NINE

Stock Cubes and Baking Powder: The Industrialization of Food, 1871 to 1914

Soup made from stock cubes, margarine on white bread, cake made with baking powder, canned fruit for dessert and packed biscuits as a snack on the train – during the new age shaped by modern technology, urbanization and rapid transport, Germans shook off their old food habits and embraced modernity. Following the declaration of one unified German state under the leadership of Prussian king William I as German emperor in 1871, knowledge, skills and energies were on the one hand concentrated under the roof of one nation, and therefore more efficient, and on the other could flow freely. As soon as they could afford it, urban factory workers traded potatoes for white bread and salted herring for meat. The middle classes reacted by doubling their efforts to distance themselves from the working classes, keeping up a facade of pompous affluence no matter how much some housewives struggled to make ends meet, dishing up all the complex fare then deemed indispensable. The food industry, increasingly well equipped with modern technology and knowledge, was more than happy to oblige. German engineers rose to the occasion, standardizing, developing and rationalizing foodstuffs with the same efficiency they had shown in building up the railway system. Then as now the aim was to optimize the use of resources, labour and capital to produce a reliable result, modelled on the pioneering work of the American industrialist Frederick Taylor, who sought to streamline the production process by reorganizing workers, machinery and products. In spite of protectionist warnings, the international food trade flourished and in the perception of the time food seemed almost to fly around the globe, anticipating the current state of affairs. But just as there is today, there was a limit to how much of the new people were comfortable with. Lebensreform or life reform was the green movement of the time.

As we have seen, in Germany modern food technology had started in the 1820s with the introduction of steam engines in flour mills. The limitation of machinery, unlike human beings, is a lack of adaptability, which leads to the need to standardize the raw material. Industrial flour mills and commercial bakeries set up laboratories to analyse gluten and starch content, an expense that only became justifiable once large-scale production could be provided by ‘endless’ tunnel ovens. While the origins of modern food science lie in the early nineteenth century, its findings started to make a real impact on the food industry in the 1870s. There was at the time a strong belief in strict determinism, which in principle could be applied to all natural processes. Reinforced by modern chemical analysis and physiological experimention, this allowed scientists to understand the composition of foodstuffs with more accuracy. Justus von Liebig, Carl von Voit and Max Rubner were particularly prominent in this field. Using earlier findings by colleagues in other countries, they analysed nutrients, conducted feeding experiments and assessed the human body’s ability to absorb foods by examining excrement. The result of this detailed study of organic chemistry was the identification of proteins, carbohydrates and fatty acids. The chemist Justus von Liebig integrated these findings into a coherent system, while the physiologist Carl von Voit, working with Max Pettenkofer on the human metabolism, further refined our understanding of human nutrition.¹

The roots of the food industry at least partly go back to the need to find new ways to feed the army. Military requirements could play havoc with vulnerable food prices, either pushing up the cost of food as a result of additional demand or creating shortages due to uncontrolled foraging by troops. In Prussia, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, experiments were conducted on the preparation of dried powdered meat, which could be stocked and transported more easily. Another method was devised by French physicist Denis Papin, inventor of the steam digester, a pressure cooker first presented in 1681 in London. Papin used it to boil bones. The resulting gelatin was praised as cheap and nutritious and later became the basis for many soup kitchen recipes as well as so-called portable soup, a bouillon in tablet form. In 1756 the Prussian army was offered a ‘powder against hunger’, a forerunner of the famous Erbswurst, ground dried peas pressed into the shape of a sausage. It is said to have been invented by a Berlin chef as part of soldiers’ iron rations in the Franco–Prussian war of 1870–71 and is still available today.

Rationalized production in a biscuit factory, c. 1938.

However, from 1864, the real star of all these efforts was Liebig’s meat extract, Germany’s first mass-produced, branded and mass-market food product. It appeared only a few years after Gail Borden had launched his similarly successful condensed milk in the U.S. under the Eagle brand. Like Borden, Liebig didn’t invent the process but he was responsible for assembling all the previous research on the subject. Liebig’s Extract Company Ltd was the brainchild of a German engineer combined with Belgian (and later English) capital and quality control assured by Liebig. The project linked the immense cattle herds of the South American prairies with European customers. While previous imports had been confined to hides, horns, bones and suet, it exploited the high regard in which meat essence was held. Production in Fray Bentos, Uruguay, rose very quickly. At peak production, 1,000 cattle a day were slaughtered daily at the large processing plant: 30 kg of meat had to be boiled down to produce 1 kg of completely fat-free extract. In 1870 alone 478 tons of extract were produced, as well as corned beef and salted meat. By the 1880s the company had extended its range to include liquid stock and the first commercial stock cubes under the Oxo brand. At first they were sold to army catering establishments and hospitals, moving into more general markets as affluent private households increasingly gave up boiling meat for soup and stock and bought Liebig’s instead. The main selling point was that the product could be used as a tonic for convalescents and a fortifier for the family’s provider. Cookbook authors embraced the product enthusiastically, and in 1870 Henriette Davidis published a booklet recommending Liebig’s. However, meat extract’s nutritional value became a controversial subject much discussed among Liebig’s colleagues. In the end his opponents convinced experts and the general public that the extract had little value as a food source, but encouraged appetite and aided digestion. Competition followed rapidly. In the 1880s Julius Maggi of Kemptthal in Switzerland (a Swiss-German company, but very much part of the Germanic food world) and Carl Heinrich Knorr of Heilbronn in Württemberg marketed products that were primarily based on ground legumes, dried vegetables, pearled sago and tapioca, an alternative to Liebig’s extract that was similarly directed at busy housewives and time-pressed cooks but was much more affordable. At an industrial exhibition in 1897, Knorr displayed a cubic-metre-sized soup cube prepared from dried vegetables which represented 70,000 soup portions. Real commercial success came when in the early 1900s refrigerated transport by ship did away with Liebig’s erstwhile advantageous preservation method of fresh meat at its point of slaughter. At the end of the First World War Liebig’s had lost its dominance in the German market.²

Margarine, though not actually developed in Germany, became popular in the 1880s when Dutch manufacturers transferred production to Germany as a way of avoiding protectionist import tariffs. In the early 1900s, with the introduction of new technology capable of solidifying any fat-containing liquids, large oil mills were constructed near northern German ports and along the Rhine to process copra, linseed, sesame seed, palm kernels, soy beans, groundnuts and cotton seed. At the time, in addition to 470,000 tons of real butter, Germans consumed 200,000 tons of the new Kunstbutter, artificial butter, per year. This was more than one-third of the total world production, and one can’t help being reminded of Walter Ryff’s mid-fifteenth-century remark about Grass-Alemant, German fatties. From 1897 the law required that margarine had to be 10 per cent sesame seed oil to differentiate it from butter in laboratory tests. Nevertheless producers unashamedly used the butter association in their advertising. Aha! Sanella! Das gibt ein feines Butterbrot! – ‘Ah! Sanella [a big margarine brand]! That will make fine bread and butter!’ shouted an advertisement in 1905, adding Pflanzenbutter-Margarine in small print in a corner. In 1932 a new law prohibited any allusion to animal fat or products in relation to margarine and artificial fat, although Rahma (a brand whose name could be translated as Creama, since Rahm in German means cream) simply omitted one letter in its brand name and continued to market itself under the name Rama.³

Until around 1900 in Germany (unlike in the U.S., where the Californian gold rush in particular had pushed demand), industrially produced food in cans was mostly consumed by the army and the navy and as ship’s supplies. With the exception of a few luxury products, canned food rarely featured in private households, not least as a result of the high prices of the cans themselves (the tin plate to make them had to be imported from England). Canned peaches brought the delights of midsummer to a select few in the middle of winter. The first small canning factories were established in the 1840s in Brunswick and Lübeck and centred on the equally luxurious asparagus. This led to agricultural specialization, but also the development of a parallel industry to supply raw material for packaging. It appears that the market for canned food at the very end of the century evolved largely due to department stores, which ran their own quality controls and demonstrated the content of cans in glass jars in their windows to convince customers.

In domestic households special glass jars instead of cans came to be used for preserving. Developed and patented in 1892 by the chemist Rudolf Rempel, these jars had a glass lid sealed with a rubber band. They were boiled in water in a special sterilizing pan, weighed down by a weight or stone, which was soon replaced by a metal clip. After the businessman Johann Weck bought the patent he quickly came to dominate the trade, and because his name featured prominently on each jar, the Duden dictionary of 1907 listed the verb einwecken, to preserve, which is still used to the present day. Apples, pears, cherries and plums were mostly preserved by drying. Pflaumenmus, a thick plum concentrate, was a legacy from the time when sugar was still a luxury, since it was boiled down without sugar. Its ubiquity led to complaints among servants. The first commercial jam factories started in Dresden in 1843 and Brunswick in 1861 but they were small, artisanal affairs. Jam remained a luxury product and until the turn of the century was mostly imported from Britain (where its production relied on fruit imports from Germany to a considerable extent).⁴ The German jam industry only expanded when domestic beet sugar reached the necessary quality level in the years immediately before the First World War. Since the railway system increasingly facilitated the wider distribution of perishable foodstuffs such as fruit, the area of orchards in Prussia more than doubled during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Westphalian peasants sent cherries to the cities on the Rhine and sales of quinces and plums from the banks of the Main helped to finance the local vineyards.

Weck advertisement for preserving jars, probably early 1930s.

Until 1900 canned meat such as corned beef was imported from America. At that point the inspection rules that had originally been introduced in 1879 (based on earlier regional laws) to control trichinosis in pigs were extended to include all meat, acting like a protectionist tariff. Imports almost stopped, opening a window for domestic producers that provided the army with their rations, but also supplied canned luxurious ragouts, fricassés and venison dishes to the customers of upmarket delicatessens. The industry’s greatest success was canned Würstchen, literally small sausages (frankfurters), developed in 1896 by a butcher in Halberstadt, a small town between Brunswick and Magdeburg. Canning meant that the salt level could be low, making for a finer taste, and the method was soon copied in Frankfurt, hence the name.

Sausage factory, c. 1915.

For the urban housewife, storage problems made it difficult or impossible to stock up on provisions in the traditional way, since many flats didn’t have suitable cellars or larders. In affordable accommodation the latter, if present at all, were often situated next to the toilet. Refrigerators only began to appear in domestic kitchens after the Second World War and even the icebox, an insulated wooden box that had to be filled with bought-in iceblocks, could only be afforded by more affluent households. A popular alternative method of preservation at the time was salicylic acid, originally obtained from willow bark or the herb meadowsweet, which was used to prevent mould or rot and also mixed with butter and milk.⁵ Refrigeration, developed in the 1870s by Carl von Linde among others, was first used in breweries and helped to commercialize bottom-fermenting beers. But the industry soon became aware of the vast advantages this new technology offered, and perishable foodstuffs acquired a new status on the market. Germany’s first refrigerated meat stores were installed in 1882 in Bremen and 1883 in Wiesbaden, while the fish industry used a combination of refrigerated transport and canning to extend its markets inland.

Cattle breeding had been intensified and feeding regimes optimized to achieve higher yields of both meat and milk. As the agronomist and writer Josef von Schreibers predicted in 1847, modern dairy farming could only move in one direction: ‘The animal has to be turned into a machine, destined to transform the given feed in the shortest time and in the least amount of space into the maximum amount of milk.’ Milk was now generally recognized as a valuable food, and deemed particularly important for invalids and children. From 1850 on specialized milkmen (and women) sold milk in the cities from Abmelkwirtschaften, urban stables with cows that had just calved. These relatively un-commercialized stable arrangements developed into large-scale dairies and cooperatives that could afford the modern equipment required to guarantee hygiene standards. The success of promoting milk as a healthy alternative to coffee and alcohol was limited – the lower classes considered it to be not much more exciting than Count Rumford’s Armensuppe and perceived it as too expensive. Until the end of the nineteenth century milk consumption remained significantly higher in more affluent households, while the lower classes preferred to consume dairy products in the form of cheese (the fattier the better, its production facilitated by industrially prepared rennet) and butter, both of which were gradually becoming more affordable due to the introduction of modern centrifuges. Condensed milk, first produced commercially in Germany in 1886 by the Pfunds dairy in Dresden, was advertised as a natural product especially good for children.⁶

Hortitzsch, ‘Central Post of the Wille Milchcuranstalt in Dresden’, from Gartenlaube magazine, 1883.

Belief in progress through science was the orthodoxy of the age. God-given famines were simply no longer accepted. In 1855 Hermann Klencke published Nahrungsmittelfrage in Deutschland vom Standpunkt der praktischen Naturwissenschaft (The Food Question from the Point of View of Practical Science). His aim was to provide a scientific answer to the problems of the first half of the century: food crises, high prices and scarcity. How could foodstuffs, he enquired, be re-evaluated? Characteristically this prolific writer on medical science addressed his book of ‘answers to vital questions’ to a male audience. But he followed it up in 1867 with Chemisches Kochund Wirthschaftsbuch oder die Naturwissenschaft im weiblichen Berufe (The Book of Chemical Cookery and Housekeeping; or, Sciences in the Female Vocation). This somewhat cumbersome title was addressed to ‘thinking women’ and came with a motto: ‘The difference between the educated and the uneducated lies in the fact that the former is always aware of the reasons for his actions. Chemistry has been entering men’s factories and workshops to great advantage – why shouldn’t it, keeping up with the times, bring enlightenment to the woman’s workshop, the kitchen?’ Furthermore, he contined, cooking had so far been a purely mechanical activity that would benefit from the introduction of reflective thinking. Fielding accusations that he promoted industrial surrogate foodstuffs, Klencke promised greater efficiency in terms of both cost and time.

Meanwhile, von Liebig, von Voit and their colleagues were busy in their laboratories. Voit’s ideas translated into the new field of Ernährungslehre, nutritional science, and were enthusiastically adopted by those concerned with the ever-present social problems. In 1883 the medical scholar Max Rubner introduced a new idea, the concept of calories, which would form the basis of the Atwater system. Over time institutional meal plans became more differentiated according to the age, occupation and state of health of the individual.⁷ Tables were devised that recommended ideal menus for different work requirements and age groups. Most important was the provision of sufficient protein and fat, while the understanding grew that a good diet had to be varied and balanced, since no single foodstuff could provide complete nourishment on its own. Excessive consumption of potatoes or rice was thought to lead to undernourishment and lethargy, whereas meat and a proportion of fat delivered dynamic, healthy workers. Legumes were identified as an affordable substitute for meat.

The availability of statistics obtained through national surveys contributed to greater understanding of what the German population actually consumed. Meat consumption was clearly linked to social conditions. Consumption of pork in particular had greatly increased, as distilleries and the commercialized dairy industry provided feed in the form of mash and whey. Sausage of all kinds was particularly appreciated by the labouring population since no preparation was required and it could be bought as needed. At the same time wheat consumption rose significantly, and in 1910 overtook rye as the cereal of choice. From 1900 onwards consumption of potatoes slowly declined, whereas milk, butter and cheese increased rapidly, rising from 6 kg of dairy foods consumed per head per year in 1860 to 11.6 kg in 1910.⁸

Studies indicate that from the mid-1880s the general state of public health in Germany improved in spite of more frequent and longer stays in hospitals (between 1877 and 1910 the number of hospital beds more than tripled, not least due to the national health insurance introduced for workers in 1883). These were partly due to the institutions’ improved medical reputation, and partly to the introduction of workers’ state insurance. Infant mortality began to improve from 1900, although as before, the higher a newborn’s social class the greater the chance of its survival. From the mid-1880s life expectancy between the ages of fifteen and 30 in the larger cities was on the rise, while general improvements in hygiene, rather than medical progress, made for a decline in infectious diseases. In sum, by 1900 the lower classes were significantly better off and even among them the percentage of real income spent on food was gradually decreasing.⁹ This turn for the better for more led to widespread worries about social hygiene which, it was feared, was leading to the gradual degeneration of the Germanic race. Regional rural diets were increasingly idealized, as indeed were folk traditions in general, and admired as naturally balanced by instinct. Even seen within the perspective of the time, this romantic view was often mistaken, since agricultural trade meant that the peasantry didn’t always eat what they were growing. In fact sufficient meat and fat were only within reach of better-paid workers, families with few or no children or those who could grow a fair proportion of their own food and raise a pig.¹⁰

The new food science had become accepted, indeed fashionable, among the educated classes. Combined with further new findings (particularly in the 1920s on vitamins), it fundamentally altered ideas on the connection between medicine and diet. In the 1890s the imperial health office issued its own interpretation of the new thinking: the Gesundheitsbüchlein, an educational health booklet that included nutritional advice (and saw numerous new editions until the 1940s). As in England at the time, warnings on the dangers of food adulteration bordered on hysteria. Every cookbook advised its readers to check almost everything for illegal additions, colourings and the like: cocoa might have ash added, chocolate might include rice flour, coffee beans and tea leaves could be artificially coloured. Even flour and salt were suspect and fish could be inflated so it would look larger and stuffed so it would weigh more.¹¹ Milk adulteration was indeed widespread; it was diluted with water or skimmed milk or had flour or sugar added, as well as all kinds of chemicals intended to delay deterioration. At the same time milk was often unclean due to sloppiness in the milking parlour and during transport. In 1875, in response to the problem, special pasteurized, high-quality, full-cream milk from better-fed cows that were subject to veterinary supervision came on the market, albeit at three or four times the usual price.

It soon became obvious that consumers, in spite of all the advice offered, weren’t able to check food quality themselves. The first German food law was introduced in May 1879 under the auspices of the imperial health office, itself created three years earlier. The official health policy of the time appears modern even today, making the connection between general health and social standing, environment, nutrition and so forth.

Laboratories were set up to undertake regular controls. However, the law’s implementation rested with regional governments and the text lacked exact definitions of categories to differentiate between the original, adulterated products and outright imitations. The law allowed the police to enter businesses, take samples and check on hygiene, but the resulting jurisdiction tended to diverge significantly from region to region. In Saxony egg noodles had to have a minimum egg content, but not so in Frankfurt; honey made with glucose syrup that had been made from potatoes was deemed adulterated in Dresden but not in Magdeburg. For new products such as margarine and jam, standards had to be defined from scratch. For glucose syrup this represented a problem. Produced from potatoes since the 1870s on a large scale on the agrarian estates east of the Elbe, it was a much-used ingredient of the developing confectionery industry. In jam, however, adding glucose syrup was considered as diluting the fruit, leading in 1910 to the introduction of a legal minimum fruit content. Public discussion was most concerned with health issues regarding preservatives, since industrial interests lobbied for certain additives, deemed essential for modern production, to be classified as legal.

Then as now, food scandals flared up in spite of all official efforts. Beer scandals in Bavaria in 1884–5 resulted in the discovery of all kinds of illegal additives, though these proved not to pose actual health hazards. In 1910 Maratti-Fett, cardamom oil bought in England and imported from Ceylon, had been used in the production of certain margarine brands in Hamburg, causing widespread serious illness. The new field of food chemistry, led by Joseph König, could hardly keep pace analysing the new substances that were constantly developed, such as the flavourings cumarin and vanillin. Salicylic acid was declared illegal in 1902 and after long debates boric acid followed. In some cases, such as in the shrimp industry, preservatives appeared to be used as a remedy for deplorable hygiene. In other cases, such as the Brunswick asparagus canners and the German chocolate industry, producers instigated their own health regulations that exceeded legal requirements. In general legislation evolved towards allowing only thoroughly tested additives and colourings, setting maximum content levels and having them declared on the packaging, enabling consumers to take their own decisions. In 1912 the canning industry introduced standard sizes and labelling, including net content. Saccharine in contrast, developed as an artificial sweetener in 1878, alarmed the beet sugar industry but was soon embraced by the public, since rising affluence led to modern health problems such as obesity and diabetes.¹²

As Germany’s population grew by over 50 per cent from 41 million in 1871 to 67.7 million in 1914, the number of Germans who lived in towns with more than 2,000 inhabitants almost doubled to over 60 per cent. The new urban areas were mostly in the Rhineland and Westphalia, but no city grew faster than Berlin, illustrating the profound changes that Germany as a whole was undergoing at the time. Previously a rather provincial Prussian royal seat, its population tripled, with many new residents streaming in from Germany’s eastern territories, hoping for better opportunities and making it the only European city to grow at a comparable speed to the industrial cities of North America, such as Chicago. Like the uncertainties faced by those who emigrated to America, the move to Berlin from a poor village in Silesia must have been a daring and risky undertaking. Many families counted themselves lucky to rent a place at all, no matter how cramped and primitive. The working classes’ living quarters were called Mietskasernen, tenement barracks. In 1890, 40 per cent of the city’s inhabitants lived on the third floor or higher and averaged, in 1875, 72 occupants per building.¹³ Unsurprisingly modernization in the form of a sewage system, electricity and gas as well as easy access to the public transport system came to more privileged areas, far away from the factories’ noise and filth, before they arrived in workers’ quarters. Few could afford more than two rooms, of which one served as kitchen, central living area and workroom as well as bedroom, with communal toilets and no central heating. Among the poorest privacy was almost non-existent, and public space had to be used as much as possible; the complete opposite of the bourgeois ideal. Eckkneipen, corner pubs, proliferated, said to number ‘five on four corners’ in Berlin. The poorer the family, the more important it was for women to maintain good relationships with neighbours and small shopkeepers so that help might be sought in the form of borrowing or credit. This support was however criticized by middle-class do-gooders as at best a waste of time and at worst evidence of an inclination to idleness. Few understood that these women had to meet all their family’s needs from weekly wages which for the most part barely covered necessities.

Berlin was obliged to bring in staple foodstuffs early in her history, but with the metropolis exploding from 1850 onwards, the food situation changed dramatically. State-built roads and the railway, first opened from Berlin to Potsdam in 1838, joined the waterways as a convenient way to provision the city. Freight trains increased by a factor of twenty within just twenty years, whereas passengers only tripled. Food production took new forms to satisfy the exploding demand. Berlin’s first Backfabrik, baking factory, opened in 1856 as a joint stock company. The factory could process up to 250 tons of rye flour per day, producing one-third of all the rye bread needed by the city. Local bakers worried that they might lose custom, but even with this substantial output demand rose faster than production, although mechanization allowed the Backfabrik to offer traditional products such as Schrippen, white rolls, at lower prices than bakers.

At the time meat was bought from small butchers and a few privately owned slaughterhouses. Yet by then it had became clear, as the Berlin physician Rudolf Virchow argued at council meetings in the 1860s, that the city needed meat that was not only affordable but healthy, and that the council needed to invest in the city’s infrastructure to that end. It took until 1881 for the central cattle market and slaughterhouse to open in the east of Berlin. Covering an area of over 38 hectares, with its own railway connection, it also made it much easier to implement meat inspection rules.

The city council then instigated a building programme to replace the open-air markets. As market days had been extended, with more stalls to satisfy the ever-growing demand, hygiene was an increasing problem. In 1850 the city had fourteen markets (the largest being the one on the Gendarmenmarkt) with 6,000 stalls, whereas by 1880 there were twenty markets with more than 9,000 stalls. In 1886 a covered central market on Alexanderplatz opened, combining wholesale and retail. Like the central slaughterhouse, the Alexanderplatz Markthalle had direct railway access, significantly reducing the number of horse-drawn carts on the streets and enabling deliveries of up to 15,000 kg per hour which could be stored in an ice cellar under the central building. Six years later, fourteen covered retail markets were spread all over Berlin and the old outdoor markets were closed down.¹⁴

The milk trade also underwent significant changes: in Berlin consumption of milk quadrupled between 1893 and 1913. In addition to the Abmelkwirtschaften mentioned earlier, milk was brought in by rail from increasing distances. In 1879 the builder and businessman Carl Bolle decided to tap into Berliners’ thirst by opening a milk garden on Lützowufer, south of the Tiergarten. Within two years he had expanded his business into bottling and delivering milk supplied by rail from producers in the surrounding countryside, installing Berlin’s first steam-powered centrifuges to allow the surplus to be turned into butter and cheese. The fresh milk was transported in hygienic tin plate churns (made in the company’s own workshop) and quality-checked in the company’s own laboratory. Bolle’s business rapidly grew into Europe’s largest milk distribution company. By 1907 Bolle was running 300 horse-drawn white milk carts that sold around one-seventh of all milk consumed in the city. They had fixed itineraries and rang a bell to attract potential customers’ attention. One contemporary expert asserted that Bolle’s high standards had done more for milk quality in Berlin than any food legislation or police intervention.¹⁵

Overall, food retailing saw significant reorganization, with new specialist stores selling coffee, delicatessen goods and tobacco. Over time some of these expanded into chains such as Kaiser’s Kaffee and Bolle’s dairy business (later diversifying into general grocery stores). In addition small corner food stores increased rapidly in number. They were mostly run by women and offered all kinds of daily necessities, with prices as flexible as their opening hours and readily available credit. The first Warenhaus, a department store initially aimed at those on a tight budget, developed out of Konsumvereine, buying co-operatives formed by housewives’ associations. Understandably these were not popular with retailers deprived of their profit, as prices for luxury products such as tropical fruit and canned food, but also toilet paper, could be as low as half those of regular shops. Over time some department stores ironically became temples of luxury housed in grand purpose-built premises, such as Wertheim on Leipziger Platz, opened in 1897, and the Kaufhaus des Westens, or department store of the west, Kadewe for short, opened in 1907 on Wittenbergplatz. Fresh food could only be handled by the larger of these stores as it posed particular storage problems and in any event offered smaller profit margins. This was the domain of specialized luxury delicatessens, which often came with a sophisticated restaurant. One of the most famous of these deli-cum-restaurants was Borchardt, near the Gendarmenmarkt. Opened in 1853 by a Pomeranian, August Friedrich Wilhelm Borchardt, it quickly developed into a favourite of the aristocracy and upper classes, moving into newly built and imposing premises in 1895.

Ordering food from Borchardt or his most prominent competitor, Julius Fehér, was a clear sign of social distinction. Some time during the first decade of the new millenium, Fehér published a collection of recipes using the exotic fruit and vegetables his stores in Hamburg and Berlin offered under the title Die internationale Küche (International Cuisine). In it he wrote:

The Fehér delicatessen store in Berlin, c. 1910.

A culinary place in time: Borchardt in Berlin

The restaurant exists to this day, housed in the building on Französische Strasse that was previously the delicatessen. The building was still more or less intact in 1946 and its colourful history continued under the GDR regime. Ironically legend has it that the Socialist United Party (SED) originated here, although the official ceremony took place at the nearby Admiralspalast. Before its new incarnation as a Gastmahl des Meeres (a GDR chain of seafood restaurants), Borchardt in November 1948 was one of three so-called free Handelsorganisation (HO) restaurants in Berlin, under the name of Lukullus. Later on it was turned into a dance hall for the young and in the 1980s a canteen for construction workers when the Friedrichstrasse was rebuilt. Reopened in 1992, once again it has become a meeting point for the political establishment, its imposing high ceiling and large columns reminiscent of Paris fin-de-siècle brasseries (www.borchardtrestaurant.de).

The limits imposed in earlier times by poor transport technology are disappearing. Today nothing keeps the gourmet from delighting in game, fruit and vegetables from foreign continents.

Indeed, the menus his catering business proposed sound remarkably modern: grapefruit the Californian way; chicken and okra soup; veal chop and nasturtium salad; grilled kangaroo tail with root-artichoke purée (actually the tuberous roots of Helianthi strumosu, a sunflower closely related to the Jerusalem artichoke); crêpes Parisienne and cheese to follow.¹⁶ At least the wealthy (as opposed to those belonging to the right social group, as during feudal times) could choose their meals from what the world had to offer, seasons and distance shrinking to bare logistical details. Over time this would develop into one of the basic principles of modern supermarkets: everything, any time, anywhere.

At the time national trade policy was the subject of intense public debate. On one side were the advocates of unhindered economic growth through industrialization; on the other, those who pleaded for a minimum level of agricultural self-reliance. The latter deemed the pace of industrialization too rapid and feared it could lead to a fatal dependancy on imports. Rye had been imported since 1852, barley and oats since 1867 and wheat since 1876. The agricultural sector was part of an international market strongly affected by cheap grain imports, mainly from Russia and the U.S. where, following the end of the American Civil War and with immigrants increasingly settling in the Midwest, wheat cultivation had doubled within fifteen years. This had combined with the extension of the railway system and the lowering of transport costs by ship to Europe, and ordering had been made easier via the telegraph. This did not only apply to Germany. By 1900 Britain was importing four-fifths of its grain, three-quarters of its dairy products and almost half its meat.¹⁷ However, in Germany the old landowning Junker class, the agrarian elite east of the Elbe whose interests were directly opposed to those of the various industrial parties, still dominated politics in spite of their gradually declining economic power. In 1902 new tariff laws were introduced in favour of them, virtually locking out cheap Russian imports and leading to significantly higher bread prices.

In the search for nourishing, affordable home-grown food alternatives soybeans came under consideration. They were first grown on an experimental scale in Vienna in 1875, and two years later in Germany from seeds imported from China. Soy was found to be nourishing, tasty and equally suited to humans and animals. The crop was more robust than maize, ripened early in the year and seemed well adapted to the Central European climate. Nevertheless the new cultivar failed to acquire general acceptance, remaining locked into the research programmes of agricultural institutes until the aftermath of the Russo–Japanese war of 1904–5, when imported soy beans began to arrive as raw material for the manufacture of cooking oil and margarine, with animal feed as a by-product. Since other nations were able to source their oilseeds from their respective colonies, Germany became the chief European importer of soy beans from 1910 onwards, as land formerly devoted to home-grown oil-bearing crops such as linseed and rape had been converted to more profitable cultivars such as sugar beet. In 1913 a company offered the first soy products in the form of milk and flour, while soy was also introduced as an ingredient in the popular instant sauce powder produced by Maggi. German consumers, however, never fully embraced soy and its derivatives.¹⁸

As the nation’s disposable income increased and urban households had more money to spend on convenience products, choices were no longer only dictated by economic constraints and the distance between producer and consumer widened. Advertising replaced the market cries of old. The pioneers of this new method of selling included new luxury foodstuffs and products which needed explanation, such as cocoa, coffee substitutes and margarine. The responsibility for marketing food products moved from the seller to the producer. Branded products in sealed packages couldn’t be tasted before purchase and were sold in a fixed size for a fixed amount, thereby significantly reducing the storekeeper’s role or replacing it altogether, as in vending machines like those for Stollwerck chocolate. Package design became very important and products were valued for their ‘shop window quality’. Major producers not only ran massive advertising campaigns but provided shopkeepers with ready-made promotional material and advice.

Shop windows illuminated by gas light started to appear in Berlin in the 1860s and by 1884 the main boulevard, Unter den Linden, was equipped with electrical street lighting. Evening strolls became a new leisure activity, and arcades augmented shops with restaurants and cafes. In 1914 restrictions that ordered the covering of shop window displays on Sundays were lifted. Larger cities were soon converted into a backdrop for billboards, with illuminated signs (made from single light bulbs, not yet neon) on walls and roofs, the most eye-catching of these animated. A contemporary commentator raved:

Electrical light sparks from a fantasy sparkling wine bottle pouring automatically into a pointed glass a never-ceasing stream of sparkling Champagne. An ad for a sparkling wine characterizes Berlin as thirsty for Champagne, a city where sparkling wine and whiskey are flowing.¹⁹

By the 1890s the use of advertising as a form of mass-communication had been well established among food manufacturers and department stores. Thanks to a standardized postal system, mail-order companies became profitable, offering coffee, butter, honey and even poultry. Affluent households were inundated with catalogues and special offers. The first Litfasssäule or advertising pillar was erected in Berlin in 1855. Advertising campaigns took the form of flyers and simple posters much like those for exhibitions and events, and in some cases came to be elevated to an art form. In the 1880s Julius Maggi himself designed the characteristic bright yellow and red label which adorned his liquid seasoning, and employed the young writer Franz Wedekind to produce the advertising copy. Modern technology provided new design possibilities: specially shaped bottles for beer and lemonade and printed tins for biscuits, tea, coffee and the like, as well as luxury printing methods for all kinds of packaging, became an important part of branding. In 1891 Liebig’s success was followed by Leibniz-Cakes, small flat biscuits designed by the Hanover merchant Hermann Bahlsen to sustain hungry travellers. Bahlsen imported modern chain ovens from Glasgow, while the packaging was as distinctively designed as the advertising. In 1911 the biscuits, named after the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a native of Hanover, were Germanized to Keks. In 1891 August Oetker, a pharmacist in Bielefeld, hit upon the idea of selling baking powder and custard powder in small, standardized envelopes, imitating American custom. He branded them with a logo under the Dr Oetker name and ran an advertising campaign assuring consumers of their quality. His marketing strategy included the publication of a Schulkochbuch, a cookbook for school kitchens, and he was later to pioneer the advertising of food products on TV.

Besides Liebig’s, Bahlsen and Dr Oetker, other innovative companies included Kathreiners Malzkaffee, Henkell and Stollwerck, all of which used American and English expertise and ideas for their marketing. Their campaigns included demonstrations and lectures, recipe competitions, customized magazines, calendars, cookbooks and short films that were shown in cinemas. Recipes and serving suggestions printed on packaging replaced the sensory impressions delivered by unpackaged wares that could be touched, smelled and tasted. Serialized picture cards were often added; these could be collected in customized albums. In the 1890s Stollwerck packaged their chocolates in cardboard Easter eggs, and advertising postcards were distributed at exhibitions such as the Gewerbeausstellung of 1896 in Berlin, confirming the overwhelming importance now attached to visual information and the truth of the German saying Das Auge isst mit, the eye also eats.

Postcard from 1915, part of a series issued by the Bahlsen company to promote their product and proudly display the Germanized Keks.

The introduction and expansion of the railway system was a key factor in the movement of people as well as foodstuffs throughout the period. Within a few decades people embraced the new mobility and the distribution of perishable foodstuffs increased markedly. Instead of Postwartestuben, waiting rooms along the old postal lines, Bahnhofsrestaurants now catered to travellers in the larger train stations. Soon first-class passengers could order a warm meal at the station to be served at their seat on the train, and in 1880 the first dining car on the European continent was introduced on the line linking Berlin to Frankfurt am Main. When Baedeker, the German equivalent of Murray’s red books for English travellers (and a follow-up of the Münster Montaigne missed on his trip in the 1580s), was first published in 1835, it was advertised as a handbook for fast travellers. Cultural tourism was on the rise. In 1816 the first steamship on the Rhine was English, but eleven years later it was joined by a German equivalent. The idea of travelling out of curiosity or for relaxation or entertainment was immediately attractive to Germans. A slim cookbook, Junggesellen- und Touristen-Kochbuch, published in 1896 and aimed at bachelors, included travellers in the title. Just over half a century after the first railway line opened to passengers, overnight express trains were taken for granted. In towns and cities the number of travellers prepared to pay for accommodation saw taverns and inns replaced by hotels and Höfe, courts. Many of these were endowed with seemingly aristocratic names and initially were reserved for men. Towards the end of the century establishments which offered nothing more than a set menu were considered outmoded and replaced by large hotels with restaurants, many of them financed by shareholders. These luxurious establishments offered travellers more modern amenities than they could afford at home and were greeted with great enthusiasm.

Before 1871 most places – like Gebrüder Habel, opened in 1779 on Unter den Linden in Berlin – had been more solidly bourgeois than openly extravagant. After that, however, the restaurant scene fundamentally changed. William I had French chefs but was comparatively modest at table, whereas his chancellor Bismarck was a gourmet who loved large amounts of good food. In 1878, on the occasion of the Berlin congress, the British delegation noted somewhat disparagingly: ‘Prince Bismarck, with one hand full of cherries, and the other of shrimps, eaten alternately, complains he cannot sleep and must go to Kissingen [to take the waters].’²⁰

From the economic boom of the so-called founding years (mainly based on the substantial French reparation payments after the Franco–Prussian war of 1870/71) and the pompous lifestyle favoured by William II all kinds of new hotels and restaurants emerged, anticipating the excesses of the 1920s. In Berlin in late 1877, the imposing Vienna-style Café Bauer opened opposite Café Kranzler. It was lavishly decorated by well-known artists. Seven years later it was the city’s first restaurant with electric lighting. It offered 600 newspapers and magazines as well as a separate room for unaccompanied ladies. Besides coffee and tea in many variations, its menu included eggs for breakfast, various cold cuts, beer (with porter and pale ale the most expensive), spirits, wines (German, Austrian and French) and champagne.²¹ At the same time taverns such as Lutter & Wegner were converted to restaurants serving wine, a move designed to compete with the beer palaces with their extravagant Tivoli-style entertainments. This development was by no means restricted to Berlin. Germany’s largest such wine restaurant was the Nymphenburg Volksgarten in Munich. Opened in 1890 and modelled on the Copenhagen Tivoli and the Vienna Prater, its many rooms had a total of 6,000 seats and a variety of entertainments including an Almhütte, an alpine dairy, since guests had clearly come to expect more than just good food and drink.²²

One name to feature prominently in Berlin’s gastronomic life was that of Kempinski. The Kempinskis’ story is typical of Berlin. Like many other Jews at the time, in the early 1860s Berthold Kempinski had moved from Posen, the least economically developed of Prussia’s eastern provinces, to Breslau in Silesia, trading in Hungarian wines. Ten years later he moved to Berlin and started a wine company on the Friedrichstrasse. His wife prepared and served simple dishes to customers in the small tasting room, and over the years this developed into one of Berlin’s largest and most successful gastronomic businesses. In 1907 Kempinski opened new premises on the Leipziger Strasse, decorated in the art nouveau and early art deco styles characteristic of the time. Here numerous restaurants could seat 2,500 guests catered for by several kitchens, a bakery, a patisserie and a butcher. In addition there were workshops to maintain the vast amount of silver and copper items, glass and china painting, a steam-powered laundry, an incinerator and refrigerated storage rooms. Oysters, a Kempinski speciality from the start of the business, were sold in impressive quantities. A delicatessen and a catering service completed the complex in 1912. Wine remained the core of the Kempinski business and it owned vineyards in many of the country’s growing regions. Its wine stock was stored in vast cellars on Friedrichstrasse and thousands of bottles were sold every day. But what marked Kempinski out from competitors like Dressel, Hiller or Borchardt was the fact that it catered for many different social groups. At Kempinski’s wines were priced to attract all comers, from the upper classes down to the lower bourgeoisie. You could splurge on melon with crayfish, poached salmon, loin of venison and strawberries with thick cream, or you could sit in exactly the same impressive surroundings and be served by the same elegant waiters, but order less expensive dishes, or smaller portions at half price.

In contrast the Dressel and the Hiller restaurants on the central boulevard Unter den Linden were both famous, expensive and intimidatingly exclusive. The Hiller had been owned by Lorenz Adlon before he opened his monumental hotel opposite the Brandenburg Gate in 1907. Lorenz Adlon had come from Mainz and originally trained as a carpenter. Early in his career, however, he discovered a talent for restaurant organization and worked his way up the professional ladder in Mainz, Düsseldorf and Amsterdam before settling in Berlin, where he bought the renowned Hiller. In 1890, together with his colleague Dressel, he bought the Hotel Continental next to the Central Station on Friedrichstrasse, and from 1899 on the two ran the highly successful and lucrative Zooterrassen, a café and restaurant in the zoological garden. At the same time, Adlon established himself as a wine merchant. All of this seems to have been with one ambition in mind: building the Hotel Adlon. When the Adlon opened, it was full of marble, expensive tropical hardwoods and the latest technology in the form of elevators, heating, telephones and modern conveniences.

Diners at Kempinski, c. 1910.

Many legends surround Hotel Adlon and it is often very difficult to uncover the solid facts. Lorenz Adlon’s extremely expensive and therefore very risky undertaking must in some way have had the backing of William II. The enterprise fitted the emperor’s vision of a new, modern and luxurious Berlin, and he therefore allowed the demolition of a historic Schinkel building, the Palais Redern, to make way for the new hotel. The emperor is often quoted as saying, ‘Kinder, wenn ihr baden wollt [a different version goes: ‘wenn ihrs gemütlich wollt], geht ins Adlon!’ (children, if you want to have a bath/comfort, then go to the Adlon). Rumours had it that he paid a yearly retainer for the entertainment of his guests, topping the sum up if needed, and used the Adlon as an unofficial extension of his own, considerably less luxurious palace. But that could be a clever modern manipulation of reality, just as some people insist that the famous French chef Auguste Escoffier presided over the Adlon kitchen for a while, for which there is no evidence at all.

Back then Escoffier’s recipes were as important for the German gastronomic scene as for that of France and French was the culinary language of the time. However, the rampant nationalism of the time also found its way onto menus. Chief promoter of the idea was the Allgemeiner deutscher Sprachverein, the general German language association founded in 1885 in Brunswick, ‘with the aim of maintaining the true spirit and the real essence of the German language . . . thus strengthening the national identity among the German people’.²³ The three stated goals of the language association were defined as cleaning the language, protecting the specific Germanic character and, finally, re-establishing German national traditions. The very first Verdeutschungsheft or Germanification manual, published by the association in 1888, was Die deutsche Speisekarte(The German Menu). The thin volume contained examples of German menus (now called Tischkarten instead of Menü), two drawings to illustrate the correct terms for cuts of beef and veal and a dictionary of the most common dishes, with German phrases substituted for foreign terms. The work also suggested German spellings for those foreign terms that had ‘become’ German, and accepted some ‘irreplaceable’ ones like Kakao, cocoa, and Schokolade, chocolat. In the fourth edition, published in 1900, the author made a special case of the ‘controversial’ word ‘sauce’. Translations given in the first edition – Tunke, Beiguss and Guss or Brühe – had not caught on, he wrote, and he therefore declared Sosse as acceptable. ‘Those who can’t warm to this substitution,’ he went on, ‘should do as the German Kaiser and make no special mentioning of the Sossen.’ In 1888 William II had decreed that, as far as possible, all imperial menus were to be written in German. Following his decree, the first of these Germanized menus, for a meal for officers ordered to attend the imperial table on September 10, was published in the newspapers:

Windsor-Suppe. Zander in Rheinwein gedämpft. Burgunder Schinken mit Gemüsen. Pasteten von Rebhühnern mit Trüffeln. Hummer nach Ostender Art. Pulardenbraten, Salat. Mehlspeise von Äpfeln. Butter und Käse. Gefrorenes. Nachtisch.

Windsor soup. Pike perch steamed in Rhine wine. Burgundy ham with vegetables. Partridge pies with truffles. Lobster the Ostend way. Roast chicken, salad. A flour dish from apples. Butter and cheese. Ice cream. Dessert.

French linguistic (and culinary influence) in Germany went back a long way. In some places, such as Berlin, this influence acted at the top level of society – from the mid-seventeenth until the mid-nineteenth century the Prussian court, in common with many others, spoke French – as well as at lower social levels, where French was heard first from the Huguenot immigrants welcomed by the Great Elector of Brandenburg after the abolition of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685. In Berlin in 1698 the French colony made up one-quarter of the city’s population. It appears that on a lower social level many Huguenots quickly assimilated and thus the languages mixed (an influence still perceptible to this day), while the elite of the réfugiés hung on to the more prestigious French longer. French occupation followed in 1806–08 and again in 1812/13. It was only from the second half of the nineteenth century, when the British Empire was at its zenith, that English started to compete with French. In the Speisekarte, the ‘wondrous mix of French and German which nowadays are joined by some English words’ was put in the dock, and words like souper, service, restaurant and menu were quoted as examples:

Even for the simplest dishes of the bourgeois cuisine, which have not come to us from France, French expressions are used . . . gekochtes Rindfleisch [boiled beef] is too common, so it appears as boeuf bouilli . . . and the disgusting à la. . . could as well be nach.

Prior to the Franco–Prussian war efforts to attain linguistic purity had been mostly moderate and seen as a means to a more general and better comprehension of the German language, encouraging public discourse. But with growing German nationalism throughout the reign of William II, linguistic purity became an end in itself and took the form of Fremd-wörterjagd, a paranoid hunting of foreign words as a method of unifying the nation against the enemy. Around the turn of the century, Ernst Lössnitzer, a Dresden-born chef and teacher, was one of the driving forces behind the Germanizing movement in the restaurant scene. In the introduction to his Verdeutschungswörterbuch für Speisekarte und Küche (Germanification Dictionary for Menus and Cookery), first published in 1888, Lössnitzer denounced the predominance of the French language, which had become fashionable in the wake of the Thirty Years War, resulting in the downgrading of German to a servants’ language. Prior to this, he claimed, Germany had a distinctive national cuisine, while nowadays there were French menus for German people on German soil. This disgraceful situation had to end, he wrote, since Germany had won back full independence as a state, psychologically and economically, meaning that there was no further need for the bastardized ‘französeln’, the German version of Franglais. Lössnitzer’s book was the most extensive foreign to German dictionary on the subject, and undoubtedly also a sign of German professional chefs’ renewed self-esteem. They had formed an association in 1896, with international exhibitions and annual culinary ‘Olympics’ taking place in Frankfurt am Main since 1900. Even before that, the New York Times reported in May 1884:

The movement some time ago started in Berlin to secure reforms in German cooking, by introducing French methods and making cooking a profession, is meeting with much success. The reformers have arranged to hold a great public exhibition of the German arts devoted to cooking, baking, and confectionary, in Berlin, from Aug. 17 to Aug. 24 next. The enterprise will be extensively advertised, and many prizes will be offered to competitors.²⁴

In the book’s second edition of 1903, Lössnitzer mentioned a letter of thanks from William II and other German royalty. What Lössnitzer failed to mention is that from the start the linguistic associations had strong opponents. In 1889 a group of 41 writers, journalists, philosophers and academics, among them Rudolf Virchow and Theodor Fontane, signed a public declaration against the Sprachverein. They accepted that a ‘cleaning’ of the German language was necessary, but strongly opposed official coercion in the form of strictly defined rules, and opposed the introduction of a state-run institution modelled on the Académie Française. The Germanizing movement grew stronger during the First World War, but lost its appeal afterwards.

At the time German wine was a source of great national pride. German winemakers flourished throughout the nineteenth century, their international reputation established with the vintage of 1811, the Kometenjahrgang, the famous comet vintage referred to by Goethe as the Eilfer, eleven. Excellence was a matter of timing. In 1811, for the first time, almost all Rheingau vineyards were picked late (a custom established at Schloss Johannisberg in 1776 as a reaction to the positive result of the accidental delay in the previous year), yielding exceptionally rich and long-lived wines. In 1845 the young Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert, had visited Hochheim on the River Main to explore the origins of Hock. Demand for Rhine wines increased in the new urban centres, not least as a result of better and more affordable transport, and this, along with patriotic fervour, combined to make the best German wines more expensive than those of the renowned châteaux of Bordeaux. In 1901, as a result of anxiety about food adulteration in general, the legal term Naturwein, natural wine, was introduced as a description of wines with an entirely natural alcoholic content, produced from a single vineyard in a single vintage. In 1913, following repeated complaints about cloudy wines from overseas customers, the wine commission agent Theodor Seitz patented a method for sterile filtration using asbestos (deemed harmless at the time).

Poster advertising the cookery exhibition of 1894, which featured ‘Cooking, pastry, baking, troops’ catering, the people’s nutrition and all related trades’.

Wine consumption was restricted to the middle and upper classes and provided a highly ritualized marker of social status. Sparkling wine, considered both prestigious and modern, enjoyed considerable success, not least through promotion by the nascent advertising industry. In contrast to beer or strong spirits, its target group included women and young men. Lutter & Wegner in Berlin had built its reputation and success on the much-repeated story of the invention of the word Sekt. The writer E.T.A. Hoffmann and his actor friend Ludwig Devrient were regular champagne drinkers who one night in 1825 quoted Falstaff’s line from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Bring er mir Sect (Bring me a cup of sack), from which casual reference came the new term for Germany’s sparkling wine. In 1902 the Sektsteuer, a tax on sparkling wine, was introduced on the initiative of Admiral von Tirpitz, minister of naval affairs, as national pride called for an extension of the imperial fleet for the ostensible purpose of protecting Germany’s sea trade. Germany was a largely unsuccessful latecomer to the colonial game, copying the brutal exploitation of indigenous peoples practised by the longer-standing European colonial powers. Concentrating on the Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa, copra, coffee and cocoa were mostly produced on the agricultural side. In the 1900s the expenses of the navy construction programme escalated and led to repeated financial crises. From 1909 the Sektsteuer was graded according to price, resulting in the increased consumption of less expensive wine. The tax is still levied today at €1 per 750-ml bottle, and graded according to bottle size.

Legislation affecting champagne was much less strict than it is today, and region and name frequently diverged substantially. Thomas Mann in Die Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull (Confessions of Felix Krull), first published unfinished in 1922 and set in the decades following 1871, portrayed a notorious fraud’s father as a corrupt sparkling wine producer who lived in a villa on the Rhine. Bottles of his Lorley Extra Cuvée were described as looking much better than they tasted, and, faced with bankruptcy, the pleasure-seeking father shot himself. Mann frequently used food to define his characters; in Buddenbrooks, Verfall einer Familie (The Decline of a Family) of 1901, grand and overly sumptuous meals make the young hero sick as the family is gradually ruined.

In the restaurant scene as in the private sphere, appearances became increasingly important. It is reported that William II was a thoughtful, quiet man in private, but the face he showed to the world was that of an all-powerful imperial ruler. Friedrich Schiller, intentionally or not, had supplied the leitmotif for this in his poem of 1799, Die Glocke (Song of the Bell), much quoted at the time: ‘the man must to go out into hostile life . . . whereas inside rules the modest housewife, the children’s mother’. German households came to be modelled on his example. According to the law, it was a wife’s duty to keep house while the husband took care of all important economical and financial decisions. Married women acquired their social standing and creditworthiness from their husbands (it was not until 1977 that husband and wife would be considered fully equal under the law). Women were expected to take responsibility for home and family, including cooking, in accordance with their ‘natural’ inclination, most people at the time agreed. Official statistics never listed ‘housewife’ as a distinct occupation, but grouped them with other unwaged situations such as children, the homeless, the mentally ill and inmates of prisons.²⁵

As in Britain and many other Western countries at the time, everyday meals had to be kept as simple and affordable as possible, but still had to be tasty and varied and include the husband’s favourite meat-laden dishes, even if his wife didn’t share his preferences. Women would often content themselves with smaller portions or have no meat at all, just as sisters didn’t question the fact that they had to look after their brothers. The scholar Victor Klemperer, born in 1881, remembered his father being served schnitzel when the rest of the family had to make do with sandwiches. The master of the household alone ate stewed apples and apple cake every day. It was seen as the duty of the entire household to keep the family provider in the best possible health, and wives must not disturb their husbands with their worries during meals. Even educated, independent women took it for granted that they were the ones at the stove, as the cookbook Für Zwei in einem Topf (For Two in One Pan) by the highly regarded actress Luise Dumont-Lindemann showed. Published in 1912 in Düsseldorf, its recipes for two were directed at ‘housewives who can’t spend more than 1.5 to two hours in the kitchen each day’. Dumont-Lindemann made good use of leftovers and suggested replacements for ingredients which might prove difficult to procure. Thrift was admired as much as before, but for middle-class women the notion now included the task of presenting an impressive front to the world, even on a tight budget. To this end housewives were expected to create impressive dishes out of inexpensive ingredients. Resources had to be juggled so that sumptous meals could be served on special family reunions or when there were guests. China, cutlery, glasses and a male servant were often hired on these occasions to give the ‘right’ impression in an effort to imitate aristocratic ways. Such meals were expected to include at least two main courses which featured rare and correspondingly expensive ingredients, often imported. A menu from a middle-class household in 1900 lists

Oysters, Batavia soup prepared with birds’ nests sourced from India, chicken vol-au-vent, loin of venison with truffled artichoke-hearts, lobster salad with mayonnaise, a salmis of duck, cheese, pineapple ice cream, fruit and coffee.

To make budgets go as far as possible, housewives were advised to keep a ledger to record all expenses. The moral pressure to be thrifty was further intensified by cookbook titles such as 50 Pfennig-Küche oder die Kunst billig und gut zu kochen (50-pence-Recipes; or, The Art of Cooking Cheaply and Well, 1894). It was directed at all classes rather than simply the least affluent. Meatloaf, potatoes, herring and legumes featured heavily. Housewives were constantly being urged to make good use of leftovers and a filling soup was recommended as a first course in order to save on the main course. The culinary shortcuts the new food industry offered proved a double-edged sword: unlike in Britain or France, any time women saved in the kitchen was expected to be reinvested in home and family instead of providing a short respite from wifely or motherly duties.²⁶

Adolph Menzel, The Ball Supper, 1878, oil on canvas. In some respects this is the pendant to the workers’ grimy world: eating hastily and in a crowd.

The idea that a wife’s work might be considered hard – let alone openly declared to be so – was unthinkable. Households went to great lengths to hide the reality of a housewife’s situation, cultivating instead the illusion of relaxed idleness. Social aspirations among the lower middle classes often led to the employment of a servant girl to establish the wife’s all-important non-working status, in spite of the fact that this stretched the funds. Ironically, at the same time housewives were also legally obliged to earn an additional income should their husbands not be able to fully provide for the family. In more affluent households outside help was hired for the harder jobs such as washing or the preparation of special meals when entertaining. In the larger apartments of the time the kitchen was sited right at the rear and was generally accessed by a separate servants’ entrance. The very opposite of the grand salon at the front of the house, the kitchen, including the laundry, was often dark, stuffy and small, directly reflecting women’s status and the work assigned to them. In detached houses or villas it was always in the basement. Servant girls were paid part of their wages in the form of board and lodging. Food was a frequent reason for complaint by servants although, in theory at least, the Gesindeordnung or servants’ law guaranteed food of acceptable quality in sufficient quantity. Nevertheless employees were unlikely to complain of employers who could all too easily find replacements.²⁷ In 1902 the left-wing economist Oscar Stillich published a bleak survey of female servants in Berlin. Most of the young women, he reported, didn’t have enough time to eat and were given reheated leftovers, sometimes even buying additional staple foodstuffs from their meagre earnings in order not to go hungry. More specific complaints were that meat which had been boiled and reboiled in the preparation of fashionable bouillons for the master was reused to prepare meatloaf for the servants, and that the aptly named Dienstbotenkaffee, servants’ coffee, was undrinkable. Other sources maintain, however, that food allocated to household servants was usually good, since a healthy workforce served the employer’s interests; there was also a fear that gossip among young female household servants which revealed penny-pinching by the master of a household would damage his social credibility.

Discussions about women’s rights intensified as more affluent middle-class women clamoured for a choice between marriage and salaried work, demanding that housekeeping be recognized as a job that needed proper training. In 1873 the first urban housewives’ associations were founded, followed in 1898 by the precursor of Deutscher Landfrauenverband, the German Countrywomen’s Association. They tried to reconcile many different goals, among them integrating housewives into the feminist movement, which at the time consisted of unmarried women who had different ideals in life. The reality, however, was that such associations supported the old patriarchal structure by making it easier for housewives to perform their tasks within the existing system. By the turn of the twentieth century the discussion had already moved on. The most progressive suggestions included cooperative kitchens to lighten the load on housewives who worked outside the home, since salaried jobs were considered essential for the achievement of true emancipation. August Bebel, leader of Germany’s socialist movement, pronounced these Einküchenhäuser, one-kitchen co-operative ventures, a solution to the main problem and a way of providing everyone with a nourishing meal of meat and vegetables using modern ingredients enhanced through the use of new technologies. Originally this idea had been promoted by the social democrat feminist Lili Braun as part of a far-reaching life reform as early as 1900, but had been strongly opposed as counter-revolutionary by Clara Zetkin. Another proposal was that husbands should pay for their wives’ work with half their salaries, making women economically independent – an idea well ahead of its time – while countering the pejorative term Nurhausfrau, only a housewife. However, during the First World War the notion that a woman’s natural place was in the home was readily abandoned when the conservative, male establishment saw the need. Then it was suddenly considered equally natural that women leave their kitchens and children to replace their men in the factories.²⁸

Usually the cards were stacked against women who worked either from choice or necessity. While upper-class working women were seen as unfeminine, if they came from the lower classes, such women were deemed a real social threat. To prevent socialist agitation, feared above all by the establishment in an ordered society where everyone theoretically knew their place, by the mid-1880s owners of large factories had started to open housekeeping schools. They published books with titles such as Das häusliche Glück (Domestic Happiness), which contained advice on how to make a home comfortable and cosy for men. Although this particular work saw many reprints and numerous regional and international editions, its target audience were those most inclined to reject both the books and the schools as exploitative at best, and at worst an unacceptable infringement on their private lives.

It was, the middle classes maintained, a woman’s natural duty to provide a hot meal at midday, while a lack of housekeeping and cooking skills was put forward as the main reason for poor health in children and the tendency of workers to spend their leisure time in pubs, wasting money on alcohol and causing trouble. Working-class meals were published in learned journals and found wanting when analysed according to the latest nutritional theories. The mostly male authors came up with solutions to the problem of feeding a family, none of which sounded particularly enticing. One example from 1891 proposed black bread, skimmed milk, lard, coffee (half real beans and half barley) and salt for breakfast, followed by lentil soup with bacon and herring with potatoes for lunch.²⁹ Legumes, quark and cheap fish were regularly recommended as replacements for expensive meat. Potatoes were seen as overly filling, leading to a monotonous diet lacking in nutritional value. Even on the tightest budgets, women were expected to produce special meals on Saturday nights and at midday on Sunday to give their menfolk a reason to bring the pay-packet straight home rather than spending it elsewhere.

Middle-class women often extended their motherly role to alleviate the lower classes’ lot for the sake of the nation, as we have seen in the case of Lina Morgenstern and her Volksküchen, a commitment triggered by the Austrian–Prussian war in 1866 when the Prussian State called craftsmen, peasants and workers to take up arms without providing for their families. Together with many fellow well-off middle-class women, Morgenstern’s aim was to keep the poor from starving, thereby preventing urban uprisings. Her Berlin-based Volksküchen charged a modest sum for meals in order to preserve people’s self-esteem and distance the initiative from the soup kitchens run by the city council for the poor. She also saw rapid industrialization as a cause of accelerating hardship in the cities, leading her to replace the original takeaway outlets with simple dining halls. These proved popular among craftsmen, lower-grade civil servants, soldiers and servants, as well as teachers and families struggling to make ends meet. Hedwig Heyl was another notable figure in this field. She not only took over the post of acting factory director upon the death of her husband in 1889, but committed herself wholeheartedly to the women’s movement in Berlin, earning herself the sobriquet ‘Berlin’s best housewife’. Like Morgenstern she was convinced that women’s role was to counteract the hardships that came with industrialization. In her eyes good housekeeping depended on information and organization – home economics – rather than relying on female instincts. Her cooking lessons were based upon the latest scientific findings and first took shape in 1885 with women from upper-class families, later expanding to young working women of all classes.

To the bourgeoisie pubs and taverns were synonymous with socialist meetings. Morgenstern was concerned with moral education and allowed neither alcohol nor tobacco on the premises. One of the main reasons for excessive alcohol consumption was seen in the popularity of pubs and taverns where landlords imposed a Trinkzwang, or drinking rule. No food could be consumed without ordering alcohol, most often beer, the main source of profit, since the pubs were usually owned by breweries. The tighter the budget, the fewer the alternatives were for socializing and refreshment. But crowded housing conditions left workers no other place to gather and eating places such as Hammelkopf, mutton head, were popular. This simple pub near the new central slaughterhouse of Berlin had originally catered to butchers and meat buyers, offering Bouletten(meatballs, obviously a Huguenot contribution), pork shanks, cold pork chops and potato salad. The food was said to taste better than at home, its popularity assisted by beer, schnapps, card games and friendly service.

In a similar vein, though quickly growing into a chain, the Aschinger restaurants became immensely successful. Though limited to Berlin, these fast food outlets could be seen as the precursors of modern international fast food chains. The Aschinger system relied on food that was centrally produced according to high and exacting standards. Between 1892 and 1900 the two Aschinger brothers from Württemberg, one a cook, the other a waiter, opened more than twenty Bierquellen or beer pubs in all parts of Berlin. Usually a new Aschinger location meant that the brothers bought the whole building and turned the upper floors into staff accomodation, thus attracting (mostly women) workers from outside Berlin. The offer of staff meals at half price tied them even more effectively to the company. The pubs’ blue and white decor signalled the serving of Bavarian-style bottom-fermented lager, which was seen as more sophisticated and modern than the traditional acidic, top-fermented lactic-tasting Berlin Weisse or wheat beer (Weisse mit Schuss, with the addition of sweet fruit syrups, most commonly green woodruff or red raspberry, to counteract acidity, goes back to that time). However, the food on offer at Aschinger’s was actually Berlin-style and affordable without exuding even a whiff of poverty. At first it was confined to belegte Schrippen or sandwiches presented in glass showcases, just like the goods in the new department stores. Most popular was Hackepeter, raw pork mince with onions. The menu was soon extended to include Löffelerbsen, yellow split pea soup, and Bierwurst, sausage with salad, as well as more expensive dishes like roast goose with apple sauce. Fresh rolls from the Aschingers’ own central bakery were served free in unlimited quantity with any order. The Aschinger establishments were the opposite of the typical Berlin Eckkneipe, corner pubs, since the food was reliably good and affordable and the premises looked modern and clean – even elegant – and thus were acceptable to a very wide range of social groups. In the early 1900s the group extended to include numerous Konditoreien and most spectacularly the Weinhaus Rheingold, a wine restaurant, as well as several hotels. Like Kempinski, Aschinger’s became a Berlin institution mentioned by many writers of the time, such as Yvan Goll, Elias Canetti and Alfred Döblin.³⁰

Housekeeping course, c. 1900.

On Sundays many Berliners tried to get out of the city, heading for the parks or the beer or coffee gardens. Some of the latter were run as private gardens, open to travellers in need of refreshment. Unlike urban coffeehouses and restaurants, they were deemed acceptable for women and families. Around 1830 Zenner in the suburb of Treptow put out the first sign declaring Hier können Familien Kaffee kochen, here families can make their own coffee. This was the result of a royal decree directed against the numerous unregulated gastronomic ventures beyond the city’s border, prohibiting the sale of refreshments there. The ingenuity of the Berliners found a way around the problem, and private hostelries from then on sold hot water instead of ready-made coffee, although families on a limited budget had long since brought their own coffee and cake. For many of them this would have been generous slabs of Streuselkuchen, yeasty white dough often covered with a layer of fruit – usually cherries or apples – and spread with buttery crumble made with sugar and as much butter as they could afford. Back in the eastern provinces, where many of them had come from, the large sheets would have been sent to be baked in the baker’s oven after the bread. Now they either made smaller versions themselves or bought them from bakers. Ground poppyseeds as a cake topping, in a rich mixture with almonds, raisins and a little milk and sugar, were particularly typical of Silesians. For Christmas they would prepare Mohnpielen, an uncooked bread dish made from sliced Schrippen, white rolls soaked in milk with raisins and ground blue poppyseeds, made into a mush and shaped into dumplings on the plate: it was traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve after the late evening church service, although some families served it on New Year’s Eve. In contrast the fancy fare of the middle classes included more luxurious confections. The moment and place of birth of Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, Black Forest cherry gateau, a chocolate, cherry and cream-stuffed creation, are notoriously difficult to pin down, but the cake embodies the pompous spirit of the time.

Aschinger (on Alexanderplatz) interior, c. 1935.

Hans Baluschek, Families Can Make their Own Coffee Here, 1895, mixed technique on paperboard.

Everyday life for the urban working classes was as stressful as it was for the mining communities that assured the ever-growing demand for coal, and obviously this wasn’t restricted to Berlin. In 1890 the theologian Paul Göhre took three months off after graduating to disguise himself as a jobless, penniless scribe. He went to work in a metal factory in Chemnitz, Saxony, in order to experience how the working classes lived at first hand. Shortly afterwards he published his findings in a booklet full of illuminating insights. The majority of Göhre’s co-workers were Saxon locals, most of whom had taken in one or more lodgers in spite of the overcrowded accomodation in order to make ends meet, so privacy was virtually non-existent and even a bed of one’s own was regarded as a luxury. Göhre reported that salaries were largely sufficient to meet basic needs but didn’t provide for emergencies, luxuries or longer absence on military service. The factory in which he took employment was situated in an industrial suburb where old houses mingled with newly built, spartan two- or three-storey tenements. Most families only had one or two rooms, lacked a kitchen and confined their cooking to an oven standing in a corner. Göhre described the work at the factory as physically exhausting. The workday started at six and lasted almost eleven hours, with a twenty-minute break at eight o’clock for breakfast and one hour allowed for lunch. Only the young apprentices were allowed another half hour in the afternoon at four o’clock; the rest snatched a bite to eat as necessary in order to finish work earlier. Most brought their prepared breakfast from home, either sitting out in the courtyard if the weather permitted or taking it in the simple dining hall. There wasn’t much washing of hands, since everybody was eager to get to their sandwiches. These packed meals usually consisted of bread and butter with sausage, meat or cheese, and occasionally also hard boiled eggs or pickled cucumbers. Supplies could also be bought in the factory’s canteen. Coffee was brought from home in metal containers in winter, with buttermilk the alternative in summer. According to Göhre, dark beer was increasingly consumed instead of schnapps, since beer was now available in bottles thanks to the recently introduced swing stopper.

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, or Black Forest gateau.

A workers’ breakfast, c. 1920.

Although some workers returned to the dining hall at midday if they lived too far from the factory, everybody else went home for lunch as soon as the whistles blew at noon. Göhre’s notes make clear how important he deemed this meal, whose quality depended more on the housewife’s diligence and ingenuity than her budget. It was the focal point of the family routine and could not even be replaced in its complete significance by a similar meal served at night. Workers without families, such as himself, went to simple restaurants nearby, where he described the food as plentiful and decent enough: alternating roasted and boiled meat was accompanied by vegetables, potatoes and bread as well as a glass of brown beer. The municipal soup kitchen provided simple but decent meals for even more modest budgets.³¹

Long working hours profoundly affected eating habits. Wherever possible workers returned home for lunch, walking or, if they could afford it, using public transport. But with time they came to favour shorter lunch breaks to be able to go home earlier. They came to work armed with packed sandwiches and a coffeepot and soup or stew in a Henkelmann, stacked metal containers resembling India’s tiffin boxes that could be reheated in a hot water bath often provided by factories. Alternatively wives or daughters brought something along at lunchtime. In between a quick sip from the Flachmann, the hipflask, often served as a substitute for food. Numerous abstinence organizations laboured to educate against this, often joining force with other initiatives such as the women’s movement. For women alcoholism was mainly an indirect problem since they consumed much less of it, having restricted access to pubs and restaurants. Instead housewives had to deal with its effect on the household budget as well as absent or drunken husbands. Feminist activists such as Ottilie Hoffmann opened numerous alcohol-free eating houses in northern Germany that also offered evening entertainment and came to be one of the origins of the Volkshochschulen, adult education centres, founded in 1918.³²

From around 1900 factories started to offer hot meals in canteens. A forerunner of the arrangement was the organized midday delivery to the factory. WMF, a large metalworks in Württemberg, collected the Henkelmann containers prepared by housewives by horse-drawn carriage from workers’ homes. This service, dubbed Knöpflespost after a popular kind of homemade noodles, operated from 1891 to 1927. Canteens in large-scale factories were originally called Speiseanstalt, Werksküche or Menage and were above all intended to provide for unmarried workers. However, with growing distances between the workplace and home, fewer and fewer workers were able to go home at midday. In 1750 it took twenty minutes to cross Hamburg on foot, which rose to 30 minutes in 1850, but by 1900 this had grown to a full hour, a situation made worse by the trend for shorter lunch breaks. Although employers still promoted the ideal of family meals, they also wanted to curb alcohol consumption and keep their workforce well fed for the sake of efficiency. Initially distrusted as a patronizing self-interested measure, reinforced by the fact that the higher ranks tended to take the meals in their own more comfortable premises where better fare was provided, it was only after the Second World War that workers’ canteens were unreservedly embraced and such segregation disappeared.³³

Adolph Menzel, Iron Rolling Mill, 1872–5, oil on canvas. Note the hastily gulping workers in the bottom right-hand corner.

Constructions such as this one were provided by the factories for workers to reheat the lunch they brought along from home.

Hans Baluschek, Lunchtime, 1894, oil on canvas.

From 1891 to 1927 the WMF company operated the so-called Knöpflespost to collect workers’ lunches from their home.

The moral insistence on family midday meals was also rooted in the fear that children might become lifelong dependents on soup kitchens, since their school days very rarely extended into the afternoon. In contrast to what happened in England and France, food was often given directly to families so that mothers could cook at home, preserving traditional family structures. An organization initiated in 1883 by Agnes Blumenfeld risked distributing breakfast for hungry children in Berlin schools after strictly checking their needs and taking care that the children themselves went to the school director’s office to collect their breakfast. The composition of these free meals differed widely, ranging from a piece of bread and a cup of cocoa in the working-class district of Neukölln to a litre of milk and a roll with butter in upper-class Wilmersdorf. The same organization also gave food to families and helped with firewood, blankets and other necessities.

Many workers’ budgets didn’t allow for much leeway and an increase in food prices could quickly lead to mass protests, a fact of which officials were well aware. The flashpoint was now the price of meat. The price of both bread and milk also rose in the years before the First World War, but public reaction to these increases was much less violent; a sure sign of where preferences lay. When meat prices rose in 1912 because of protectionist import restrictions, the Berlin authorities organized the sale of Polish meat at reduced prices. The meat was to be offered without any profit margin by regular butchers in the covered markets. However, butchers in Wedding, a working-class district, wanted to sell their regular wares at normal prices and refused to offer the ‘Russian’ meat they declared to be of inferior quality, pretending that their colleagues in the affluent suburbs were offering better cuts. As a result, as described in contemporary newspaper accounts, the women who had flocked to the markets hoping for cheap meat started punching and bombarding the butchers with fruit and vegetables. The police closed the markets, whereupon the furious housewives’ riot spread to nearby butchers’ shops. On the following day events escalated when the women were joined by local agitators, and the police used force to protect shopkeepers and other customers. However, the women were ultimately successful: on the second day almost all covered markets were obliged to offer cheap meat.³⁴

This kind of valve for letting off steam against perceived unfairness or excessive infringement on one’s personal life was not available to the middle classes. Many of them increasingly suffered under their self-imposed stuffiness, with its endless ritualized menus, and the rapid changes around the safe havens of their homes. Theodor Fontane (a self-confessed gourmand who clearly enjoyed his food and often described it in loving detail in his work) highlighted the moral dilemma experienced by the bourgeoisie in in reconciling themselves with progress in an unfinished poem, ‘Retrorsum’ (Backwards), commenting on Automatenrestaurants, vending machine restaurants. The first super-modern fully self-serviced Automat restaurant opened in 1897 on Berlin’s Leipziger Strasse. Its interior, modelled on public vending machines that delivered cigars, perfume, chocolate and other sweets, was functional and clean in accordance with the new ideal of speed, social freedom and unhindered access under the slogan: ‘No tip, serve yourself, casual, fast and good.’ By 1914 Automatenrestaurants had appeared in all major German cities.³⁵

Some of the bourgeoisie reacted to the changes by adopting aristocratic manners, joining the reserve officer corps and taking up their drinking and duelling habits. Others threw off the constraints of the established order by embracing the ideas of the Wandervögel, a hikers’ youth movement emerging in the 1890s in Berlin. The Wandervögel and others campaigned against materialism and the presumptuous idea of unbounded human mastery of nature. Their plea for a return to a healthy, pre-industrial lifestyle soon spread to all areas of life and could be summarized under the slogan ‘back to the purity of nature’. In time the Lebensreform or life-reform campaign became almost a kind of secular religion, the cult of unspoiled nature as a modern paradise regained. This moral countertrend to conservatism and industrialization in many ways resembled the modern green movement. However, its health-conscious, youth-orientated and temperate followers also declared all alcohol as well as tobacco and coffee to be harmful drugs. New alcohol-free, sweet, fizzy beverages were enthusiastically promoted, among them Sinalco, literally ‘without alcohol’, a citrus lemonade still available today from a factory founded in 1908. In addition the first alcohol-free wines and beers were produced.³⁶ Nudism was as ardently practised as Kleiderreform, a new, reformed style of clothing which advocated domestic linen and wool instead of imported cotton. Expanding waistlines among the bourgeoisie came to be regarded as evidence of lack of willpower and personal neglect, while a slender, muscular body could be taken as evidence of youthful energy, self-discipline and high expectations. Then as now, advice on how to deal with problems of obesity varied widely, with fasting, abstaining from meat and eating raw food the most popular. The first recorded cases of anorexia appeared in the 1920s when women abandoned the lace-up corset and adopted the new less structured fashions with shorter hemlines and fewer layers.³⁷ Anti-vaccination clubs formed and Vollkornbrot, wholemeal bread, was seen as a superfood as opposed to the white rolls workers loved and could increasingly afford. The Catholic priest Sebastian Kneipp developed Kneippkaffee, a coffee surrogate made from malted barley. He also offered a hydropathic treatment that included walking barefoot in damp meadows and advocated the use of indigenous herbs instead of imported spices. A cookbook based on his teachings and published in 1897 included recipes for powdered soup made from sage, stinging nettles, woodruff, oak leaves, strawberry leaves and other similar ingredients.³⁸

Postcard from 1904, showing the Brandenburg Gate on the back and promoting the Automat restaurants on Friedrich-strasse and Leipzigerstrasse in Berlin, also advertising cigarettes and cognac.

Just as it is today, for many vegetarianism seemed like the perfect answer to civilization’s perceived unnaturalness. The ancient Greek vegetarian ideals found in Orpheus and Pythagoras had emerged among the educated classes with the onset of the Enlightenment, recommending vegetables, fruit and herbs for therapeutic as well as moral reasons, with French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau as its major influence. In his writings, especially the book Emile (1762), Rousseau worshipped nature as a de facto religion, presenting the unspoiled child in contrast to grownup man degenerated by civilization, the carnivore as brutal and unnatural in contrast to the peace-loving herbivore. In Germany Gustav Struve was one of the most important pioneers of vegetarianism. Converted in 1832 after reading Rousseau, the following year Struve published the first vegetarian-themed novel in German, Mandaras Wanderungen (Mandara’s Travels). The narrative details a young Indian’s letters home as he travels through Europe about a Christianity demoralized through meat-eating while defending the vegetarian lifestyle of his homeland (for the German audience the grass was obviously greener in far-away India). In 1869 Struve continued the theme with Pflanzenkost – die Grundlage einer neuen Weltanschauung (Plant-diet as Basis for a New Philosophy of Life), providing the movement with the necessary theoretical foundation. In contrast to the new scientific approach to health, medicine and nutrition that promoted meat as the perfect superfood, he proposed vegetarianism as the holistic approach to human health and an all-encompassing life reform as the solution to the social problems of the age. The theologian, philosopher and anthropologist Eduard Baltzer was another ardent and influential German vegetarian, converted in 1866. The following year he founded the Deutscher Verein für natürliche Lebensweise (Association for a Natural Lifestyle), continental Europe’s first vegetarian society, later renamed Deutscher Verein für naturgemässe Lebensweise (Lifestyle True to Nature). Three years later, a national umbrella organization, Deutscher Vegetarierbund (German Vegetarian League), followed. Thereafter numerous vegetarian cookbooks of all kinds were published, often combined with comprehensive advice on health and life in general.

Obviously vegetarianism was part of the romanticization of agrarian life in general which carried the life reform movement. Whereas earlier forms of agromania had aristocratic ladies posing as milkmaids, the new trend involved a much larger part of the populace. Urban working families were encouraged in various ways to return to nature and appreciate the countryside. One of these was Gartenstädte, based on an English idea. The cooperative structure of these garden cities was seen as ideal though rarely realized, Hellerau near Dresden being one of the notable exceptions. Garden suburbs began to appear at the edge of large cities, as did Schrebergärten, allotments named after the Leipzig physician Daniel Moritz Schreber. Schreber’s publications discussed children’s health and the social consequences of over-urbanization, advocating physical exercise in the countryside. Allotments came to be used for food production as much as recreational purposes. The largest garden project still in existence is Eden, a settlement dedicated to fruit growing founded in 1893 in Oranienburg near Berlin. For the first seven years the project was strictly vegetarian, but thereafter relaxed its rules. It produced a whole range of Reformwaren or reform products including fruit and vegetable juices, vegetarian margarine and Kraftnahrung, powerfood, a vegetarian meat and sausage lookalike, precursor of today’s tofu sausages. Designed as the food for a new reformed natural lifestyle, these products and many similar ones were sold in special shops known as Reformhaus (the first of which opened in 1887), precursors of the organic stores that joined them from the early 1980s onwards. Sporting events such as races to prove the strength of vegetarian athletes were immensely popular.

The principles of wholesome food as a source of health and a way of life were later articulated by anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner when he outlined the principles of biodynamic agriculture in a lecture, Landwirt-schaftlicher Kurs, delivered in 1924 to landowners in the Silesian town of Kobernitz near Breslau. Based on anthroposophy’s holistic approach, Steiner placed agriculture in a larger, cosmic context, emphasizing independent self-sufficiency as the ideal structure for farming communities. As an alternative to the new industrial fertilizers and chemicals, he recommended natural preparations made from mineral, herbal and animal components, as well as the use of cow dung to increase soil fertility while discouraging pests and disease.

Steiner was convinced that spiritual powers enabled all life on earth and that the cosmos and humanity all work together to influence plant growth. He regarded human taste as an essential element for detecting the intrinsic quality of foodstuffs and for understanding the connection between production methods, geographical location, and the characteristics of different types of foods.

Maximilian Bircher-Benner, a Swiss-German physician, was among the strongest opponents of Justus von Liebig and the new food scientists and became one of the guiding culinary voices of the reform movement. After studying the much-hyped hydrotherapy and visiting reformer colleague Heinrich Lahmann’s renowned sanatorium in Dresden, he opened his own sanatorium in Zurich. Named Lebendige Kraft (Living Power), it targeted the wealthy who sufferered from the long-term effects of the overeating encouraged by the economic boom. The idea proved extremely successful and attracted businesspeople, writers and artists from all over the world. Among those who spent time at the sanatorium was Thomas Mann, who wrote in a letter in 1909: ‘Best wishes from a grass-eating Nebuchadnezzar who crawls on all fours in his airbath.’ The sanatorium, he said, was a prison of hygiene where one had to get up at six in the morning and lights were off at nine in the evening. Treatments included long walks in the adjoining woods, abundant sleep, gymnastics and modest vegetarian meals that favoured raw food, and patients were to avoid stress and stimulants as much as possible – very much like an expensive modern-day spa. Bircher-Benner’s colleagues were dismayed by his methods, rejecting his teachings as heretical. But he remained firm in his belief – based on new scientific findings in thermodynamics – that processing diminished food’s nutritional value. He was convinced of the fundamental importance of the fact that plants transform solar energy into carbohydrates. Green leaves and fruit, he maintained, were ‘sun-food’. Like many other pioneers, Bircher-Benner took his ideas to the extreme, and for him cooking was a compromise to be avoided as far as possible. Whereas the pro-meat faction of the time saw meat as equivalent to cultural and social superiority and therefore especially important for men, Bircher-Benner declared the consumption of flesh to be a dirty and an inefficient energy source. His sister, placed in charge of the sanatorium’s kitchen, didn’t ban it completely from the menu, possibly in an attempt to accomodate as many wealthy customers as possible. Red cabbage, stuffed veal breast, macaroni with grated cheese, lettuce, Turkish rice pudding with raspberry sauce and fruit on a Sunday in January were followed the next day by salsify with tomato sauce, green beans, potato pancakes, lamb’s lettuce, cheesecake and fruit. However, the famous Bircher-Benner müesli (a Swiss diminutive of Mus, mush) was invariably served for breakfast. It consisted mainly of fresh fruit, above all grated apple (including the skin and core), soaked oats, a small amount of ground hazelnuts or almonds, lemon juice and sweetened condensed milk, the latter favoured by the doctor over fresh milk for reasons of hygiene, in spite of the processing involved.

A culinary place in time: Hof Marienhöhe

One of the very first biodynamic estates in Germany was established at Hof Marienhöhe near Bad Saarow, one hour’s drive southeast of Berlin. When Steiner’s disciple Erhard Bartsch arrived at the estate in 1928, the soil was dry and sandy, covered with heath and a few robinia trees. It was deemed completely useless for agriculture. But Bartsch’s intention was to test Steiner’s methods under extreme conditions. The first plantings were 4 km of hedgerows, and Marienhöhe has been under cultivation ever since. Today the estate consists of 120 hectares of small fields surrounded by a ring of lush forest. Cereals, potatoes, root vegetables and salad greens flourish, alternating in a seven- to nine-year cycle with legumes and fodder for the farm’s pigs and cattle whose milk is hand-processed into cheese. It is largely to the work of organic and biodynamic farms that Germany’s new cheese culture can be ascribed. In 1992 about 60 dairy farmers and cheesemakers founded the Verband für handwerkliche Milchverarbeitung, an association for artisanal milk processing (www.milchhandwerk.info), which today has over 600 members.