Henkel Timeline

In 1887, the product range was expanded with Henkel’s Thee, making the company one of Germany’s biggest tea importers. 

The Schwarzkopf brand has its roots in Berlin: In 1898, chemist Hans Schwarzkopf and his wife Martha opened a retail store in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district and sold “dyes, remedies and scents”.

Henkel and fertilizers? Until 1917, Henkel sold the Floral fertilizer – mainly in Germany – under the motto “Makes plants thrive and flower abundantly.”

Who doesn’t know the “White Lady”? In 1922, artist Kurt Heiligenstaedt designed one of the most iconic advertising figures for Persil. She featured on posters, metal sheet signs, house gables and master clocks on large city squares until well into the 1960s.

Henkel showed originality in its product promotion with sandwich ads – including for the first cold-water soluble Henkel glue, Mala-trocken, which was produced from 1929. 

Henkel brought the talking film “Wäsche – Waschen – Wohlergehen” ‏(loosely translates to “Laundry, washing, well-being”) to German movie theatres and hit the bull’s eye: About 30 million moviegoers watched the 96-minute-long feature in the years that followed. 

The first liquid hair tinting lotion by Poly Color adorned a nude Botticelli Venus in 1947 – and post-war Germany was up in arms about it. With a modified packaging, however, Poly Color soon became a huge success. 

Henkel invented Pritt after the “twist up” mechanism was tested on lipsticks – a revolution in the world of glue. In 2001, the Pritt glue stick was even tested in space and became the first brand on the planet to receive the “space-proof quality” seal.