UHU Der Alleskleber

UHU Der Alleskleber is a clear, solvent-based glue sold in a slim metal tube printed bright yellow, with UHU in heavy black capitals along its length and a black screw cap over a pointed nozzle. Squeezed out, it is a colourless, stringy liquid with a sharp smell of solvent that dries clear in minutes. It sticks paper, card, wood, leather, glass, porcelain and most plastics, polyethylene and polypropylene being the exceptions.

Its inventor was August Fischer, a pharmacist who in 1905 bought a small chemical works in Bühl, at the edge of the Black Forest, that made inks and glues. In 1932, aged 64, he arrived at a solution of polyvinyl acetate in solvents that formed a clear, strong bond on almost anything, even the new Bakelite. Ready to use from the tube and needing no heating or mixing, it was, the company says, the first of its kind. Fischer named it after the eagle owl, in a trade whose brands were already a Pelikan, an Adler and a Marabu.

His son Hugo sent samples to 36,000 schools, and the slogan 'Im Falle eines Falles klebt UHU wirklich alles' made the glue a household word. It was used, by contemporary accounts, in building the airship Hindenburg. Writing in 2009, Die Welt observed that the yellow tube with black lettering had practically not changed in nearly eighty years, the metal cap of the first tubes apart. The yellow and black carton came later, with the self-service shops.

The firm has had several owners since the Fischers, among them Beecham from 1971 and the Italian Bolton Group since 1994, but the glue is still made in Bühl. In German-speaking countries UHU has become a generic word for any all-purpose glue. The original solvent-based formula is still sold, its carton now marked 'Das Original', beside the solvent-free and gel versions developed later.