Bayer "heroin" for the drug diacetylmorphine and marketed it as a cough suppressant and non-addictive substitute for morphine until 1910. Bayer also introduced phenobarbital; prontosil, the first widely used antibiotic and the subject of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Medicine; the antibiotic Cipro (ciprofloxacin); and Yaz (drospirenone) birth control pills. In 1925 Bayer was one of six chemical companies that merged to form IG Farben, the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical company. The Allied Control Council seized IG Farben after World War II, because of its role in the Nazi war effort and involvement in the Holocaust, which included using slave
Bayer war potential". It was split into its six constituent companies in 1951, then split again into three: BASF, Bayer and Hoechst. Bayer was at that point known as Farbenfabriken Bayer AG; it changed its name to Bayer AG in 1972. Fritz ter Meer, an IG Farben director and Nazi Party member who directed operations at the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz, was sentenced in 1948 to seven years for war crimes during the IG Farben Trial at Nuremberg. Released in 1950, he was elected chair of Bayer's supervisory board in 1956 and remained in that position until 1964. In 1953