The story
The Roth-Händle company started trading in 1897 and registered the name as a trade mark on 22 July of that year.
For many years Roth-Händle cigarettes had a reputation for being very strong, but today are much milder to conform with European Union legislation regarding maximum levels of toxic substances.
Roth-Händle cigarettes use a high proportion of domestically produced dark tobacco and fewer flavour additives than many other brands. They were marketed for many years as "all natural".
Their best-known product is filterless cigarettes. A filter variant was also produced until 2017. Roth-Händle packaging is distinctive, using a soft pack in plain red with 19th century artwork and typefaces in black (or white in the filter variant). Schwarze Hand, a fine cut loose tobacco for hand rolling, is also produced.
In 1991 European Commission legislation set maximum permissible levels of toxins in cigarettes. This affected 'full-strength' products from Reemtsma including Roth-Händle, Reval, "West Strong" and "Astor". From 1993 a maximum of 15 milligrams of tar per cigarette was permitted, further reduced to 12 milligrams in 1998.
In 1998 Roth-Händle introduced a blond variant, similar to Gitanes Blondes, but this met with little commercial success and was eventually discontinued.
From Wikipedia’s article on Roth-Händle, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3