DELTIN

Brief History

Merk & Cie was the largest true independent in West Germany growing to more than 500 Deltin branded filling stations in the mid 1960s, concentrated in Bavaria. In 1989, after many years of shrinkage, Merk re-branded most of the remaining 120 or so stations to BP, leaving just a handful of low-volume sites using the Deltin name. The entire company was subsequently sold in 1994 to the Austrian firm OMV, enabling it to gain a toehold in the South German market and the Deltin name had disappeared by the end of the decade.

Maps

Images courtesy of Hermann Rauh

The first known Deltin map (left) dates from between 1951 and 1954. It covers just its Bavarian homeland at a scale of 1:250,000. The actual map is stapled inside light card covers, and was produced by Wolff. By 1965 JRO-Verlag of München had taken over production of Deltin's Bavaria map (right). Again pasted into card covers, the map marked all Deltin locations with the M in a triangle of Merk & Cie.

The extract (right) shows just how dense the Deltin network was in its heartland, with many villages to the North and West of Rosenheim having Deltin pumps in 1965. Significantly, there were none in the town itself, and it was this reliance on small country stations that explains why Deltin maps are so rare and how the company lost over 80% of its outlets in the 25 years after this map was printed. The 1972 edition (upper left) was drawn by Falk still marking Deltin locations, though 3 of the 11 sites shown on the 1965 map extract had already closed. Two years later, Falk had to re-draw the map to reflect the new "d" logo of the company, and took the opportunity to updated the original mapping style, by making secondary roads red rather than green. The cover of this 1974 issue is shown lower left.

This 1986 map is almost certainly of the final design used by Deltin, as the company only had 144 outlets then, and switched most to the BP brand in 1989. Simple card covers fitted onto a stock map of Bavaria at 1:250,000, which may have allowed a standard cover to be used on several different years' maps. As the logo is hard to see from the image, it is repeated right.

Map image bottom left and logo courtesy Jon Roma