The birthplace of the world’s oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company

In 1668, the pharmacist Friedrich Jacob Merck, who was born in Schweinfurt, acquired the later Angel Pharmacy located on Schlossgraben in downtown Darmstadt. The pharmacy, which is still owned by descendants of Friedrich Jacob Merck, is the origin of the world’s oldest pharmaceutical-chemical company.

In 1827, the pharmacist Emanuel Merck began the industrial-scale production of highly effective plant constituents, the alkaloids. The pharmacy laboratory developed into a pharmaceutical-chemical factory.

In 1904, the company moved to its present-day location because it could no longer expand in the city center. Built back then on a green meadow, the new site now borders the Darmstadt suburb of Arheilgen.