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REGIONAL SPECIALTIES

While the various regions of Germany were independent and autonomous communities until relatively recently, it is not surprising that they also developed special regional foods. There is a common factor: almost everywhere, these regional foods are based on the country’s favorite staples of beer, pork, potatoes, and cabbage, yet they are different in the technique of cooking, seasoning, or the way they are served. In general, there are three main divisions of German cuisine: Central, Northern, and Southern.

CENTRAL REGION

The Central region also includes hearty meals and foods, especially the famed Westphalian ham and dark heavy pumpernickel bread. Pork is important here and many dishes favor a heavy touch with freshly ground black pepper. Gravies are thickened with dried bread crumbs more often than with flour. Pannhas is a thick, simmered porridge made from buckwheat and may be eaten hot or cold and sometimes sliced and fried. Pannhas may have been the origin of New England “scrapple,” with cornmeal rather than buckwheat used in the United States. Frankfurt is known for a special herb-flavored green sauce, grune sosse, which is similar to the pesto alla genovese based on basil.

One cannot think of Thuringia without images of fluffy round dumplings, for here is the home of the feathery klosse, made only from potatoes and flour – the best made even without the leavening help of eggs. The foods in Saxony are similar but they take even more pleasure in sweets: schnitten, stollen, and fruit kuchen in delicious variety. Apple cider in different alcoholic potencies is a familiar drink throughout this region.

NORTHERN REGION

The Northern region, influenced by its proximity to the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands as well as by the damp, cold climate, is characterized by thick soups, pickled and smoked meats and fish, dried fruits, smoked bacon, sour cream, and many dishes with goose and eels. Most interesting is the traditional North German meal of labskaus: a one-dish meal of meat and fish plus vegetables which became a sailor’s specialty and earned the name lobscouse. Schlachtplatte or slaughter plate is also a Northern specialty of a variety of meats and sausages – the byproducts of a slaughtering day – served with bread and pickles.

Berlin, considered part of the Northern cuisine district, is famed for its ground meat dishes: strammer max, a snack of buttered rye bread with a thick slice of ham and two fried eggs resting on top; Berliner pfannkuchen, luscious plump jam-filled doughnuts (the inspiration of those in other countries); and baumkuchen, rich eggy Christmas layered logs glazed and browned with chocolate. Here too, kummel (caraway) as a flavoring and as a liqueur is important and beer is taken with schnapps to accompany most foods. Occasionally beer mit schuss indicates a shot of raspberry syrup in the beer for a change. Every Berlin bar carries a good supply of Kurfurstlicher Magenbitter, a bitter potent cordial said to do wonders for the stomach.

SOUTHERN REGION

Southern German cuisine has a characteristically lighter touch. Wine is more prevalent than beer, due to the grape cuttings planted by the Romans almost 2,000 years ago. Here, dumplings are called knodel, and some very special potato dishes are prepared: puddings, pancakes, diced potatoes and bacon and the famed himmel und erde: equal amounts of pan-fried sliced apples and potatoes with crisply fried slices of blood sausage, aptly translated as “heaven and earth.”

FOODS COMMONLY USED IN GERMANY

Pork, beer, potatoes, sauerkraut, and black bread are not only German staples, they are simple hearty foods that German ingenuity has raised to gastronomic heights of perfection and diversity. With newer trends to lightness and simplicity, people increasingly forgo soups as being fattening, and eat less bread and potatoes but more eggs. It is a pity that soups are losing popularity (except in rural regions where they are still a staple), for German soups are always richly satisfying, based on vegetables, flour-thickened, and flavored with smoked pork. No part of the pig is wasted and much of the pork produced finds its way into the dozens of varieties of sausages as well as hams, bacon, chops, and roasts.

Beer is the national drink and is of exceptional quality everywhere, with many areas specializing in several distinctive types. Potatoes are served in every conceivable form and guise but none so wondrous as the fluffy dumplings of Thuringia. Sauerkraut, too, shows up in soups, stews, blended with fruits, or dotted with caraway seeds – the perfect bed for roast goose or plump sausage.

German bakery is renowned not only for its flavor – the honest taste of good fresh ingredients – but also for its lack of coloring, additives, or chemicals, which the Germans dislike. Throughout, honest natural flavors of good fresh foods in hearty servings all washed down with fine beer rep-resent German cuisine at its best.

German cuisine can also be divided into cookery based on wine and cookery based on beer. At one time only the aristocracy was permitted to hunt and dine on game and wine; today it is only a question of taste and preference. Wines are served mostly in a Weinkeller and foods are more apt to be light and delicate from main dish to airy desserts. Beer is served in a bierlokal, brauhaus, or keller and is the hearty partner to filling savory dishes usually served in generous portions.

MEALS AND CUSTOMS IN GERMANY

Early risers, the Germans like a light breakfast of bread or rolls with butter and preserves and coffee with canned milk and sugar. Children may be served a porridge of oats or rice flavored with raisins and cinnamon. But since that first meal of the day is served before the real German appetite has fully awakened, most people take a few sandwiches of meat or cheese to work or school, to be eaten around ten o’clock as the second breakfast or snack. In some areas a few sausages with beer fill the hunger “pocket.”

Traditionally the noon meal is the largest of the day and many try to eat at home with the family, although this is becoming increasingly less feasible with more and more women working outside the home. A hearty soup, a meat and vegetable eintopf, and a dessert (susspeisen) make up the midday meal.

Since supper is customarily served around 7:30 p.m., an afternoon snack of “coffee and a sweet” helps tide one over. A light evening meal frequently comprises soup and a dessert, a selection of cold meats, sausages, and cheese with bread or rolls accompanied with salad is served. Occasionally a late evening hunger pang may be assuaged with sausages and beer or a thick goulash-type soup. Restaurants serve every variety of food in generous portions and eating out is almost a form of sport to many Germans.

One can understand the delight in eating out with only a glance of what is offered: good eating places have special names such as gasthofe, ratsheller, weinstuben, bierhallen, restaurants, schnellimbiss-stube (quick lunch counter), milchbars for cool milk or milkshakes, eissalons for refreshing ices and ice creams of all types, konditoreien for pastries and coffee, summer beer gardens, and even special cafeterias at places of business to provide that hot midday meal. And there is a wurstlerei just for beer and sausages. Increasingly, Turkish, Italian, Thai, and other ethnic restaurants in the cities provide delicious alternatives to traditional German fare.

Entertaining at home is enjoyed with close friends, family, and the children’s friends. In fact, for most Germans, the friends of their children are not only welcomed as family, they are often considered as extended family. Many Germans retain the old traditions and formal etiquette associated with entertaining in the home. These include punctual arrival, some hand kissing is still customary, and almost always, a bouquet of flowers will be proffered to the hostess. Handshaking is a definite point of etiquette, and reputedly, more handshaking goes on in Germany than in many other countries.

Entertaining for business purposes or with casual friends takes place not in the home but in the many types of restaurants and cafes. Should it be necessary to bring people into the home to discuss business, the hostess rarely serves anything.

Family and close friends coming for dinner or lunch will always be served with the best linen, and if possible any fine treasured pieces of china, especially coffee sets. Rhine and Moselle wines or a punch bowl accompanied with appetizers of small salted pastries and nuts will be offered first. The more sophisticated may sip Scotch, bourbon, or brandy, but generally cocktails are not in the German entertaining tradition. Home dinner parties are usually prompted by some special family occasion such as a confirmation or engagement. Often a lengthy evening may conclude with the hostess serving casually prepared sandwiches or plates of sausages with beer.

A particularly delightful custom is that of presenting children with a huge gaily decorated cone filled with sweets for their first day at school. Perhaps this sweet beginning adds pleasure to learning.

Domestic Life and Special Occasions in Germany

The German home is an orderly one and German cleanliness is legendary. Children are taught very early to be polite, courteous, and responsible. There are some regional differences that are noted by Germans themselves. Northerners feel that Bavarians (in the south) take life too easily, are too fond of good living, and speak with an unintelligible dialect. But the southern Germans counter this with the opinion that northerners are too dour and serious even if they grudgingly admit that northerners are honest and very hardworking.

Whether from the north or south, in most German households there is little argument that father is the head. More recently the traditional view that the “woman’s place is in the home” is fast disappearing as increasingly women join the workforce.

Kitchens are small but efficient and make use of modern gadgets and electrical appliances. Small appliances are of high quality and often perform several functions. Earthenware mixing bowls, strong wooden spoons, pudding and cake molds, rubber, wooden, and metal spatulas, as well as wire whisks all find a place in the German kitchen. Even if the weekdays are busy ones, the hausfrau will find time to prepare a special dinner at least once a week, while home baking for the holidays is traditional. Many kitchens boast specialty baking utensils: the kugelhopf tube pan with its diagonal spiral fluting; springform cake pans; flan and torte pans; a springerle roller or wooden springerle molds for cookies. Utensils are chosen for use and for quality and all are bought to last.

In rural areas cold cellars are used for winter storage of root vegetables, fruit, the family crocks of pickles and sauerkraut, and shelves of home preserves and jams. But food storage is not such a necessity in the city. Germans prefer their foods fresh. Baked goods, and often vegetables, fruits, and meats are bought daily. Many specialty stores, small open-air markets, and huge supermarkets and hypermarkets with incredible selections of local and imported goods make shopping a delight. Still other specialty shops feature a wide range of fine foods such as imported cheeses, different breads and rolls, and sausages and meats of every description. Milk too is not delivered to homes and is often bought daily at nearby dairies.

Special Occasions

Present-day Germany is almost equally divided between Roman Catholics and Protestants and each group celebrates not only religious and saint’s days but also join in beer and wine festivities, regional holidays and, in some areas, harvesting and planting festivities.

Hundreds of local and regional festivals and holidays are celebrated throughout Germany and vary according to locale, as do customs and foods. The South is predominantly Catholic while the North is mostly Protestant. Plain cakes, bread, and cheese are served at funerals, while the happier family occasions such as weddings, engagements, and confirmations call forth wines and opulent meals from the best of the regional and family specialties.

The wedding-eve party is called polterabend and, aside from the special treats and wine that are served, guests traditionally bring baskets or armloads of old crockery and these are cheerfully smashed because “broken dishes bring good luck.” Humorous and teasing speeches and songs for the new couple help make a boisterous and fun-filled evening. Another traditionally German evening is the herrenabend, an evening for men only. Not quite the same as the familiar “stag party,” the herrenabend usually takes place for the purpose of discussing business or politics while eating and drinking. Of course no one minds if, towards the smaller hours of the evening, drinking predominates over conversation.

Spring and fall see the proliferation of many local beer and wine festivals but none as overwhelming as the Munich Oktoberfest held annually for a sixteen-day spree of beer-drinking, singing to the oompah-pah bands, dancing, and snacking on roasted chickens, sausages, and whole spit-roasted oxen all in gargantuan quantities. The lest, which originated in 1810 to celebrate Crown Prince Ludwig’s marriage, proved to be such a good idea that it has been an annual event ever since. The boisterous good fellowship has spread to other countries where citizens of German origin make their homes, and, as with the Irish Saint Patrick’s Day parade, everyone, regard-less of ethnic background, happily joins in. Together with the fun and frolic, eating and drinking, nearby amusement parks offer all manner of games and rides as well.

The German’s annual calendar is rung in with a quiet family evening on New Year’s Eve centered around the traditional specialty of Polish carp: a whole carp gently poached in a rich sauce of beer, gingerbread crumbs, lemon peel, almonds, and raisins all traditionally served with kartoffelklosse and kraut. The festive meal is served with a flaming punch bowl and completed with an array of baked treats. Catholics eat no meat on New Year’s Eve, Protestant families may enjoy other local food favorites.

Three King’s Eve, Epiphany or Dreihonigsabend signifies the end of the Christmas season (Twelfth Night) and is greeted with the serving of wine or punch and konigskuchen, a loaf cake with raisins, almonds, and rum.

Arriving in bleak mid-winter is the brightest carnival of them all: Fasching (elsewhere called Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday), usually a three-day bash of costumes, masks, parades, processions, parties, and revelry unmatched at any other time of year. Crullers called fastnachtkrapfen are the special treat everywhere but feasting and drinking before the Lenten restrictions is the general rule. The new spring beer, called Bock, is celebrated during this time as well and is enjoyed with bockwurst sausages that are the specialty of the season. Holy Thursday (just before Good Friday) is also called Grundonnerstag and the spring festival is heralded with the serving of a green vegetable soup made of fresh spring vegetables, while other dishes made with eggs and spinach are also traditional. Good Friday or Karfreitag is a solemn day when all businesses and shops are closed. For the pious, no meat is eaten; only fish dishes are allowed. Churches open their doors revealing huge displays of fresh flowers and flickering candles.

Easter or Oster arrives with the special aroma of home-baked fruited breads and cakes, candies in the form of eggs and rabbits, and a traditional Easter dinner featuring ham served with pureed peas. For the children, the Easter Bunny does his job of hiding colored eggs throughout the house and in gardens.

A pleasant spring ritual is the Whitsun Festival or Pfingstausfug, a traditional spring outing when good luck is considered to be the prize of the first person to hear a cuckoo, and everyone enjoys communing with nature.

Germany is the land where many of Christendom’s cherished Christmas traditions originated. These include the Christmas tree, many Christmas legends and hauntingly beautiful Christmas carols, as well as some of the earliest staging of Christmas nativity scenes (by Saint Francis of Greccio, 1225) and primitive Christmas plays.

The holiday begins early with the many fairs held at this time of year, especially the one held annually at Nurnberg. Here one finds every conceivable decoration and toy for Christmas: a fairyland of color, design, and fun. And for those who get hungry while shopping, there is the famed Nurnberg lebkuchen and pfefferkuchen (spiced squares and cakes).

While the first taste of Christmas may be at the fairs, the real beginning of the festive season is on Saint Nikolaus’ Day, December 6. The evening before, all children hang up socks or hoots and find them filled in the morning with sweets and small gifts. But the real excitement is the house-to-house visit of Saint Nikolaus himself with his helper, Krampus, a horrid furry little monster who carries a switch for bad children. But most children have been good and therefore happily receive the saint’s good cookies and good wishes. Delicious smells drift from every home as mothers almost daily prepare batches of honeyed and spiced cakes, cookies and fragrant breads all called weihnachtsgeback. And everywhere little naschhatzen (pilferers of sweets) are nibbling tastes of stollen, lebkuchen, spritz cookies, springerle, and spekulatius.

Christmas Eve brings tree-lighting and carol-singing and most families go to church. Surprise gifts from Kris Kringle appear mysteriously under the tree after everyone returns from church services. Since pious Christians refrain from eating meat on Christmas Eve, the traditional dinner of Polish carp baked in all its glory with beer, nuts and raisins is usually the highlight of the meal surrounded with potato dumplings and dishes of kraut. Punch or wine and fine bakery end the meal while others still nibble on fruit and nuts. Christmas Day is a quiet family day in Germany and the special dinner will likely be the regional specialty of roast hare, roast pork, or a fine fat roasted goose. Marzipan fruits and little figures are part of the decorations and the nibbles too.

FOOD AND CULTURE IN GERMANY

As early as 100 C.E., the Roman historian Tacitus described the Germans as a “warrior nation, hard-drinking, honest and hospitable.” He spoke of German food as “simple” but hearty, that included breads and gruels made from oats, millet and barley, wild fruits and berries and wild game and fowl roasted whole on huge spits. Milk and cheese added variety, especially on the occasions when game was lacking. By 800 C.E. Charlemagne had joined the many Germanic tribes into a huge empire that included not only present day Germany but also France and parts of Italy. It was Charlemagne too who encouraged monasteries in their cultivation of vineyards, orchards, and gardens, especially herb gardens.

Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire existed for a time, but parts of it broke away and became distinctive united nations. This was also to be the fate of Germany. In fact, at the time of Tacitus’s writing, the term “Germans” referred rather loosely to all the “barbarian” tribes north of the Alps and the Rhine River including what are today known as English, Dutch, and Scandinavians. The Latin word Germania used in so many early Roman and Hellenistic writings is believed to be of Celtic origin while the later term Deutsch has a more complex origin linking both early Teutons and Saxons and referring to language as well as people. It is thought that by a mistranslation of the word Deutsch, the Germans emigrating to Pennsylvania came to be known as “Pennsylvania Dutch.”

Although Charlemagne had tried, and the people themselves dreamed of it, the hope of a united Germany was not to be. The problems which prevented unification were first, the lack of natural boundaries, and second, the fact that the German language was also spoken in other lands, so it could not be used as a unifying factor.

However, the influence of the Romans and other Europeans brought improvements at least in foods. By the Middle Ages, Germans were quaffing their hot-spiced wine from gold and silver plated vessels and downing not only spit roasted oxen but also spiced sausages and blood puddings, smoked meats and pickled fish, a great variety of fresh and dried fruits, and even spiced honey cakes. Strict adherence to church fasting days, which prohibited the consumption of meat, meant that fish was in greater use and prepared in even more ways than in present times. Spices were especially important, not only to help preserve foods but to help improve the taste of spoiled meat.

Accepted Germanic manners and customs date from Charlemagne’s time, and although there were some gradual adaptations, the prevailing pattern of manners was rigidly adhered to by all. It is believed that Charlemagne introduced the custom of dining alone with his faithful leaders while the servants were the last to eat. Later, couples often dined together, sometimes sharing a plate and eating with the fingers (before cutlery became popular), but the women would retire promptly after eating, leaving the men to their drinking and singing.

In the Renaissance period, the establishment of the Hanseatic League helped to organize and increase trade, bringing a greater variety of fish, spices, fruits, oil, and even precious sugar to German tables. Cattle and poultry production was increased both in amount and quality by special breeding. Following the ideas used in the kitchens of noblemen, foods were cooked in cauldrons suspended on hooks over open fires. There were even some primitive kitchen ranges with metal rings over wood fires to hold huge pots in which bubbled mixtures of meats, vegetables, and fragrant herbs. Local inns served sausages with white and black radishes and mugs of wine, cider, or beer, and favorite dishes included lentils or beans cooked with chunks of cured and smoked pork.

In cold weather, dried fruits were served with cured meats, and pears, apples, and plums were commonly set into banked ovens to dry after the bread had been baked. Two other dishes were already old favorites: steak Tartar, adapted from the scraped raw meat of the marauding Tartar horsemen from Mongolia, and sauerkraut, a tart fermented dish the Tartars had learned from the laborers on the Great Wall of China.

Germany as a political entity came into being on January 18, 1871, when peace was finally signed with France and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck welded the nation together. But the area itself was still far from unified. There were still pronounced regional differences in religion, customs, dialects, and even temperaments. Wars and dissension had torn the land: the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) had produced incredible devastation and starvation – people ate dogs, cats, rats, acorns, and grass. Generally, it was felt that the unification of 1871 was only a superficial one. Despite every effort, the fiercely individualistic regions could seldom reach agreement, with the result of a lack of national identity.

The discovery of America had brought many new exciting foods to European tables, but it took almost 200 years and the strong insistence of Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1744 that German peasants plant potatoes against hunger, before the potato found a firm place in German cuisine. It now appears in dozens of delicious forms from soups, thick sauces, pancakes, dumplings, and puddings, even to the making of schnapps. Cocoa and turkey came to be known, but coffee was to suffer a lack of popularity because of the national preference for beer. Brewed everywhere and enjoyed everywhere, beer was considered a food in liquid form, evidenced by a corpulence seldom seen before. Beer began and ended the day, was a part of many dishes – bierhals, bierfreund, biersack, etc. – and was the beverage for all gatherings from weddings to funerals. Its thought that the beer preference has to do with Germany’s long history of strife and wars, for the processing of beer is quicker and easier than the culture of wines.

The 1700s not only saw new foods enter the German cuisine, there were also some new customs. French influence was becoming paramount in everything to do with food and drink. Small glasses replaced huge drinking mugs; coffee, tea, and chocolate came to be sociable drinks and were served from specially made porcelain sets. Fine light bakery and flaky pastries replaced the heavy honey and spice cakes of old. The carving of huge roasts was refined to an art and matching silver sets of cutlery and carving utensils came into vogue. Even Frederick the Great of Prussia preferred speaking French to German. French cooks and cookbooks, French manners, all became an intrinsic part of the cultured upper classes and, as always, this newer protocol was rigidly adhered to.

But the German peasants, workers, and the many poor made do with their homemade beer and filled their stomachs with kraut and bacon, lentils and peas, firm satisfying breads and light dumplings. By the 1800s more than four-fifths of the German population were peasants, and their own pigs were the mainstay of their diet. Thanks to Frederick the Great, it could be said that by the end of the 1800s, “potatoes were such a regular item that smoke coming from a cottage chimney at night was almost a certain sign that inside, potatoes, bacon and onions were frying.”

Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled from 1888 to 1918. He introduced many English customs to the court since his mother was a daughter of Queen Victoria. Most popular was the introduction of large satisfying English-style breakfasts, and inns called weinstube featuring lodging and good food and wine. Kaiser Wilhelm also insisted upon menus being written in German instead of French, and he was not above enjoying robust peasant dishes. It was not long before the tastes and manners of the court were reflected in fine hotels and the burgeoning middle classes.

The industrial revolution that swept Great Britain took another hundred years before it took hold in Germany. For too long, the Germans lacked well established political and economic systems: Germany’s many fragmented provinces and states often had separate currencies and different trade tariffs. But within three years after the 1871 unification, more mines, ironworks, and blast furnaces were producing than had existed in the past seventy years.

The expansion and power of the great Krupp works paralleled the growth of Prussian power. Educational systems were keyed to industrial education and research, and this trend, together with the vast riches of natural resources and the growth of fast communication systems, spurred German genius. Welding industrial development to scientific research and careful use of resources were vital factors in Germany’s success. But so was another point: business and industries were enriched by aggressive personalities who regarded politics as too conservative.

Yet the dream of a unified Germany was still shared by political conservatives, intellectuals, and powerful businessmen. The gradual rise of the Social Democrat Party and a large working class that chafed under the collar of hard work and submissiveness expected of them caused rumblings of concern. In their gigantic industrial leap forward, they had pushed aside the periods of Classicism and Romanticism that other nations had gone through, and this lack added yet another rift to the many inner conflicts of the German people.

After the First World War, the great progress of the Second Reich was abruptly ended. New interpretations and fabrications of German history attempted to overcome the people’s sense of national failure. These theories drew largely on popular legends, on the German composer Richard Wagner’s revival of Germanic mythology, and on Gobineau’s race theory, and not least on the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s “superman” and “blond beast.” Every misfortune came to be attributed to the deceit of others: “the crafty Jews, the perfidious British, the treacherous Italians” and so forth. Lacking established values and traditions and leaning heavily on a lack of reality and with a sense of despair and inferiority, the ground was laid for the horrors that came with the Second World War.

For a time Germany was split yet again into East and West. But the autumn of 1989 to the end of 1990 saw dramatic changes. The dismantling of the notorious Berlin Wall was triggered by the influx of East Germans fleeing to West Germany through Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Coinciding with the collapse of the Honecker government, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall gained a wave of unrelenting support. By the end of 1990, a unified Germany held elections for the first time in fifty-eight years. Subsequently, the reality of everyday life, economic restructuring, attacks by neo-Nazi gangs, and the pressing influx of immigrants dimmed the euphoria of unification.

Despite the current struggles, Germans are regaining their deep traditions of respect for authority and orderly living. Their great zest for life, boisterously dramatized in their festivals, is also bringing them renewed industrial and agricultural advances as well as a high general standard of living. There is a new and growing pleasure in regional German cuisine, and the celebration of regional dialects, customs, and festivals. Yet some admirable old ways remain ingrained: politeness and formality especially in names and titles, the importance of cleanliness and neatness in dress, and a strong sense of responsibility even in very young children.