German Cannabis History — 5,500 BCE to Bubatz

Last verified: April 2026

Ancient & Medieval Roots

Cannabis has been present in the territory of modern Germany for at least 7,500 years. Archaeological evidence dating to approximately 5,500 BCE documents cannabis seeds at sites in what is now central Europe, predating written history by millennia.

Hemp cultivation was widespread in the Germanic and Celtic regions long before the Roman period. By the medieval era, it was an established crop with both practical and medicinal applications.

Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), the Benedictine abbess, polymath, and one of medieval Europe’s most remarkable figures, documented cannabis in her botanical and medical writings in the 12th century. She described its use for pain relief and other medicinal applications — an early entry in what would become a long German tradition of pharmaceutical cannabis.

Hemp’s practical importance is most dramatically illustrated by the Gutenberg Bible (c. 1455), printed in Mainz. While the pages themselves were vellum and paper, hemp was central to the paper-making and printing industry that Gutenberg revolutionized. By the 17th century, Germany had an estimated 150,000 hectares under hemp cultivation — a scale that would not be matched again until modern industrial hemp programs.

Prohibition Takes Hold

German cannabis prohibition developed gradually, driven more by international pressure and pharmaceutical regulation than by domestic moral panic:

1872: Cannabis restricted to pharmacy-only sales under Prussian pharmaceutical regulations. Not a ban, but the beginning of controlled access.
1929: The Opium Act (Opiumgesetz) classified cannabis alongside opium and cocaine, following the 1925 Geneva Convention. Germany was among the first European countries to implement international drug control frameworks.
1971: The Betäubungsmittelgesetz (Narcotics Act) replaced the Opium Act, maintaining and strengthening cannabis prohibition.
1982–1996: Hemp cultivation was completely banned in Germany, eliminating even industrial use.
1996: Industrial hemp cultivation legalized under EU regulations, but only for licensed farmers growing low-THC varieties.

The 1960s Counterculture & the Haschrebellen

Germany’s 1960s counterculture produced its own distinctive cannabis moment. The “Herumschweifende Haschrebellen” (Roaming Hash Rebels) were a West Berlin anarchist group that combined drug culture with radical politics, squatting, and anti-authoritarian activism. They were part of the broader Kommune movement that defined West Berlin’s counterculture and planted seeds that would eventually grow into Kreuzberg’s cannabis-tolerant identity.

The 1960s and 1970s also saw the development of Germany’s hashish supply chains from Turkey, Morocco, and Afghanistan, establishing a cannabis culture centered on hash rather than flower — a pattern that persisted until relatively recently.

Turkish Gastarbeiter Culture & the Word “Kiffen”

One of the most distinctive features of German cannabis culture is linguistic. The German word “kiffen” (to smoke cannabis) derives from the Arabic word “kayf” (كيف), meaning pleasure, well-being, or a state of blissful relaxation.

The word entered German through the Gastarbeiter (guest worker) programs of the 1960s and 1970s, which brought hundreds of thousands of Turkish workers to West Germany. Turkish hashish culture and vocabulary merged with German youth culture, and “kiffen” became the standard German word for cannabis consumption. It remains the most common term today — a permanent linguistic trace of this cultural exchange.

The Fall of the Wall & Two Drug Cultures

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 brought two fundamentally different drug cultures into sudden contact.

West Germany had developed a cannabis culture connected to international supply chains, counterculture movements, and a pharmaceutical tradition that maintained some medical awareness of the plant.

East Germany (DDR) had a radically different relationship with drugs. Cannabis was rare behind the Iron Curtain. Instead, East Germans developed pharmaceutical workarounds — most notably the abuse of Faustan (a benzodiazepine) as a recreational substance. When the Wall fell, the collision of these two drug cultures produced a chaotic period in reunified Berlin that contributed to the city’s reputation for permissiveness.

The 1990s Berlin that emerged from reunification — abandoned buildings, squatter communities, the birth of the techno scene in former East Berlin spaces like Tresor — was the crucible that formed the cannabis culture the city is known for today.

The Road to Legalization

German cannabis advocacy has a long institutional history. The Deutscher Hanfverband (DHV, German Hemp Association), led by Georg Wurth since its founding in 2002, has been the primary advocacy organization pushing for legalization. Through hanfverband.de, the DHV built a grassroots movement that kept legalization on the political agenda for two decades.

Cannabis also entered German pop culture through:

Lammbock (2001) and Lommbock (2017): A pair of stoner comedies that became cult films, depicting small-time cannabis dealing in a university town. They captured the normalization of cannabis in German youth culture.
Deutschrap: German hip-hop artists including Haftbefehl and Ufo361 made cannabis a central theme, reflecting and amplifying the street-level normalization that was already underway.

The political breakthrough came with the 2021 traffic light coalition (SPD, Greens, FDP). FDP leader Christian Lindner’s viral social media moment — responding to a citizen’s question with “Bubatz bald legal?” (Weed soon legal?) — became a meme and an accidental campaign promise. “Bubatz” entered the mainstream German cannabis vocabulary, and the coalition agreement included cannabis legalization as a priority.

The Cannabis Act passed the Bundestag on February 23, 2024, and took effect on April 1, 2024 — a date many assumed was an April Fool’s joke until the first legal joint was lit at midnight in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

The Bottom Line

German cannabis history is not a story of sudden change. It is 7,500 years of continuous presence, punctuated by medieval herbalism, industrial hemp, imported prohibition frameworks, counterculture rebellion, cross-cultural vocabulary, and a two-decade advocacy campaign. The legalization of 2024 was less a revolution than a return to a relationship that predates German nationhood itself.