C.S. Reich
C.S. Reich was founded by Carl Sebastian Reich in Schweina, Germany in 1887. By it's 50th jubilee in 1937 C.S. Reich was the biggest pipe factory in Germany. In 1952, however, the owners of the company were imprisoned and the company itself was nationalized as Howal, an abbreviation of "Holzwaren Liebenstein" (wood products Liebenstein). By the 1970s Howal, after acquiring many other smaller pipemaking firms, was the sole maker of smoking pipes in East Germany. In 1990, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of the Germanies, the company was closed.[1]
Three years later, in 1993, Design Berlin purchased the Howal factory and began making pipes there once again.