To borrow the line from the late Paul Harvey and his radio shows:  now for the rest of the story … about the Cologne Wars, rife with intrigue and a whiff of scandal.

In the city of Cologne today you’ll find two companies that both claim to sell the original eau de cologne: Farina and 4711. My post yesterday may have made it sound like the two companies, the former founded by Giovanni Farina and the latter by Wilhelm Mühlens, were equal pretenders to the throne. However, in fact the history is a little more complicated.

It was Italian perfumer maker Giovanni Farina who moved to Cologne in the early 1700s, and who wrote to his brother that he had created a new fragrance that he had decided to name after his new hometown, Cologne. This scent quickly became popular, being purchased by royalty more than the common folk, as a single vial of this cologne cost more than half a year’s salary of the average civil servant in the 18th century Cologne. Farina’s achievement was seen as miraculous, producing as he did “a constantly homogeneous fragrance consisting of dozens of monoessences” (description taken from the Farina company website).  Farina was celebrated far and wide for his creation, and — as I mentioned yesterday — the town fathers even put a statue of Farina on the side of the city hall tower to commemorate his achievements in selling his Eau de Cologne.

Now, a successful product will inspire knock-offs, imitations that try to pass themselves off as the real thing, only cheaper. This is apparently what happened in the early 1800s when Wilhelm Mühlens decided to open his own perfume factory in Cologne; he may have wanted to offer a less expensive version of the Farina cologne, one that could be sold to more people. Or maybe he just wanted to get in on the money that Farina was making.

The first thing Mühlens had to do was come up with a product that was similar.  Now, the actual formula for Farina’s cologne was (and is) top secret. But that wasn’t the biggest hurdle he faced, as by 1803, people associated Farina’s name with the product In fact, Mühlens seems to have reasoned that people recognized the “Farina” name more than the actual scent. So he came up with a clever scheme.

In 1803 he journeyed to Italy and found a man named Carlo Francesco Farina. Now, I was all ready to spin a fanciful back-story here about how Carlo was a disgruntled cousin of GIovanni, jealous of Giovanni’s success and wealth or something. However, the actual story is simpler than that, for Carlo Farina was not related at all to Giovanni. Rather, Carlo was from a different Farina family altogether; but for Mühlen’s purposes, Carlo’s last name was crucially Farina.

So Mühlens made a deal with Carlo Farina to license the “Farina” name from Carlo for use with Mühlen’s product. That gave Mühlens a legal way to be able to call the his product “Farina Eau de Cologne,” even though it had no connection with Giovanni Farina’s company or scent. Not only that, Mühlens also named his company “Farina.” Which meant that in the early 1800s, there were two Farina companies both making (different) Farina Eau de Cologne: one firm was run by the family of Giovanni Farina, and one was run by Mühlens.

Naturally, Giovanni’s company did not take this lightly. Rather, they took Mühlen’s company to court. After a long drawn-out legal battle, the court ruled in 1835 that the licenses from Carlo Farina that granted the right to use the Farina name to Mühlens were voided. Mühlens no longer had the right to market his cologne company under Carlo Farina’s name. But the court order was a little too specific: while it prevented Mühlens from using Carlo Farina‘s name, it technically didn’t prevent him from using the Farina name in general.

So, back to Italy he went, in search of another man named Farina. Mühlens soon found another Farina to do business win, and quickly re-established his company named “Farina”, continuing to market his cologne under the name “Farina Eau de Cologne.”

Needless to say, the court battles started up again. Amazingly enough, it took until 1881 until Wilhelm Mühlen’s company’s was finally barred from using any variation of the “Farina” name ever again. At this point, the Mühlen’s company was run by Wilhelm’s grandson, and he then changed the name of his company to “4711, ” after the company’s building’s address on Glockengasse in Cologne.

What I find rather astonishing is that even after all the different court rulings, apparently at no time was Mühlens, his heirs or his company enjoined from using the tagline “The Original Eau de Cologne” for their product. Which seems a little bit misleading. I mean, while it’s clear that the 4711 product has the most original origin story, the perfume itself is far from the actual original Eau de Cologne.

And now you know the rest of the story … and why it was a little long to include it all in yesterday’s post.

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P.S. BTW, my blog post title “The Cologne Wars” was inspired by the Star Wars movie title The Clone Wars.   It has really nothing to do with anything, I should probably note, though, that no one else ever refers to the disagreement between the perfume makers as a war…