to rifts throughout the family and ultimately to the sale of the company in 1994.

Today the “4711” brand is owned by “Mäurer & Wirtz” and can be found on many more products, such as shower gel, aftershave, etc.
It is said that a bottle of “4711” is sold every 5 seconds in the world.
Here in the “47 11” house in Cologne you can discover and experience the world and history of fragrances as part of a guided tour.

The Cologne band “Klüngelköpp” dedicated a song to the perfume a few years ago

*Now we are about to deal with the darkest chapter of German and Cologne history. Follow us to the EL-DE-Haus, the former Gestapo headquarters in Cologne. *

Image source 1. Image: By © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16828818


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