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February/March 2009
Gallery: Shear Artistry – Paper Cutting in Switzerland
by Cynthia Elyce Rubin
Although a small country, Switzerland has played a large role in folk arts as its artists over the past centuries have created a colorful range of decorative and utilitarian
objects. Frequently used in the daily lives of their makers and owners, many of these art forms no longer have a function in contemporary Swiss everyday life, but the art of paper cutting (Scherenschnitt in German and Papier Découpé in French) remains a vital, living expression, particularly in two regions: the German-speaking Canton Bern and the French-speaking Pays d'Enhaut, a district in Canton Vaud.
Paper cutting, however, did not originate in Switzerland. Linked to the invention of paper, its origins lead to China where the tradition dates to the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 AD to
221 AD). Since paper was an expensive luxury, paper cutting was initially an artistic decoration, highly prized by Chinese royalty. Later, during the seventh through the thirteenth centuries, as the price of
paper declined, paper cutting became popular among common people. The only necessary equipment, besides paper, was a pair of scissors or a knife, tools that everyone could afford. In the countryside, paper
cutting became an art that every girl was encouraged to practice. Like music to a well brought-up Victorian maiden, its mastery indicated a desirable quality in a prospective wife. Professional paper cutting
artists, on the other hand, were almost always men who worked together in a small factory environment.
Filling a need for wall and window decoration, paper cuttings also bore cultural significance in rural China where they played an important symbolic role in every person's life
cycle. Paper cuts were always on hand to help celebrate the birth of a child. A maternal grandmother presented her twelve-year-old grandchild the gift of a special paper cut on the theme of longevity. On
one's wedding day, in every corner of the festive house, there were paper cuts of pairs of magpies meaning "Double Happiness," and "Two Geese," birds that mate for life. As a person aged,
paper cuts conveyed longevity, luck, and fortune, and at the end of one's life, they were buried with the dead or burned at the funeral ceremony.
The paper cut made its way over the Silk Road to Europe and beyond where regional designs developed, spread widely in society, and changed with the times. According to information
from the First German Paper Cut Museum in Vreden, Germany, the oldest known German example – illustrating the Sacred Heart with cross and crown of thorns and Jesus' pierced hands and feet –
showed the cover of a communion cup at the monastery of Tegernsee. It no longer exists, but known drawings indicate this paper cut dated from the fifteenth century. Today, paper cutting is not practiced widely
in Germany but remains popular in Switzerland and several other countries, including Poland and Mexico…
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In Praise of the Apple
by Leah Larkin
Two German entrepreneurs take the common apple to lofty new heights.
Dieter Walz and Armin Treusch share a common passion: apples. Treusch makes twenty-five different kinds of apple wine, while Walz’s specialty is Apfelwalzer, a sparkling apple wine.
The two Odenwalders treat the fruit much as vintners treat the grape. Treusch recommended a Treusch 2006 Rheinischer Bohnapfel, to accompany the Nibelungenschnitzel auf Apfelwei-Zwiebelsosse (schnitzel with apple wine-onion sauce) I ordered at his Gasthaus in Reichelsheim.
“The idea is to make apple wine like real wine. We use different apples, just like different grapes are used to make wine,” he explains. “We try to bring
culture to apple wine.” He bottles his apple wine in traditional Bordeaux bottles with a cork. He serves it in regular wine glasses – not the standard water glass it is usually served in.
Treusch said he got the idea some twenty years ago when picking apples in the field with his children. “I wondered why we couldn’t make apple wine like regular wine.
That was the beginning.” In the middle of his two adjoining restaurants, the gourmet Schwanen and the Gasthaus Johanns Stube, is his Pommothek, an Apfelwein Vinothek, with shelves of various
kinds of apple wine and other apple products for sale. The wine is priced at € 5,90 – and up – per bottle.
According to the apple aficionando, there are now five or six others making different kinds of apple wine in the Odenwald. One is Walz who takes it a step further with his
sparkling apple wine (Apfelwalzer). A lusty type who has an Edelbrennerei (distillery) in Seidenbuch near Lindenfels, Walz likes to tell the story of how he got the idea to make a fizzy apple wine.
“One of my clients made champagne (sparkling wine) in his basement. I asked if I could do the same with apple wine. In the beginning I made many mistakes. It all exploded.
I had to put on a thick jacket and diving mask to clean up the mess. But I didn’t give up. Today it’s so good I can take you to my cellar.”
Walz will not tell how many bottles of the bubbly he produces each year, but last year he turned twenty-five tons of apples into brandy, wine, and sparkling wine. To make some
seventy different types of alcoholic products, he uses berries, nuts, mushrooms, and fruits of the region. He grows ancient species of fruit trees that are no longer commonly cultivated…
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Hop To It! Germany's Hallertau Hops Region
by Sharon Hudgins
If you enjoy a good beer, you owe a great deal to this region of Germany – home to the world’s largest
production of beer’s magic ingredient.
"What's that?" asked an American college student on a bus tour in Bavaria during his first year of study abroad.
He was pointing to fields full of tall, dark brown wooden poles, lined up in neat rows, with lush green vines growing on wires attached to them.
"That's a telephone-pole field, you idiot," said his companion, an older-and-wiser student who had lived in Germany for the past year. "Haven't you ever
seen one before?"
"Gee, we don't have anything like that in the U. S.," replied his friend. "Germany's really an interesting place!"
You might be laughing, but it's a true story. Of course what he was actually seeing were the seemingly endless hectares of hops fields in the Hallertau region of Bavaria.
Although hops are grown in several parts of Germany, the Hallertau region (or Holledau, as it's known locally) is at the top of the hops list. It's the largest single
hops-producing area in the world, covering seventeen thousand one hundred seventy hectares (more than forty-two thousand acres) of hops fields in eastern Bavaria. A pastoral region of rolling hills planted with
hops, barley, and wheat – essential ingredients of Germany's great beers – the Hallertau is bounded by the cities of Ingolstadt on the west, Kehlheim (near Regensburg) in the north, Landshut on
the east, and Freising to the south.
The fifty-kilometer (thirty-mile) Deutsche Hopfenstrasse (German Hops Route), runs along highway 301 through the middle of this agricultural area, between Freising and
Abensberg. And in the heart of the Hallertau, you'll find the Deutsches Hopfenmuseum (German Hops Museum) located in the little market town of Wolnzach, just off the Autobahn between Munich and Regensburg.
Known as "the green gold of Bavaria," hops have been a major agricultural product in the Hallertau for several centuries. So it's fitting that this particular
plant has an entire museum devoted to the history, cultivation, harvesting, processing, marketing, uses, and culture of hops throughout the ages. However, don't envision some musty old museum with dusty
displays of dried plants under glass. This sleek modern building is filled with fascinating exhibits designed to attract both children and adults. And if you haven't already seen plenty of hops growing
in the fields around Wolnzach, you can get up close to the vines planted right outside the entrance to the museum.
On a visit to the German Hops Museum last summer, I learned that Germany is the world's largest producer of hops, accounting for more than two-thirds of the hops grown in
Europe and one-third of all the hops grown on the globe. Three-fourths of Germany's crop is exported to other countries, mainly the United States, Japan, and Russia…
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Home is Where the Harvest Is
Food and wine from southern Germany’s vineyards
by Liz Tarpy
Heinrich Gretzmeier sticks an upside-down broom decorated with colorful strips of cloth in the ground outside the courtyard of his house in Merdingen, Germany. It is the fall harvest,
and the broom is a signal to locals that his family’s restaurant is now serving homemade food and wine, straight from their farm and vineyard.
In the courtyard, diners eat at wooden tables surrounded by potted plants, bales of hay, and wandering cats. Grapevines clutch to the terra cotta walls and creep over trellises.
Inside, communal tables hold chattering groups of friends and neighbors drinking wine and nibbling at cheese. From the kitchen, Frau Gretzmeier cheerfully feeds the hungry crowds with what the harvest dictates.
Typical dishes include Flammenkuchen, a thin-crusted tart topped with crème fraîche, onions, and bacon; Hobelkäse, paper thin slices of hard, aged cheese piled high on wooden boards; meat
platters of homemade liverwurst and blood sausage. Schweller, a new potato salad with chive quark (a fresh, curd-like cheese), accompanies a glistening slab of fresh ham. All meals come with a basket full
of her Bauernbrot, the dense, slightly sour, crusty “farmer bread” typical of the area.
As a complement to the hearty food, customers drink wines from grapes grown in the Gretzmeiers’ ten-hectare vineyard (about twenty-five acres), located just up the road from
their house in the village. Blue Spätburgunder, Grauburgunder, White Burgunder, Auxerrois, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Müller-Thurgau, Red Muskateller, Regent and Cabernet Sauvignon are the varieties Heinrich
grows best. He also produces sparkling wines (Sekt) in the “method Champenois” – or very slow fermentation in the bottle and two to three years of ageing in the presence of
yeasts. As an alternative to wine, liquors (Schnapps) are available, distilled from the farm’s wild pear and plum trees and bushes full of fat berries.
This is not just any quaint country restaurant. Heinrich Gretzmeier and his family run one of the many Straussis, or small, seasonal, farm restaurants found in southern
Germany’s wine-growing region. Due to the area’s rich, volcanic soil and temperate weather, winemaking has been important here for centuries. However, the Straussis have remained relatively unknown to anyone outside the community…
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Pedaling Past Castles in Münsterland
by Leah Larkin
Biking is an obsession in Germany and the inhabitants of the region around Münster take the activity to an entirely new level.
Wanderung (hiking) may appear to be the favorite pastime of Germans who tread upon countless hiking trails through the forests. The country also offers ample opportunity
to the bicyclist with an extensive network of marked cycle routes. My husband and I relished pedaling these Radwege (bike routes) when we lived in Germany. For the most part, the trails are through fields and forests. In cities, you follow the signs, which lead down less-traveled streets. It makes for stress-free pedaling.
We have ridden many marked routes, mainly in the south, but wanted to explore a bit of the north. Münsterland, the area around Münster in northwestern Germany, is famous for its
bicycle network with dozens of different inter-connecting routes primarily on flat terrain. The landscape is pretty and pastoral, with impressive “water castles” along the way
We set off from Münster on a cool day in May for three days of riding, following several different inter-connecting routes that would take us past picturesque castles. We did
get off course more than once, but overall it was a fun and pleasant experience.
Our first destination was Havixbeck and its castle, not that far according to the map. We must have followed the wrong sign, as it took us awhile to get there, but it was an
enjoyable ride, and the castle, Burg Hülshoff is a gem with tree branches skirting its moat and purple rhododendron filling in with bold color.
Many of the Wasserburgen or water castles in the region were first built in the twelfth century as wooden strongholds on artificial hills protected by an offensive wall
and a moat. By the sixteenth century, wood gave way to stone, but surrounding lagoons or moats remained a feature of these fortresses. Some are open to visitors. The beautiful settings make all worth photographs.
We rode on from Havixbeck, hoping to make it to Billerbeck for lunch. The journey was a delight through fields with dozens of windmills (the modern kind), forests, neighborhoods
with picture-perfect brick houses and more perfect gardens awash in colorful, blooming shrubs. There were a few sections where we had to downshift, but these were not major hills…
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All Roads Lead to the Sea – Stralsund
by Anna Cramer
The call of the sea combines with stunning gothic brick architecture and a rich Hanseatic heritage to make this coastal town a
delightful place to visit.
When the director of Stralsund tourism, Birgit Wacks, suggested we start our tour by climbing the western tower of the late-Gothic basilica of St. Mary’s, the sweeping
views on this bright, sunny day justified the labor of climbing up the many steps. “It is red, the whole historic center is red, when seen from the top!” she had promised enthusiastically during a
recent German Life interview. And indeed, Stralsund presented its stark red walls and roofs in sharp contrast to the surrounding blue waters. This beautiful city is one of the highlights of the European Brick Gothic Route,
which comprises churches, monasteries, public and private buildings from the times of the medieval trade association Hanseatic League on, and can be followed in all countries bordering the Baltic Sea.
This year, Stralsund, located between the Baltic islands of Darss, Rügen, and Usedom, is celebrating its seven-hundred-and-seventy-fifth birthday, inviting visitors to many
activities, and even a Wagner festival. Because its historic center is situated on an island, completely surrounded by small lakes, and opening to the waters of the Baltic Sea, it is often called the
“pearl” of the Hanse or Hanseatic League, its rival Lübeck being the “queen.” Indeed, from our high position and by squinting our eyes, with a little imagination, we could
virtually behold a carefully mounted gem below us.
Stralsund’s historic center covers a small area of only eight hundred meters by five hundred meters, which had been so well fortified, that even commander Wallenstein, leading
the Catholic Emperor’s forces against the Protestant north during the Thirty Years’ War (1618 to 1648), failed to conquer it in 1628. He is reported to have sworn: “Stralsund must come down,
even if it were tied to the skies with chains,” but the Swedes helped defend Stralsund’s independence, only to stay and dominate it for nearly two hundred years. Many signs of this period are
still visible here, among them the Swedish coat of arms above the Town Hall (Rathaus) entrance.
Although most of the fortification walls and bastions have now given way to lovely parks and lakes, the thirteenth century medieval layout is preserved to such an extent, that
Stralsund, along with nearby Wismar, obtained the coveted status of UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002. The wide, straight streets in a west-east direction in a chessboard layout are all leading to the sea
harbor – just like in nearby Greifswald, also a Hanseatic port town. While typical medieval towns were often characterized by crooked lanes and narrow streets, bent around churches and squares,
Stralsund’s streets were unusually broad, offering space for one or even two horse-drawn wagons side-by-side, laden with furs from Russia, with Flemish cloth, Swedish ore, or herring from Schonen. They are
interconnected by a system of narrower alleys, similar to nearby Wismar, and are one of the reasons why both were put on the Heritage list. Another reason was the dense concentration of medieval, Renaissance and
Baroque buildings, reflecting the affluence of these Hanseatic cities. While Wismar was also chosen for having the last remaining artificially constructed medieval waterway inside its town walls, it is
Stralsund’s singular situation as an island town that makes it unique and helped preserve the medieval skyline. Seen from the Strela Sound, no high building spoils the view. Just like back in the
fourteenth century, it is the tall steeples of the three main churches that greet the seafarer, a sight, which once promised profitable transactions – and now a memorable visit…
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Buckelapotheker – The Itinerant Pharmacists of Thuringia
by Jörg M. Unger
They traversed the roads of Germany selling their specially concocted cures for all ills and were the only
“doctors” ever seen by many villagers.
Always having a good piece of medical advice and an appropriate remedy ready, they were both – the medicine men from Thuringia and the sales
representatives of the early pharmaceutical industry. The Buckelapotheker were itinerant pharmacists, who carried herbs, drugs, and ointments on their back (in informative German: Buckel) on their journeys.
Their “store” was a huge leather satchel or a tall wooden rack, looking like a chair that was filled with piled-up vessels of earthenware, glass bottles, and small boxes made from thin strips of
wood. Dressed in brown leggings or black trousers, red vest, white scarf, and wearing black shoes and a triangular hat, they were respectable figures of men, who made a great impression on their customers.
For weeks, these medicine dealers or peddlers went from the villages in the Thuringian slate mountains on their fixed routes to the nearest market towns, neighboring
principalities, and dukedoms in Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, Brandenburg, and Silesia as well as far away to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and other distant countries of
Europe, from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. Often they walked up to forty miles a day, before they arrived at guesthouses, where they found accommodations and temporarily stored their goods
– also called Olitäten. This word cannot be found in a dictionary, not even in a German one. An old Thuringian encyclopedia, however, defines them as all sorts of essences, extracts, mixtures, and
fragrances – deriving from the Latin word oleum, although just a few products were oils in the real sense of this word.
The traveling pharmacists were sophisticated people with cosmopolitan attitudes and manners who gained extensive knowledge through their travels. Using Latin terms to describe
the contents of their mixtures, they enjoyed the reputation of educated physicians, and in quite a few hamlets and remote settlements, they were the only – and therefore long-awaited – consultants on
medical issues.
The land of Olitäten or the Thuringian herb garden comprises about one hundred square miles between the towns of Neuhaus, Saalfeld, Königsee, and
Grossbreitenbach. Grounds of slate, porphyry, quartz, sandstone, and chalk have provided the biosphere for a large number of species of plants, various rare flowers, and herbs for thousands of years, and the
discovery of iron ore, copper, sulfur, alum, vitriol, and many minerals made the region a flourishing medical laboratory…
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Language: Ernst H. Blake und Taos Ski Valley in Neumexiko
Von Peter Pabisch
Wenn man in diesem Teil der Rockys Ski fährt, kommt man an Namensschildern vorbei wie Stauffenberg und Fabian, Firlefanz und Rübezahl oder Walkyries, Lorelei und Zdarsky. Noch
ehe man das eigentliche Skigebiet von Taos Ski Valley auf der Suche nach einem Hotel betritt, stößt man auf Hausnamen wie Alpenhof, Edelweiß, St. Bernard oder sogar noch erstaunlicher „Viktoria Marina
Princess of Prussia House“. Und auf dem Hauptgebäude der Skischule bemerkt man riesige Kopien von Malereien aus der Manessischen Handschrift. Was haben Namen des deutschen Widerstands vom 20. Juli 1944,
des österreichischen Erfinders des modernen Skisports, ferner deutscher Mzthen und Märchenfiguren und einer der Enkelinnen des letzten deutschen Kaisers Wilhelm II., weiters, was haben Gemälde deutscher
mittelalterlicher Literatur und Kunst mit einer amerikanischen Gegend in den Rockzs zu tun? Alles lenkt zurück zum Gründer von Taos Ski Valley Ernest H. Blake. Sein Enkel Maximilian Ernest erwiderte jüngst
seinem Grundschullehrer auf die Frage, warum sein zweiter Name Ernest ohne „a“ geschrieben werde, dass der von seinem Großvater stamme, „der das Schital erfunden habe“.
Obwohl Ernie, wie ihn jeder nannte, seinen deutsche Familiennamen zu Blake geändert hatte, behielt er eine gewisse Verbindung zu seiner deutschen und schweizerischen Kinderstube
bei, indem er Ernst nur zu Ernest wandelte. Er wurde in eine Industriellenfamilie geboren, die Fabriken in Frankfurt und Zürich und eine Zeit lang in New York besaß; und er durfte eine behütete Kindheit mit
seinen Geschwistern erleben. Er besuchte die berühmte Schweizer Schule in Zuoz, wo übrigens eine seiner Mitschülerinnen Viktoria Marina von Preußen war, die Jahrzehnte später mit ihrer Familie über Ernies
Einladung nach Taos Ski Valley zog. Er wurde Mitglied des Schweizer Eishockeyteams, aber zuallererst wurde das Skifahren seine Hauptbeschäftigung während seiner Entwicklungsjahre in Europa, wo er beinahe jeden
Hang in den Alpen und den Dolomiten kannte. So endete er mit seiner Skikarriere in den Vereinigten Staaten. Er brachte viel Erfahrung mit, wie man ein Skigebiet finden und aufbauen könnte und entschied sich für
Neumexiko an der Grenze von Colorado, weil er hier auch die Kultur faszinierend fand, wo der angloamerikanische Norden das hispanische Lateinamerika mit seiner Durchmischung mit indianischen Stämmen trifft...
Ernest H. Blake and Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico
by Peter Pabsich
Skiing in this part of the Rocky Mountains leads one down slopes with names like Stauffenberg, Fabian, Firlefanz, Rubezahl, Walkyries, Lorelei, and Zdardsky. Even before entering the
actual ski area of Taos Ski Valley, on the way of finding one’s hotel, one can read house names like Alpenhof, Edelweiss, St. Bernard, or even more astoundingly “Victoria Marina Princess of Prussia
House.” On the ski school’s main building one notices huge copies of paintings of the medieval Manessian manuscript. What do the names of the German resistance members on July 20, 1944, the Austrian
inventor of modern skiing, German myth and fairy tales, one of the granddaughters of the last German emperor William II, and paintings of German medieval literature and art have to do with an all American
surroundings in the Rockies? It all leads back to the founder of Taos Ski Valley – Ernest H. Blake. His great-grandson Maximilian Ernest recently replied to his elementary schoolteacher, who had asked him
why his second name was Ernest without an “a,” that it came from his great-grandfather who “invented the mountain.”
Even though Ernie, as everybody called him, had changed his German family name to Blake, he retained some connection to his German and Swiss upbringing by changing Ernst only to
Ernest. Born into a family of an industrial entrepreneur who had factories in Frankfurt, Zurich, and, for a while, New York, Ernst experienced a protected childhood with his siblings. He went to the
distinguished Swiss school of Zuoz where, by the way, one of his schoolmates was Victoria Marina of Prussia, who, upon Ernie’s invitation, moved with her family to Taos Ski Valley decades later. He became
a member of the Swiss national ice hockey team, but first of all, skiing became his main occupation from his formative years in Europe, where he knew almost every slope in the Alps and the Dolomites, to his
skiing career and business in the United States. Thus, when Ernie came to this country he had a great deal of experience of how to go about finding and starting a ski resort. He decided on New Mexico at the
border toward Colorado, because he also found the culture intriguing where the Anglo-American north meets Hispanic Latin America with its mixture of Native American tribes…
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Setting Boundaries – A Brief History of Surveying in Germany
by Robert A. Selig
Germany’s system of surveying and mapping land ownership has been in place for over seven
hundred fifty years and is still in use today.
The origins of the office of the Feldgeschworene, called Untergänger or Umgänger in Swabia and Württemberg and Vierer or Siebener in Franconia and Northern Bavaria, lie in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but what do these words mean? Rather than try and translate them, even under the best of circumstances Field Juror, Aroundwalker, Fourer and Sevener remain nonsensical terms, it may be better to take a look at what the oldest German law book, the Sachsenspiegel, has to say about them. Codified in Latin around 1220 to 1230, the Quedlinburger Handschrift,
a later, but still thirteenth-century Middle-High German copy, states in Book 2, Chapter 28, § 2, that whoever “grevet he op stene, de to markstenen gesat sin, he mut drittich scillinge geven – whoever digs up stones that are set as boundary stones must pay a fine of thirty shillings." The men who had placed the boundary stones were called Feldgeschworene.
They were highly respected property-owning men and leaders in their communities who, in order to prevent nepotism, or at least keep it to a minimum, could not be closely related to each other either by blood or
marriage, and who had sworn an oath to correctly mark the fields and boundaries of their village and to periodically walk its perimeter to ensure that the stones were still sitting and in good
order where they had been placed.
One of the oldest surviving boundary stones is preserved in the museum of the city of Rüsselsheim just west of the Frankfurt Airport and dates to 1360, while a 1368 document
from Freiburg in the Breisgau declares that the boundaries of the city were marked by nineteen stone crosses. Within the boundaries marked by these stones, one of which can still be seen in its City Hall, crimes
were punished differently, that is, more severely, than if they had been committed without, indicating that during the Middle Ages already these stones, like modern border signs, not only marked geographical
borders but created and denoted legal boundaries and jurisdictions as well.
The advent of early modern statehood during the fifteenth century which transformed the feudal societal system of the Middle Ages based on a personal bond between knight and
retainer and/or lord and peasant and in which the physical location of people was relatively unimportant, into a state which strove to define itself territorially, was caused by and in turn caused a multitude of
changes. Arable land became ever scarcer as the population losses caused by the Black Death were overcome, causing social tensions within villages. Smaller lords, for example, the Imperial Knights so prevalent
in south-central Germany, sought to maintain their independence in the face of mounting threats to their survival from larger neighbors (Revolt of the Imperial Knights in 1522)…
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The Secret of Making Thuringian Dumplings
by Jörg M. Unger
The recipes are many but when it comes to a traditional dumpling from Thuringia, the ingredients are few and basic but the end
result defines “comfort food”.
While the “Potato State,” Idaho, is in the United States, the “dumpling state,” Thuringia, lies in Germany – at least since the eighteenth century,
when the cultivation of potatoes spread all over the region and ingenious women found out how to make “Erdtuffelklüs” (old German for dumplings).
It started in 1739, when Duke Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar enacted an edict that obliged all peasants to deliver “zwey Fuder Erdtuffeln” (old German for two cartloads of potatoes) – each September for feeding his wild boars in winter, as the duke was a keen hunter. Eighteen years later, his successor started to promote the cultivation of potatoes by paying a bonus to the peasants for growing potatoes, as he regarded this vegetable a “very useful fruit for humans” that helped to prevent famines in his dukedom, whose fertile soil provided good conditions for the cultivation of potatoes. Soon after, an instruction on how to grow potatoes efficiently was published in a weekly gazette of Weimar in the summer of 1757.
Originally, dumplings were the meal of the common folks and peasants, and were to substitute for bread. Prepared for Sunday lunch, the leftover dumplings could be warmed up in
hot water or fried in a pan to be served with sauerkraut on weekdays. Due to this custom, scurvy was stamped out all over Thuringia.
The brand name “Thüringer Klöße” (Thuringian dumplings) has been a registered and protected trademark since August 2004. As it is a geographical term, Thuringian dumplings must be prepared in this region or made of potatoes from Thuringia. Otherwise, they may only be served as “Klöße nach thüringer Art” (dumplings à la Thuringian cuisine) – to be as precise as a German official. In informal language, however, they are simply called Knölla, Klüs, Klöse, Hebes, Hütes, or Höbes (all words in plural), depending on the people’s dialect and the area in which they are served.
Today, nearly every restaurant, which pays attention to its reputation, has dumplings on its menu, and in rural regions, it is still a must to have dumplings and roast meat on
Sundays. As a matter of course, young girls have always had to lend their mother a helping hand in the kitchen, and this way, the tradition of making dumplings has been passed on over the generations.
The first museum, giving information about the history of growing potatoes in Thuringia and displaying potato presses of all ages, is located in Grossbreitenbach. The museum was
opened in 1996 and is part of a local museum in a historical half-timbered house that dates back to 1730. A visit to this exhibition is like entering a kitchen of the nineteenth century. Old pots are placed on a
stove, cups and wooden beaters hang on a rack, and a bowl waits to be filled with grated and cooked potatoes, and mixed with starch by a wooden beater – made from a Christmas tree. In another room, there
are wooden presses from the early nineteenth century and metal presses of the 1950s and 1960s. Cookbooks are scattered on a table and historical documents tell about the oldest dumpling factory in Heichelheim,
five miles north of Weimar, where potatoes were peeled, grated, frosted, and packed until the 1980s…
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At Home: Sweet and Sour Goodness – Sauerbraten
by Sharon Hudgins
Sauerbraten is surely Germany's best known dish around the world. This old-fashioned marinated pot roast, served with a sweet-sour brown sauce, is still popular in modern Germany, too. In a recent survey of Germans aged fourteen to sixty, Sauerbraten came in seventh on a list of sixteen of their favorite foods.
When I was still in college, I was introduced to Sauerbraten at a Bavarian-style restaurant in Washington, D.C. And it soon became one of my own favorite German dishes. I liked it because the sweet-sour, slightly spicy sauce raised it a cut above standard American pot roast with gravy. And I loved the thick potato dumplings on the side (great for sopping up all that sauce), as well as the piquant red cabbage that also provided a sharp visual contrast to the more neutral colors on the plate.
A couple of years later, at my first restaurant meal in Germany, the host suggested we order Sauerbraten. I thought I knew what to expect – but that Rhineland Sauerbraten,
served at a fine restaurant in Bad Godesberg, notched up my opinion of the dish to a much higher plane. The tender slices of beef could be cut with a fork, and the rich brown sauce, with a hint of gingerbread
spices, had a depth of flavor that I'd not tasted before.
That trip to Germany soon seduced me into living there for another fifteen years, during which I ate many different versions of Sauerbraten, from the northern Rhineland
to the Bavarian Alps (and plenty of places in between). Some were as bland as any desultory cook's sliced beef with brown gravy. However, others sang with spices, balancing the bass notes of bacon and onion
flavors with the treble of vinegar and wine.
Variations on the Sauerbraten theme can be found in different regions and in different cooks' kitchens. The Rhineland version is the sweetest and spiciest, with a sauce containing golden raisins, lemon juice, and crushed gingerbread (or gingersnap cookies). Bavarian Sauerbraten is usually milder and less sour, with fewer spices and no raisins; sometimes the sauce is also mellowed with cream. (Occasionally you'll find this dish is called Böfflamot, the Bavarian term derived from French boeuf à la mode.)
In Saxony, the beef might be marinated in buttermilk instead of the usual wine and vinegar, and in some places of northern and eastern Germany the sauce is thickened with rye or pumpernickel bread.
In all versions, though, Sauerbraten is basically beef marinated for several days in an acidic liquid, then braised in the marinade along with diced root vegetables, and finished with a sauce made from the cooking liquid left in the pot…
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Ansbach – City of Franconian Rococo
by Zac Steger
The Hohenzollerns, Kaspar Hauser, and fascinating architecture all come together in this small town in Bavaria.
Ansbach lies on the Rezat River on the Castle Road that extends across southern Germany from Mannheim towards Prague. Easy to explore and filled with beautiful architecture and
fascinating history, this charming small town is appropriately found in the heart of “Romantic Franconia.”
Ansbach started as the site of a Benedictine monastery by Gumbert, a member of the regional nobility, in 748. Originally known as Onolzbach, it was first recorded as a town in
1221 and entered the Hohenzollern era about a hundred years later. By the fifteenth century it had become a beautiful residential town under Albrecht III, also known as Albrecht Achilles, of the Markgrafschaft Brandenburg,
a major principality in the Holy Roman Empire. Despite his many feuds, including a failed attempt to take over Nürnberg, the town prospered.
The city shared the same fate as others in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War, though it was spared total destruction. In the seventeenth century, it was rebuilt under
Margrave Albrecht and Margrave Johann Friedrich, whose daughter, Caroline of Ansbach, became Queen-consort to George II of Great Britain.
Several distinguished architects were called upon in the eighteenth century under Margravine Christiane Charlotte and her son Carl Wilhelm Friedrich, who would become
brother-in-law to Prussian King Frederick the Great. Leopoldo Retty, Gabriel de Gabrieli, Karl Friedrich von Zocha, and Johann David Steingruber dressed the city in what is now known as “Ansbach Late
Baroque,” as well as some excellent Rococo. The architecture of this period still defines the city today.
The Margrave’s Palace is arguably the most important site in the city. Originally a fourteenth-century moated castle, it was expanded into a Renaissance palace in the
sixteenth century by Gideon Bacher. The architecture seen today has remained unchanged since the eighteenth-century work of Zocha, de Gabrieli, and Petty.
The palace interior features Retty’s beautiful “Ansbach Rococo” style through the twenty-seven rooms that can be toured by visitors. Among the highlights are
the Spiegelkabinett (mirror room), the Tafelzimmer (tile room), covered in roughly two thousand eight hundred detailed tiles made at the Ansbach Fayence Manufacturer, and the Audienzimmer (Margrave’s audience room), featuring a majestic porcelain chandelier, a gift from Frederick the Great. The most impressive display of Rococo is found in the two-story Festsaal (festival hall) with its beautiful ceiling, rich ornamentation, and magnificent chandeliers. An excellent collection of porcelain is located in the Gotische Halle (Gothic Hall)…
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Family Research: Who Were “Hasenclever's Germans?”
by James M. Beidler
The point has been made in this column over and over that Germans often travel in packs. And one of the reasons for this phenomenon is that sometimes they were hired away from
the Old World in packs. Take, for instance, the case of a group known as "Hasenclever's Germans."
Peter Hasenclever was an ironworks entrepreneur and merchant who brought hundreds of Germans to the American Colonies between 1764 and 1769 to work at his enterprises in
northern New Jersey and upstate New York. According to his memoir, "The Remarkable Case of Peter Hasenclever, Merchant," he brought over five hundred thirty-five people – which Susan Deeks, who
has written about this case of cluster immigration, says is "ambiguous." She says "we don't know whether he meant five hundred thirty-five workers, plus families, or five hundred thirty-five
people in total, including families. There is good reason to believe that the five hundred thirty-five figure also includes workers recruited from England who were not German at all."
Unfortunately for genealogists, no one researching in America, England, or Germany has turned up a list in Hasenclever's hand; a company record listing employees; original
indenture contracts; or ship manifests that correspond to the names that have been identified.
Deeks wrote that "A set of records does remain that provides invaluable clues to the identities of many of the Hasenclever Germans: the ledgers of Father Farmer, a
German-born Jesuit priest who rode a missionary circuit through the [New Jersey] Highlands between 1765 and 1783 performing baptisms, marriages, and other religious rites." While these records are valuable,
they only cover Roman Catholics, of course, and only apply to the New Jersey ironworks.
Those researching the Hasenclever group also are interested in what port the Germans landed; while most Colonial Germans came through the port of Philadelphia, there is scant
evidence that this was the route of the Hasenclever Germans.
In addition, ship lists of foreigners were meticulously kept in Philadelphia, so if the Hasenclever group arrived there, they should appear in these records, unless they came on
a ship whose list has not survived.
It seems more likely that this group came through the port of New York, which has no large body of passenger records for the Colonial period.
Some of those investigating the Hasenclever Germans have attempted to add an air of mystery to this; however, since such lists simply were not required at this time in New York
(indeed, Philadelphia was the only port that did mandate them before the American Revolution), it is probably just the case that it is a benign omission…
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Calendar:
February
Frederick, MD
First Friday of the month: Der Stammtisch at Brewer’s Alley, 124 N. Market Street. Call 301-631-0127.
Indianapolis, IN
First Wednesday and first Saturday of the month: Docent-led tours of the Athenaeum at 401 East Michigan Street. Call 317-630-4569, ext. 1 or email athfound@sbcglobal.net .
Danbury, NH
February 8: Sunday Storytelling Brunch. Inn at Danbury. Call 1-866-DANBURY or visit www.innatdanbury.com .
Danbury, NH
February 14: Valentine’s Day Brunch. Inn at Danbury from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Call 1-866-DANBURY or visit www.innatdanbury.com .
Danbury, NH
February 22: Sunday Storytelling Brunch. Inn at Danbury. Call 1-866-DANBURY or visit www.innatdanbury.com .
Valrico, FL
February 27 – 28: African Violet Show and Sale. Tampa African Violet Society. Farm Bureau, 100 Mulrennan Road. Call 813-681-1910 or 813-689-8700, email: mlh@ij.net or tpalynne@tampabay.rr.com
March
Frederick, MD
First Friday of the month: Der Stammtisch at Brewer’s Alley, 124 N. Market Street. Call 301-631-0127.
Indianapolis, IN
First Wednesday and first Saturday of the month: Docent-led tours of the Athenaeum at 401 East Michigan Street. Call 317-630-4569, ext. 1 or email athfound@sbcglobal.net .
Danbury, NH
March 8: Sunday Storytelling Brunch. Inn at Danbury. Call 1-866-DANBURY or visit www.innatdanbury.com .
Danbury, NH
March 22: Sunday Storytelling Brunch. Inn at Danbury. Call 1-866-DANBURY or visit www.innatdanbury.com .
Tomball, TX
March 27 –29: Ninth Annual Tomball German Heritage Festival. Old downtown streets of Tomball near 11 W. Main Street and Market Street. Five stages of live music, folk dancers, arts, crafts, food, beer, carnival, fireworks, and more. No admission or parking fees. Call 281-379-6844, email: gradsand@yahoo.com , or visit www.tomballsistercity.org .
Franklin Square, NY
March 29: Lenten service (in German). At 3:00 p.m. Ascension Lutheran Church, 145 Franklin Avenue, Franklin Square, NY. Call 516-352-1263.
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