Café HAG
Café HAG is a worldwide brand of decaffeinated coffee owned by U.S. multinational Kraft Foods.[1]
History
The brand originated in Bremen in Germany in 1906 and took its name from the company title Kaffee Handels-Aktien-Gesellschaft, or Kaffee HAG for short.
The company was set up by Ludwig Roselius, co-developer of the first commercial decaffeination process. Barbara Goette accepted Ludwig Roselius' offer to work for the corporation and she saved his life by intervening on his behalf with Hitler in 1936 and consequently the Kaffee HAG concern made a huge capital investment in Focke-Wulf resulting in a 46% shareholding and reconstitution of the company.[2] On 26/7/1942 in the Berghof Adolf Hitler mentioned, on the one hand, how clever Ludwig Roselius was to extract the caffeine from coffee, sell the finished product as Kaffee HAG for a higher price, yet on the other hand, how he was taken in by a charlatan who declared that he could purify dirty water whereas he himself immediately recognized this man as a crook.[3] Alfred Runge and Eduard Scotland designed iconic posters[4] and packaging for the HAG Kaffee company. They are credited with designs that defined the company.[5]
In the 1920s and 1930s Kaffee HAG was known for the publication of the Coffee Hag albums of heraldic emblems.
The coffee brand Sanka was later spun off from Kaffee HAG in 1910[6] for the French market ("Sanka" is a contraction of the French words "sans caféine") and U.S. rights to the Sanka name were sold in 1913.
The Kellogg Company purchased Roselius's American branch (based in Cleveland, Ohio) in 1928,[7] then sold it to General Foods in 1939.[8] General Foods acquired the original German company in 1979. The spelling of Café HAG was standardized in the 1990s. Both Café HAG and Sanka are now owned by Kraft Foods, which merged with General Foods in 1990.
References
- ↑ Kraft:UK Coffee Brands
- ↑ Ludwig Roselius: Ein Nachruf von Barbara Goette, Bremisches Jahrbuch, 1951, www.brema.suub.uni-bremen.de/periodical/pageview/62875 viewed on 26/3/2016
- ↑ Trevor-Roper, Hugh. Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1942: His Private Conversations. Trans. N. Cameron and R.H. Stevens. New York: Enigma Books, 2000, p. 598.
- ↑ Kaffee Hag, invaluable.com, retrieved 9 February 2014
- ↑ {{cite web | Hag Several manufacturers are detected, signed with ES | author = Several manufacturers are detected, signed with ES (Edouard Scotland) (manufacturer), Kaffee Hag AG (advertiser company) & it | accessdate = 2014-02-09 | publisher = Europeana} }
- ↑ Sanka. Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1989. Accessed 5 August 2008.
- ↑ "Kellogg Acquires Kaffee Hag Firm". The Evening Independent (St. Petersburg, Fla.). Feb 4, 1928. p. 3A.
- ↑ Pendergrast, Mark (2010), Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World (revised ed.), Basic Books, p. 187, ISBN 9780465024049
External links
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