Spaghetti and Rouladen: Regionality in a Globalized World, Reunified Germany since 1990
The gigantic experiment that subjected the Germans to two completely different cultural spheres added yet another layer to the country’s foodways, although one that took a while to bond with the existing complexities. Since the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, East and West Germany had increasingly grown apart. A GDR journalist in an interview in 2010 remembered that when she was allowed to attend the Berlinale film festival in West Berlin in 1988, she thought it all very impersonal and formal compared to film festivals in Moscow. Since she didn’t have West German currency and hadn’t been invited to any of the official parties, she had to diplomatically beg the press office for meal tickets and felt very much excluded: ‘West Berlin was a foreign city.’1 Half of Germany had shot full throttle in one direction, searching for the new, whereas the other side had been forced, at least officially, to look in the opposite direction, stay closer to home and thereby safeguard more traditional ways. When the two sides finally became familiar with each other once again and got used to their new oneness from widely diverging perspectives, their combined experiences made them astonishingly well equipped for the ‘thinking global, acting local’ trend of the twenty-first century; the philosophy of being open to new things while remaining true to one’s own identity.
Since then interest in regional food products and cuisines has grown simultaneously with the acceptance of foodstuffs imported from all over the world. You could call it a new balance, or a move away from dogmatism. Bread is a good example of this. Heavy, dark bread baked from scratch has almost turned into a luxury product, whereas light wheat bread from industrial production is ubiquitous and affordable. However, unlike in English-speaking countries, in Germany sourdough is still taken for granted. A new generation of artisanal bakers feels completely free from any political or philosophical mission in their creations, picking up on worldwide traditions in a multicultural way. Similar to the Weichardts spearheading the return to Vollkornbrot in the late 1970s, Peter Klann has been the pioneer of this next step in the history of bread in Germany since the early 2000s. On the shelves of his Soluna bakery in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, rustic round rye loaves called Rundling sit next to Swabian Dinkelseelen, large breadsticks made from spelt and sprinkled with salt and caraway seeds, English scones and petits pains obscures with bay leaves from Provence. These new bakers are open to any inspiration and taste, yet are very much focused on their local customers.
Similarly EU legislation, while often accused of furthering uniformity on its citizens’ plates, also offers bureaucratic structures to protect regional foodstuffs with an entire framework of geographical indications. This mostly takes the form of the protected geographical indication (PGI), which stipulates processing according to traditional recipes, but not the local origin of the raw material. So far it has been granted to Dresdner Christstollen, Halberstädter Würstchen, Swabian Spätzle, Holsteiner Katenschinken, Spreewaldgurken, Lübecker Marzipan, Nürnberger Lebkuchen, some beer varieties and many other products. A whole list of natural mineral waters, four types of cheeses (Allgäuer Emmentaler, Allgäuer Bergkäse, Altenburger Ziegenkäse and Odenwälder Frühstückskäse) and two varieties of moorland sheep carry the PDO seal (protected designation of origin) under which all the ingredients and the whole production process are tied to a place and traditional methods.2 As we have seen, some of these foodstuffs have been associated with a certain place for centuries, such as Nuremberg gingerbread or Lübeck marzipan. For others their regionality only emerged in contrast to a larger or even global context. In some cases, whole regions reinvented themselves based on a small number of selected products. Regionality is a notoriously difficult notion to pin down. It is often linked to the idea of sustainability, implying rural origins (such as in Landmilch or Landmetzgerei, country milk, country butcher) or short distances between producer and consumer. It is however rarely consistently defined and often plays on buyers’ desires. Economic, socio-cultural and ecological factors exploit the longing for harmony, cosiness, a sense of belonging and identity.3
Not long after reunification, nostalgia for the GDR past set in among east Germans, dubbed Ostalgie. East Germans rarely long for the GDR as such to rematerialize, but for some of the familiar shapes, looks and tastes of their home country. As certain brands vanished they came to symbolize the loss of an entire world, and a whole range of cookbooks is dedicated to recipes presented as being specific to GDR cuisine. In 2003 the film Goodbye Lenin, the highly original story of a family living in a small flat in East Berlin’s Karl Marx Allee at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, focused on this dilemma, featuring above all Spreewaldgurken, pickles from the Spreewald region southeast of Berlin, but also packaged food such as Mocca-Fix Gold coffee. In 1989 the East German food industry was faced with the sudden collapse of their home market as well as the no less abrupt loss of socialist export markets. Monetary union in July 1990 was the final blow, exposing them to competition with the Western food industry. Many East German companies were forced to close down or sell out and Westernize their products. Nowadays, some people favour east German food products for nostalgic reasons and others want to contribute to economic stabilization in the east, while many perceive them as regional and therefore more authentic. In some cases products have been revived; others survive as real success stories (such as Rotkäppchen sparkling wine or Hallorenkugeln, sweets from one of the oldest German chocolate factories in Halle/Saale), while still others continue as regional products (such as mustard from Bautzen/Saxony). Building on its long history, the east German food retail group Konsum was revived and restyled in Dresden, and in 2008 expanded across the former border into Nuremberg and Erlangen.
All over Germany regional cuisines are being reinterpreted at home and in restaurant kitchens. In 2009 three-quarters of the respondents to a survey declared regional cooking styles to be important, up from two-thirds in 2003. Almost every second household declared that they served traditional fare such as Spätzle, Semmelknödel (bread dumplings), schnitzel, Eintopf stews or Labskaus (a northern German dish based on salted meat, potatoes, beetroot and pickled herring) at least once a week. But 13 per cent also said that they experimented with more exotic recipes.4 Ethnic restaurants and foodstuffs from around the world experienced a real boom, be it Thai restaurants or the virtually omnipresent sushi. When in 1987 EU law forced Germany to open its market to foreign beer even if it was not brewed according to the strict old Reinheitsgebot, using other ingredients than water, hops, yeast and malt, domestic brewers felt threatened. Today beer from all over the world is mingling happily on the shelves with that of small local producers, some of them organic, and huge brands without any problem. This inclusive openness is characteristic of contemporary German food-ways. While artisanal cheese producers increasingly explore the notion of terroir in the form of solid milk beyond the lac concretum of Tacitus’ times, the dairy industry’s big players export ever larger amounts of German cheese to Russia and Japan (although the main export market for the German dairy industry is Italy, followed by the Netherlands and France).
The language on menus shows the same mix of curiosity and quiet self-confidence, as witnessed by the menus of the new Hotel Adlon. Lorenz Adlon’s masterwork escaped the Allied bombings of 1940 to ’45, but burned down in May 1945 under mysterious circumstances. The surviving wing first continued as a hotel, then became a dormitory for apprentices in the 1970s, and in 1984 was finally torn down. In the 1950s Hedda Adlon, Louis Adlon’s second wife and widow, sold her option for purchase and the name to the Kempinski hotel group. After reunification it was rebuilt on exactly the same spot and modelled on its first incarnation, albeit with one more floor. When it opened in 1997, it looked just as pompous as the original did. Today menus from the Lorenz Adlon restaurant are notable for mentioning the products’ origins. The dishes are described in much greater detail than a century before. Occasionally French terms are used, and headings (Crustacés et Poissons) are generally bilingual. Some riddles remain for the untrained Adlon guest: confiert, Loup de mer, petits pois à la française. This could be seen as a tribute to the Escoffier legend; the Adlon past is rooted in a time when French ruled supreme in ambitious kitchens.
Back in 1903, in the years immediately before the first Adlon opened, Ernst Lössnitzer’s Speisekarte Germanizing booklet tackled what he called the usual objections to German terminology. French expressions supposedly were more distinguished: the higher art of cooking, after all, was and had always been French (a belief that of course is revealed to be nonsense when you examine it closely), and the technical terminology therefore had to be French. He then listed arguments in favour of Germanizing: German people had started to feel like good Germans and had been ‘cleaning up’ their language in all areas, he wrote. The mixing up of all kinds of languages was not only tasteless, it also corrupted comprehensibility – menus were written for guests, not experts. To the present day French and other foreign terms on menus often reflect chefs demonstrating professional expertise, using a Fachsprache, a specialist language, and thus excluding ordinary people and exploiting the insecure. Consommé is an example of this, also quoted by Lössnitzer. But many of the words he complained about and wanted translated have definitely become naturalized (Aroma, Bonbon, Champignons, Estragon, Sauce). Others have indeed been replaced by German words, for instance assaisonnieren, to season (although gratinieren lives happily next to its German equivalent überbacken). But altogether, although the linguistic Germanizing movement of a century and more ago was in many cases exaggerated and arguably contributed indirectly to the rise of fascist thinking, it certainly did not try to construct an alternate reality the way the Nazis did with their propaganda and comprehensive, all-encompassing dictatorship. Today German on the menu has the opposite effect, leaving more choice to the guest, and thus provides the basis for an ongoing search for the culinary reality of a distinctive German cuisine. As chefs are ready to interpret old recipes with new ingredients and vice versa, Germans are ready to adopt new words. Common sense has thankfully prevailed over fundamentalism.
In 2009 a court ruling put an end to the CMA (Centrale Marketing-Gesellschaft der deutschen Agrarwirtschaft), a quango promoting German agricultural products. Its financing through compulsory contributions by producers was declared illegal under European law, and producers complained about the agency’s inefficiency. Meanwhile the similarly structured German wine institute was also the subject of legal attacks, but survived them, successfully reinvented itself and is now flourishing. Vineyards represent less than 1 per cent of Germany’s agricultural area, but are of entirely disproportional cultural impact. German wines have seen a real revolution in quality and reputation since 2000, overcoming the stigma of their nationality as well as the 1960s’ industrialization of erstwhile successes like Liebfraumilch. A new generation of professionally trained winegrowers is well connected in the international wine world, able to focus on terroir, the wines’ origin in the vineyard, and in many cases converting to organic methods.
For agriculture in general the same trend exists, albeit in a considerably less pronounced form. In unfavourable areas such as the low mountain ranges, steep valleys or pastoral mountain regions, agriculture tends to be on the retreat, and as Germany is no exception to the general trend towards concentration, the number of farms on the 17 million hectares presently under cultivation is declining. Although slightly more farms are run as a part-time job than as a main business, the former cultivate less than one-quarter of all used land. The most successful farms combine production with processing and distribution, selling their own bread, cheese, meat and other products at farm shops or farmers’ markets and taking in holiday-makers for Urlaub auf dem Bauernhof, holidays on the farm. About one-third of the total agricultural area is grassland and a very small area is covered with orchards (mainly apples, followed by sweet and sour cherries, plums and pears) and vineyards, but the bulk is cultivated as fields. Of these grain makes up more than half the total, with wheat dominating, followed by barley, rye and oats. Besides these, maize, rapeseed, sugar beet and potatoes are produced. The production of strawberries, the second most important fruit crop behind apples, increased by more than two-thirds between 1999 and 2005, and surveys show that in spite of year-round imports, domestic consumption still follows the German season. Likewise the importance (and diversity) of domestically grown vegetables is on the rise. Cabbage in all its varieties is followed by asparagus (for which the area under cultivation doubled between 1995 and 2005), lettuce, carrots, onions, and to a lesser degree green peas, green beans, spinach and radishes. Trade structures have been changing too: wholesale markets of fruit and vegetables today only serve the restaurant trade, hospitals, and small retailers (in Berlin, for instance, they only reach about 15 per cent of the population), as large discounters and supermarkets all buy directly from producers.5
Meat production in Germany concentrates on pigs (EU number one) and cattle (EU number two behind France), although poultry is increasing, representing more than 15 per cent of all slaughtered meat in 2004. More than half of all pigs are kept on farms in Lower Saxony and North-Rhine Westphalia, a tendency that started over a century ago due to the proximity of shipping ports for imported feed and for the export of the meat, as well as to the markets on Rhine and in the Ruhr region. The related problems (pollution with excrement, the high risk of pests and diseases) are augmented by the fact that industrial poultry farming tends to be in the same areas. Dairy farming is less concentrated and still mostly situated in areas with limited value for other crops, that is the marshes on the Northern and Baltic Sea, the lower mountain ranges and the foothills of the Alps. The EU milk quota system (which EU officials plan to abolish in 2015) stunted the growth of dairy farms. The number of dairy cows decreased further by more than one-fifth between 1995 and 2005, while yields per animal rose significantly, from an average of 5,320 litres per cow per year in 1995 to 6,840 litres in 2009. The abolition of state regulations for regional milk deliveries in 1970 led to the concentration of dairies, reflecting the worldwide trend. Milk is transported over ever larger distances: the number of dairies in West Germany went down from 2,758 in 1960 to just 196 in 2009. That year, the five largest German dairies processed about half of all German milk, up from less than one-quarter in 1996.6
One of the driving factors behind this development is the major food retailers. In 1998 the five leading retailers (and the trend is towards further supranational concentration) represented 64 per cent of all food sales in Germany. This requires large amounts of standardized products of reliable quality at prices that are as low as possible. Unsurprisingly retailers’ idea of quality isn’t necessarily the same as consumers’, as the example of ESL (extended shelf life) milk shows. First introduced in German stores in 2008, its treatment often places it nearer in taste to UHT milk, in particular towards the end of its shelf life. However, it is legally labelled as fresh milk, with the addition of länger haltbar, or ‘keeps longer’, as opposed to conventionally pasteurized milk now labelled traditionell hergestellt, ‘traditionally produced’. The latter has almost disappeared from discount stores’ shelves.
As in earlier centuries, worries about food security continue to influence Germans’ shopping and eating habits. Food often makes it into the mass media in the form of scares and scandals. Salmonella, campylobacter, E. coli and listeria all have to be reported to the relevant authorities. As in other industrialized countries, the contamination potential in large-scale production units, along with the ever increasing miles that foods travel and their ever longer shelf lives, certainly creates risks on a scale that was hitherto unknown. But looked at rationally and put into a larger perspective, most of these scares and scandals seem at least somewhat overblown when set against the actual (minimal or non-existent) casualties. Although no one issue caused as many casualties as the deadly Spanish cooking oil scandal in 1981 or the Italian red wine poisoned with methyl alcohol in 1986, food scandals in Germany spread an atmosphere of fear and disgust in consumers that borders on the superstitious. In most cases buying patterns change for only a brief period, or until the next problem flares up; a pattern of ritualized emotional response. However, the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Germany led to a substantial agricultural crisis and considerably strengthened the green movement.
The first report about BSE in the United Kingdom reached Germany in November 1987. In 1990 a German health inspector came across the first indications of the disease in Germany, but lost her job when she reported her findings to the public. In 1997 pre-emptive culling took place, with government officials insisting that Germany was BSE-free and at no risk. In November 2000, however, the German government had to admit the existence of the first official BSE case in Germany. A total ban of meat and bonemeal for animal feed followed, as well as nationwide tests of all animals slaughtered at under 24 months of age. One-third of all Germans reduced their beef consumption significantly at the time; one-quarter even renounced it completely.7 In 2007 the official statistics declared four BSE cases, a significant drop from the 125 cases reported in 2001. So far it seems that there has not been a single BSE-related human casualty in Germany, whereas 176 casualties have been reported in the UK.8
The BSE crisis led to a fundamental rethinking and restructuring of agricultural policy and consumer protection, instigated by the Green Party’s push for transparency and organic agriculture. Organic grocers, farm shops and supermarkets flourished and have since become much more mainstream. In 2010 every fifth German bought organic food, women more frequently than men. In 2011 organic products represented 3.7 per cent of all food retail sales, while the area organically farmed in Germany almost tripled from 2.1 per cent in 1996 to 6.1 per cent in 2011, over 1 million hectares. However, that isn’t even close to the 20 per cent set as a goal in 2002 by the Green Party. Today 7.5 per cent of all farms work according to organic principles. On average their yields are much lower than those of conventional farms, but since they realize significantly higher prices, the results in financial terms are about equal. Two-thirds of all Germans are familiar with the Bio-Siegel, the European organic food label for foodstuffs produced according to the EU-Eco-regulation. With €73.60 spent on organic food per head in 2010, Germany is seventh in Europe (behind Switzerland, Denmark, Luxemburg, Austria, Liechtenstein and Sweden), the EU average being €32.20, compared with €64.30 in the U.S.9 Farmers’ markets, farm shops and organic stores are mostly used by households with above average income.
Germans mostly buy their food in supermarkets, followed by discount stores and special grocery stores. Although food discount stores’ sales have stagnated during the last years, during the last decades they have been extremely successful. This can be traced back to the early 1960s, when the brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht redesigned their family’s small grocery store in Essen and built it into a chain of food discount stores which would eventually grow into the worldwide operating company of today. By cutting their range down to the fastest-selling items and doing away with any frills in their bare neon-lit shops where products were sold directly from pallets, they were able to undercut regular supermarkets and suggest to consumers that the lowest possible prices were to be found in their stores. This proved an almost magical formula and the ALDI chain soon covered all of Germany. Their methods remain much the same to this day and have been widely copied by their competitors. Whereas until the 1980s their main customer group was among those with lower budgets, they have since become accepted by a larger range of social groups and expanded their range to include fresh food and organic produce (an attempt not to lose market share to the popular new organic supermarkets).
Overall taste is the criteria most often given for what Germans buy (over 75 per cent), followed by freshness, shelf life, health and seasonality, with price in the midfield, closely followed by organic certification.10 Dietary choices and restrictions, such as eating no meat, no wheat or no dairy products, seem to be on the rise and may often have physiological reasons, but could also be interpreted psychologically, as a reaction to the overwhelming and sometimes confusing choice of foodstuffs on retailers’ shelves. Critics repeatedly point out that organic food and farming chase a utopian and romantically idealized notion of nature similar to the life reform movement’s rejection of industrialization, sharing its longing for a return to a ‘original’ and ‘natural’ diet that in fact never existed. They stress the fact that present-day quality control of food only became possible through modern mass production and that most familiar foodstuffs deemed natural are in fact shaped by human intervention, such as eggs, milk or grain, all originally serving other purposes in nature than feeding mankind. On the other hand, the critics tend to play down the long-term environmental effects of the use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides, as well as the health implications of industrial scale animal husbandry. Official policy tries to integrate environmental, social and economic interests to secure farmers’ long-term survival.
Since 2008 the Verbraucherinformationsgesetz, or consumer information law, aims for a higher transparency for all food on the shelf. Genetically engineered food is a much discussed and very controversial topic in Germany, where the first experimental plantings have only recently been allowed. However, additives from genetically engineered soybeans, mostly imported from the United States, are being used in all kinds of food, and they do not always have to be declared on the label. Every second German (and in particular the better educated) thinks of genetically modified or irradiated food as more risky than untreated food.11 Germany ranks second only behind Poland in the numbers of allotments (1.24 million in 2008, in comparison with 80,000 in the UK and 150,000 in France), and their popularity for food production is increasing once again, particularly among young urban professionals.12
Where does all of this leave us with regard to the question posed at the beginning of this book: what is German about the way Germans eat and what they eat? Before I try to answer this, let’s look at what they actually consume today. The latest statistics tell us that in general men consume larger quantities of food than women (except for fruit), whereas women tend to make more health-conscious choices. Bread is the most important staple food and together with dairy products the most important energy source. Vegetables and fruit are consumed daily by almost everybody, with quantities slightly higher for women and increasing with age and higher social status. Surprisingly, most fresh fruit is eaten during the winter months. Although Frederick the Great, the potato promoter, remains an important historical character, Germans now eat less than 100 g of potatoes per day (and much of that in processed form such as french fries), but the old eat more. Butter is favoured on bread over margarine, and for both fats quantities increase with age, but decrease overall with higher social status. One-fifth of the substantial quantities of dairy products consumed today is made up by quark and cheese (slightly more than 40 g per day), and whereas the overall amount of food decreases with age, more cheese and quark is eaten. Germans clearly don’t go to work on an egg: on average they eat much less than one egg per day. Predictably men devour about twice as much meat and related products as women (160 g versus 80 g on average per day), but statistically they consume fewer processed meat products such as sausages and hamburgers the higher their social status. Fish is much less popular than meat in general, but is consumed more frequently with higher social status, although almost every fifth German doesn’t eat it at all. More than half of all Germans reject offal. Soups and stews become much more popular with increasing age, whereas the popularity of tomato ketchup and other condiments as well as sweets declines with age – with the exception of jam, of which the elderly eat more than younger people, who in turn eat far more savoury snack foods such as crisps and popcorn.
As for drinks, coffee is by far the most popular hot beverage, with less than one-fifth rejecting it completely. On average most Germans drink either less than a cup daily or more than two, with men around 40 topping the chart with more than half a litre daily. Women drink much larger quantities of herbal tea than men, who prefer soft drinks (of which general consumption decreases with higher social standing). Men drink on average almost four times as much alcohol as women, and clearly prefer beer, whereas women are undecided in this respect. Spirits play a very minor role and are mostly consumed by men of lower social standing. Men drink most when they are young (fourteen- to eighteen-year-olds consume one glass of alcoholic beverages daily on average, mostly bingeing on the weekend) whereas women’s consumption peaks when they are over 50. For both men and women, wine and sparkling wine become more popular with age, whereas alcopops and cocktails are almost exclusively drunk by those under 25. With higher social standing, women on average drink larger quantities (in the form of wine), whereas for men they stay about the same, but less of it is consumed in the form of beer. Smoking and alcohol consumption frequently go together.13
Compared to surveys taken in the mid-1980s, fat and alcohol consumption in general have decreased. In spite of this officials are still not entirely happy with the state of national nutrition (will they ever be?), although Germans clearly tend to eat more lightly and healthily than they did a generation ago. American fast-food chains in Germany originally presented their restaurants as they did in the U.S., as affordable family restaurants and an alternative to bourgeois rituals. However in the 1990s they were increasingly seen as ecologically, nutritionally and culturally unsound, even disastrously so. In recent years many have tried – with considerable success – to change their reputation by offering more healthy options, redesigning their outlets and working intensively to change their public image. At the other end of the scale, the German section of the Slow Food movement celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2012 and has taken serious efforts to emancipate itself from its image of being an elitist foodie club and to present itself as a politically responsible, more inclusive and active movement.
It is telling that food surveys typically don’t include the very young, the very elderly, non-German speakers and the homeless, but it is difficult to judge if this is because these groups are deemed too marginal or if other reasons are responsible for their exclusion. In fact, as average life expectancy is increasing, food in elderly people’s homes and hospitals represents a growing challenge. It is often declared bland or unsuitable. In a similar vein, although one-fifth of all food in Germany is ultimately thrown away, according to estimates (comparable to other highly industrialized countries such as the UK), this is no guarantee that everybody is eating well or even sufficiently. According to a survey taken in 2012 and initiated by the German government, two-thirds of that waste occurs in private households, whereas food banks, intending to help those in need, focus on the 17 per cent lost in retail and the catering sector. Modelled on the New Yorker City Harvest, the Berliner Tafel was founded in 1993. This charity project (whose example has been followed nationwide) collects up to 660 tons of surplus and leftover food monthly from retailers and the restaurant trade, and redistributes it to those in need, be they homeless, jobless, elderly or single parents with low income or other serious problems.
On average the amount of food Germans consume exceeds their actual needs. Five per cent of all adults are on a diet to lose weight. Based on a national food survey taken in 2008, two-thirds of all men and about every second woman are overweight or obese, with weights generally decreasing with better education and higher incomes, but increasing with age. More than three-quarters of all children are of normal weight, with less than one-fifth overweight, but almost one-tenth of all young girls (between the ages of fourteen and seventeen) are underweight, pointing to serious eating disorders. According to a national time study, as early as between the ages of ten and fourteen, girls contribute fifteen minutes more time to household tasks than boys, and for fifteen- to twenty-year-olds this gap grows to 30 minutes. But it is striking that under-twenties in general spent less time preparing meals in 2001 than a decade earlier. They tend to use the kitchen in a much more multifunctional way. Overall women are still mainly responsible for household chores, although they spend nineteen minutes less on preparing meals than a decade earlier, while men dedicate fourteen minutes more per day to household chores, including cooking and shopping. However, this change is due to a small group who invest more time than the rest. Even when both partners work full time, women invest more time in the home. Every third father says he would like to have more time with his family, but in reality traditional gender-specific patterns tend to re-emerge with the first child, and men tend to work longer the more children there are in the family.14
Contrary to the old cliché which has Germans only eating to survive, never truly savouring their meals like their French neighbours, eating well came top of the list in a survey taken in 2004 that asked what people would be willing to spend money on (followed by housing, travelling and clothing).15 In 2008 Germans used 12.4 per cent of their disposable income to buy food and non-alcoholic drinks (slightly less than the French, but about double that of Americans), which translates into €214 on average per household and month. An additional €85 per household was spent monthly on eating out, of which €57 ended up in restaurants, cafés and the like.16 Statistics also show that the average time spent eating actually increased during the decade following reunification, from 1 hour 22 minutes daily to 1 hour 43 minutes, and the largest part of this increase was spent eating at home.
At a quick glance one might think that Christianity’s traditional cultural influence on everyday life is waning. Churches tend to be empty, Christmas is highly commercialized and the popularity of eastern philosophies is rising, as witnessed by the success of yoga schools. Less than 60 per cent of all Germans are legally registered as Christian. However, long-established patterns persist and include the wide acceptance of alcoholic beverages and the ideal of communal meals, as well as Sundays’ special status as a quiet day of rest with longer and more elaborate meals. At weekends Germans enjoy their food on average for over two hours per day. The traditional meal pattern persists, with two-thirds having breakfast between six and nine o’clock, lunch between noon and two o’clock, and dinner between six and eight o’clock at night. In families with both parents working, the main meal shifts to the evening, as not even one-fifth eat their midday meal in a canteen at work or school.
Especially when personal finances are tight, many Germans tend to cook themselves instead of buying convenience food or ready meals. Two-thirds of all women and less than one-third of all men pronounce their cooking skills to be very good or good. Women acquire them primarily from their mothers while men are mostly self-taught, with both groups mentioning cookbooks third, and TV, magazines and other media ranging fifth for women, sixth for men.17 TV cooking shows, popular since the mid-1990s, could of course be seen as the ultimate incarnation of the ancient Roman formula of panem et circenses, bread and circuses to keep the populace happy. Formats such as Ready, Steady, Cook/Kochduell or Hell’s Kitchen/TeufelsKüche have been imported from Britain (as is common for many kinds of TV show); others were developed in Germany, and some successful TV hosts use cooking as a background to present and interview guests. Chefs have seen a significant social repositioning since the 1990s, and for ambitious restaurant chefs, a successful marketing campaign now seems to include books and a TV show as a matter of course.
How does all this translate into actual food on the plate? A survey taken in 2007 (on fourteen- to 60-year-olds) produced the following list of the most popular dishes eaten by Germans, in decreasing order:18
Spaghetti bolognese
Spaghetti with tomato sauce
Schnitzel
Pizza
Rouladen (beef roulades)
Asparagus
Sauerbraten
Lasagna
Steak
Nudelauflauf (pasta dish casserole in the style of macaroni and cheese)
Kohlrouladen (braised cabbage roulades with a minced meat stuffing)
Fish
Kasslerbraten (brined and smoked pork roast) Spinach
Königsberger Klopse (meatballs in a white sauce flavoured with lemon, capers, and herring or anchovies)
Grünkohl (curly kale) with meat and potatoes
This, finally, brings us back to the argument I made right at the beginning of this book: German food today reflects the manifold influences we have seen accumulating through history extremely well. It is a mix of regional and global, homely and elegant, traditional and modern, with vegetables and meat almost evenly represented. The long-standing culinary connection with the Romans and with Italy is as obvious as the heritage of French influence. Sweet-and-sour Sauerbraten represents medieval times. The old love of pork persists, but American steak has also become a regular on German plates reflecting the post-Second World War Americanism of West Germany. Old religious rules are reflected in the listing of vegetables and fish. Kasslerbraten reminds us not only of Celtic salt pork, but of more recent East German preferences. Not on the list, because they are regarded as dessert rather than main courses, are the contemporary forms of the Neolithic gruel with which we started our time travel: Milchreis, rice pudding, and Griesspudding, semolina pudding, are German comfort foods. They bring back childhood memories to most Germans, but also, as we have seen, go back much further, connecting them to the earliest layers of our culinary fabric. The remarkable thing is that no single period seems to stand out in particular, at least from the culinary point of view: Germans have achieved a notable balance. One could even say, serenity.
Furthermore, if we had similar lists for individual regions of Germany, another important characteristic of German foodways would emerge even more clearly: there is no such thing as a national dish or cuisine in Germany. As I argued at the beginning, the openness to all kinds of influences, combined with the prevailing decentralized political and economic structures, has led to great diversity. Germans love their sausages, but there are any number of different kinds from different regions, after which they continue to be named. The general knowledge about this diversity today on the one hand reinforces curiosity and receptivity, but on the other makes people even more aware of specifically regional food choices.
Recently a historian has drawn a picture of each German as five persons in one, and I think this description perfectly illustrates German foodways.19 First of all, they are all from a certain village or town, let’s say Nuremberg, and identify themselves with local foodstuffs such as Nürnberger Rostbratwurst. On the next level is the state, in this case Bavaria, although I’d argue for an in-between level of region: a Nuremberger is first Franconian, favouring for instance a milder kind of sauerkraut, flavoured with caraway seeds with his or her roast sausages, then Bavarian. He or she will be out in a beer garden as soon as weather permits, with a large mug of lager that will taste much less bitter than any comparable beer in the north of Germany. While travelling abroad, our Nuremberger will be German, often rapidly longing for sourdough bread with some rye in it. However, beyond that, he or she will also identify themselves as European, for instance in India missing morning coffee or tea with milk, or bread and butter. Finally, most Germans also feel themselves to be citizens of the world. The longing for familiar food that tastes of home does not exclude enjoying Turkish köfte or meatballs, Vietnamese pho or noodle soup or any other food, be it at an ethnic restaurant, at home or in the country of its origin. All these identities are layers that build upon and intertwine with each other and therefore none is felt to be a contradiction of any of the others, although they might often appear to be when seen from outside. This is underlined by the fact that the Green Party nowadays is an accepted fact of German political life and not a counter-movement, like its life-reform precursor.
With the Markthalle Neun project, one of the old covered markets has seen a glorious revival featuring a farmers’ market on Fridays and Saturdays as well as a street food market on Thursday, with additional special themes on Sundays.
It now remains to pose the question of where German food might go from here; what will the next layer be? The signs are pointing in different directions: Asian food beyond sushi is certainly on the up, as is Turkish refined cuisine beyond doner kebabs. On a different level, affordable, healthy and sustainable, combining locally grown with imported from afar, might sound like yet another utopian concept. But these are factors that a growing number of German consumers deem important and are actively looking for in their food choices. If this seems far too sensible and sober, after our culinary grand tour through German history we know that one thing does not necessarily exclude the other: our Nuremberger from above might eat sauerkraut today and sushi tomorrow, but also healthy organically grown salad one day and junky french fries and a big fat grilled shank of pork the next. That’s contemporary German.
