Hatzenbühl in 1573: The Palatinate pastor Anselmann plants seeds of a sensitive tropical nightshade plant in the community garden. He thus became a pioneer of tobacco cultivation in his country - and the Palatinate can boast of being the home of tobacco in Germany ever since. The climate and soil in the southern Palatinate were ideal for cultivation. So tobacco thrived here as a special culture in the following centuries, initially only for ornament and as a medicinal plant, then as a luxury food, and later the cultivation also became an economic factor. At the beginning of the 17th century, the first tobacco-growing associations were founded. The economic heyday of the Palatinate "Duwak" was from 1970 to 2009 with the cultivation of three types of tobacco on an area of more than 1200 hectares: the traditional air-dried variety Badischer Geudertheimer for cigar production and the varieties Badischer Burley as well as the oven-dried Virgin for cigarettes and pipe tobacco . However, in 2010 the EU subsidies for tobacco cultivation were abolished. Without financial support, many tobacco growers gave up the time-consuming and manual production. Recently, however, there has been a boost and new perspectives - thanks to increasing quality assurance with ecological and sustainable methods, without pesticides and additives.