German Food: A Complex Dish
What is German about the way Germans eat, what they eat and why? Following renewed discussion in recent years about what makes Germans German, this book tries to answer that question through looking at the country’s food and its evolution through history. It is a complex question to which there is no one definitive answer. But as a German food writer, a food historian and a passionate cook, I strongly believe that even an incomplete answer has much to offer. In our pots and pans, on our plates and in our glasses, just as in other areas of life, the past can help us to understand the present, and ideally could serve as a guide for the future.
From the earliest beginnings, food and cooking in Germany have been marked by the geographic and climatic differences between north and south as well as the continuous cultural influences from all sides. I argue that the openness and receptiveness Germans have shown towards those influences mark them right up to the present day. Instead of clinging desperately to something static that must at all costs be preserved, such as an haute cuisine that is cut in stone, new layers of cuisine have again and again been added from all sides, leading to frequent rejuvenation and a food culture with a remarkable flexibility. I further argue that Germany’s decentralized structure, so often quoted as being to its disadvantage, actually promoted this receptiveness and plurality.
Instead of being uniform, German food has always been extremely complex. The regional variations of today are based as much on political, cultural and socio-economic history as on geography. This process has by no means always been easy or smooth. Different social groups often reacted quite differently to changes. One only needs to think of coffee (very rapidly found highly desirable by all social strata but quickly deemed dangerously expensive and wasteful, and only appropriate for a select few) or potatoes (which eventually proved to be life-saving nourishment, but were first thought of by most as animal fodder at best). Both eventually gained wide acceptance as vital elements of German food culture.
Food and Germany is a combination that makes most people think of beer and sausage, pretzels and Limburger cheese. However, the 82 million inhabitants of contemporary Germany do not all exclusively live on Oktoberfest fare. If they did, a food historian’s job would quickly be done. In fact the opposite is the case, as in most modern cultures: the far-reaching effects of globalization have made it difficult to trace the complex roots of the many traditions that together form German food.
Looked at on a geo-historical level, Germany is a country in the middle of the European continent, situated between the Slavs and the Romans, cold and heat, sea and mountains. In the course of history it has seen an enormous number of influences from all sides. To understand the past – the background of all this meeting and melding – is to understand the reasons why people in Germany eat how they do today. Unlike its neighbour France, for instance, Germany has no single national, overarching ‘haute’ cuisine, nor even a national dish, such as Brazil’s feijoada. Although it is not a particularly large country (in terms of land area, it is slightly larger than half the size of France, with a population that outnumbers its western neighbour by one-third), its culture is remarkably complex.
Aside from geographic and climatic reasons, this is mainly due to four factors. First, in the past as now, populations were not static, and when people moved they took some of their food preferences with them. In a similar manner German emigrants took their foodways with them over the Atlantic to the Americas. Second, the disintegration of the (albeit not very tightly joined) nation into countless small political units following the decline of Charlemagne’s kingdom in the course of the ninth century (a process that did not go into reverse until Napoleon’s restructuring of the European map in the early 1800s) was the basis for a variety of regional cuisines, each itself a complex system of socioeconomic and cultural layers. Third, the Reformation movement instigated by Martin Luther and many like-minded innovators set an example for the wider populace that it was possible to be different and act differently from each other. Last, the late but far-reaching and intense industrialization which turned a patchwork of agrarian states into one thoroughly urbanized industrial one led to a surge of irrational fears as well as longings for paradise lost, that is, a supposedly perfect past of naturalness. In some respects the origins of contemporary organic food stores go back to this.
The topography of Germany (within the borders of 1930).
How far can one trace German foodways back in time? One of the first written records comes from the Roman historian Tacitus in the first century AD. In his Germania he described the food habits of the ‘wild’ German tribes. According to him they survived on wild fruits, game meat that was fresh and had not been hung (a serious indication of lack of civilization, from a Roman point of view) and lac concretum (curdled milk or quark). Tacitus also mentioned a beverage he described as winelike, made from fermented barley or other grain. Although he seems partly to have been interested in showing his effeminate, degenerate compatriots an unspoilt, naturally strong people (and his description must therefore be taken with a pinch of salt), it is striking that beer, meat and cheese, three of the usual Oktoberfest suspects, were already big favourites of the Germans nearly 2,000 years ago.
Of course, the history of food in Germany starts much earlier than the first century. I will use the term ‘Germany’ throughout the book to avoid too much entanglement with political geography. Germania, the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, Imperial Germany . . . as designations changed, frontiers moved back and forth again and again. The further one goes back in time, the more difficult it is to separate the specific area that is Germany today from the development of Central Europe in general. For instance, it was only over a long period of time that Austria and Switzerland became clearly separate places on the culinary map. Nevertheless, as far as possible my focus will be on the area contiguous with contemporary Germany.
Food is more tangible than any abstract historical theory. Food history not only shines a light on who eats what, how, where and when, but also illuminates the production, selection, preparation and presentation of food as well as all practicalities surrounding it. The absence of food – famine and hunger – is very much part of the story, as it shaped the Germans just as much as what they did and do still consume. Although this quickly leads to larger political questions, I will refrain from telling Germany’s general history. For this many and more competent sources are available, not least in English.
As we progress through time, different periods make for radically different situations for the historian. Generally speaking sources become more abundant and the emerging picture more complex, up to the point when we reach what is currently filling our larder, cooking on our stoves and steaming on our plates. On our way through the centuries, whenever possible, I will suggest and describe culinary places in time – that is, places in Germany where the historical layers that form the present incarnation of German food can be directly experienced, be it in kitchens, restaurants or farms. And now, to quote the great American food writer M.F.K. Fisher, let’s set out ‘with bold knife and fork’ and dig deep into German food.
