ELASAN

ELASAN is a German skin- and baby-care brand that began in the late 1960s in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as a cream for infants. Its first product came in a deep-blue tin decorated with a white stork, which earned it the nickname "Storchencreme" ("stork cream"), a name the brand still uses for its baby-care line. Today ELASAN belongs to Leyh-Pharma GmbH, a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Brotterode-Trusetal, Thuringia, where the products are also made [11].

The start of the brand is dated in two ways. ELASAN says customers have trusted its products since 1967 [1], while a 2018 article by the European Flacon Glass Museum (Europäisches Flakonglasmuseum) traces the stork cream to 1966 [10]. The brand is active, and its range now stretches from baby creams and oils to a calendula ointment, a foot cream and several products for more demanding skin needs.

ELASAN has no named founder. It was created by a state enterprise, VEB Leipziger Arzneimittelwerk in Leipzig, which developed it as a care product for babies at the end of the 1960s, according to a collection record held by the Kreismuseum Finsterwalde [11]. The museum account adds that the Leipzig works became the only manufacturer of baby-care products in the GDR in 1966. Its first offering was a covering cream, meant to shield a baby's skin, packed in a flat, deep-blue tin with a white stork. Two years later the cream, by then sold as "Elasan-Creme", was given a new formula.

The German-language Wikipedia's list of brand names and products in the GDR records Elasan simply as the baby-care range of VEB Leipziger Arzneimittelwerk [9], which reflects how closely the name was tied to that single category.

The founding date depends on which account is followed. The company's own website gives 1967 as the year from which users have relied on ELASAN. The glass museum's history points to 1966 for the stork cream and to two years later for the "Elasan-Creme" name and formula, and a private collector's website on GDR cosmetics likewise describes the ELASAN logo as dating from 1966 [12]. The Finsterwalde museum record gives no exact year and speaks only of the late 1960s. This article follows the brand's own date of 1967 while noting the one-year difference.

From a single cream, the range grew step by step into a complete care series. According to the glass museum, baby powder, baby oil, a gel, a milk, Zartcreme (a soft cream), baby soap and a baby bath were added over time. The products were a regular part of the assortment in drugstores and department stores, and the museum notes that adults with very sensitive skin or an intolerance to perfume also reached for them.

The same collector's website recalls that in 1976 eight advertising films by the Leipzig manufacturer ran in "Tausend Tele-Tips", a television advertising programme. One of them showed a forgetful father, son in his arms, standing puzzled in front of the ELASAN shelf until a saleswoman explained the range to him. The joke, as the site tells it, was that there was nothing to choose between: ELASAN was the only baby-care series on sale.

The brand's industrial setting shifted with the reorganisation of the East German pharmaceutical sector. From 1979, VEB Leipziger Arzneimittelwerk came under the newly formed VEB Pharmazeutisches Kombinat GERMED Dresden, a state pharmaceutical combine [10]. GERMED, the collector's site explains, was a word mark standing for "German Medicaments".

After German reunification, ELASAN changed hands and places of manufacture. The glass museum's 2018 article states that ELASAN products, in a new design, had been made since 2000 by Riemser Arzneimittel AG, a company based in the Hanseatic university city of Greifswald in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Production later moved to Trusetal in Thuringia under Leyh-Pharma, though no public account gives the date of that change.

ELASAN's ownership has passed through several hands, and the sources describe different stages of that chain. The 2018 glass museum article names Riemser Arzneimittel AG as the manufacturer since 2000 [10]. More recent sources name Leyh-Pharma GmbH: the Kreismuseum Finsterwalde record states that the brand is used today by Leyh Pharma GmbH [11], and Leyh-Pharma is identified as the operator of the brand's website in its legal notice [3]. The two accounts most likely describe successive owners rather than a genuine dispute, but when and how the brand moved from Riemser to Leyh-Pharma has not been made public.

Leyh-Pharma has its own origin story tied to reunification. According to the company, pharmacist Klaus-Dieter Leyh founded his pharmaceutical manufactory in the Thuringian Forest only a few days after Germany reunited [2]. ELASAN says he wanted to use the new freedom to run a business to keep proven formulations in circulation, and to preserve East German cosmetics brands that were at risk from powerful competitors in the West.

Leyh-Pharma describes itself as a small Thuringian manufacturer of medicines, medical devices and cosmetics that also takes on contract manufacturing [8]. The legal notice on the ELASAN website names Wilhelm Haarmann as managing director and gives the company's address as Im Beierstal in Brotterode-Trusetal, with registration at the local court in Jena. The company's shareholders are not publicly documented. Alongside ELASAN, Leyh-Pharma sells a line under its own "Leyhs" name, and the company says some of its products still draw on the ideas of Dr. Erfurth, a paediatrician from Thuringia.

ELASAN presents itself as traditional family skin care with regional roots. Its tagline is "Made in Thüringen", and it describes its products as being of "Apotheken-Qualität" (pharmacy quality). The company says it still makes its baby cosmetics with natural raw materials and combinations of active ingredients based on original pharmacy formulations, and it speaks of combining traditional craftsmanship with modern research.

Place is central to how the brand talks about itself. Trusetal, which the company calls a recognised health resort on the edge of the Thuringian Forest, is presented as an asset: ELASAN says its products contain medically treated spring water, water that may earlier have flowed over the local Trusetal waterfall. The company adds that it often buys its cosmetic ingredients in the region and even orders its tubes from the neighbouring town of Wasungen [2].

Generational trust is the other recurring theme. On its baby-care page, ELASAN suggests that parents care for their baby with the same product that the child's mother may have received as a baby herself.

The current range is organised into skin care, baby care and specialist care, alongside the Leyhs line and a nasal spray.

Baby care remains the brand's core. ELASAN describes this line as "also known as Storchencreme" and says it is produced in Trusetal [5]. It includes a baby ointment (Leyhs Babysalbe), which the company says is free of zinc, parabens, colourants, fragrance and preservatives and is recommended by midwives; the Zartcreme, labelled vegan and intended for very dry and normal skin; a baby lotion; and a baby oil made without paraffin or preservatives, which the company calls non-comedogenic, meaning it should not clog pores.

The skin-care range covers an Intensiv Creme without perfume or preservatives, a Lipophile Pflegesalbe (a rich, oil-based care ointment) for face, body and scalp that the company says is free of fragrance, colourants and preservatives, the Thüringer Ringelblumensalbe (a fragrance-free calendula ointment), and the Thüringer Fußcreme, a foot cream. A skin and wound protection cream is also sold.

For the specialist-care range, the company makes suitability claims rather than medical ones. It says its Ureaderm F10% cream is particularly suitable for people with diabetes and as supportive care alongside psoriasis treatment, and that its foot cream is suitable for foot care in diabetes [6]. The company does not cite clinical studies for these statements, and its free-from claims apply to individual products rather than to the whole range. No third-party certifications are documented.

ELASAN has a place in the material history of East Germany. The Kreismuseum Finsterwalde in Brandenburg holds an aluminium "Elasan Creme" tin, dated to the 1980s and made by VEB Leipziger Arzneimittelwerk, in its collection. The European Flacon Glass Museum devoted a 2018 feature, titled "Von Eheglück und Storchencreme" ("Of marital bliss and stork cream"), to the GDR-era baby-care series. A private collector's website on GDR cosmetics also catalogues the brand's old tins, powders and soaps.

ELASAN is active. As of September 2026 the brand runs its own online shop, which serves customers in Germany and Austria and lists products with customer reviews, and the company also refers to a factory outlet at its Trusetal site. Manufacturing takes place in Trusetal, Thuringia, under Leyh-Pharma GmbH. Its sales are concentrated in Germany and Austria.