The first thing you are likely seeing here is a recipe. I try to translate one recipe from a historical source every day, and here is where I post them. When I have time to experiment, I also post reports on actually trying out the dishes or short articles on other historical questions I find interesting. But mostly, it is recipes. I hope you enjoy them.
Today, many Europeans look at the late 1960s as the “Good Old days”, but they did not necessarily feel like that to the people alive at the time. It was, after all, a scary age, one of confusing change and ideologically charged confrontation. Anticommunist hawks imagined a desperate last-ditch defense against the red tide engulfing the globe while hardline leftists eagerly awaited the dawn of world revolution, and shifting allegiances on both sides made it hard to keep track of just who you were supposed to be hating at any given point. In the midst of all of this, young people everywhere experimented with new ideas of community and justice, and sometimes, things came together in fascinating ways.
Just like they were unaware they were living in simpler, happier times, the people of Hannover in 1969 also did not know they were experiencing an age of carefree prosperity, so when the Üstra company operating their tram announced a 33% fare hike for 1 June, many were worried. Especially young people depended on public transit and the higher price bit hard into strained budgets. Their parents might have gritted their teeth and shrugged it off, but this was a generation that lived and breathed activism. They were going to organise. University and secondary school students began what would become one of the most successful grassroots protests in modern German history: the ‘Red Dot’ (Roter Punkt).
Blockade of a tram line. This picture is from Kiel as I was unable to find any copyright-free photographs from Hannover. Courtesy of wikimedia commons
Germany in the late 1960s was a rapidly changing nation. The grim, shameful silence following collapse and defeat after the Second world War was challenged by a younger generation, strict social conventions were loosening, and the influence of a wider world was making itself felt everywhere. Music and films, literature and clothing, freer travel, and not least, food made Germany a more cosmopolitan and freewheeling place. For many Germans, their first experience of this, either through travel or vicariously, was Italy, and one of the quintessentially Italian foods that young people came to know and love was pizza. It was fascinating – a challenge to notions of ‘proper’ food, flexible, imaginative, romantic, and adventurous, and best of all, if you lived far from one of the few, but rapidly spreading pizzerie in the country, you could actually make it.
The unjustly neglected culinary writer Grete Willinsky gives early instructions in her 1961 Kulinarische Weltreise:
For the yeast dough: c. 300-400g flour, 15-20g yeast, two tbsp pork lard, a pinch of salt, some warm water. For the topping: 1 1/2-2 lbs firm tomatoes, about 6 anchovy fillets, 250-300g mozzarella (or a soft Emmental cheese), 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, 2-3 tbsp oil and 2 tbsp pork lard (or oil only), salt, pepper, marjoram (origano).
You prepare a yeast dough of middling firmness and leave it to rise in a warm place, then roll it out 1/2cm thick and cover an oiled baking sheet (with a raised edge). After the dough sheet has risen once again, brush it well with oil, sprinkle the grated Parmesan over it, and distribute the peeled, quartered, slightly squeezed tomatoes, the chopped anchovies, a little salt, pepper, finely crushed marjoram, and finally the the thinly sliced mozzarella (or soft Emmental, as it will hardly be possible to find the Neapolitan curd cheese (Quark-Käse) in this country) on it. Scatter pieces of lard or drizzle oil over the entire pizza, then slide it into a hot oven. Bake at a good heat for 20-30 minutes and serve hot, cut into squares with a sharp knife. Red wine tastes excellent with it!
(Grete Willinsky: Kulinarische Weltreise, Frankfurt 1961, p. 44)
This is far from the dish that Americanised convention has settled on as pizza in Germany today, and in some ways rather surprising. I am sure few Neapolitans would see lard as an essential ingredient, for one thing. But these are early days, the time when more and m,ore middle-class families could afford to go to Italy and others craved the experience on their family dinner table. By 1975, the activist and cookbook writer Peter Fischer takes a very different tone:
If you are in a pub and feel a craving for some pizza, and you also know you can trust the cook, have your pizza at the Ristorante. Otherwise it’s off to the kitchen and make it yourself. Also consider that your pizza can make many comrades happy and that even the more austere kind of female comrade will show you a little smile for this dish. It’s all quite simple:
First the dough: Crumble about 30g of yeast, stir it into lukewarm water (1/2 cup) and leave it to rise in a 50°C oven. Sift 500g of flour into a bowl, form a well in the centre, and pour in the yeast along with 2 beaten eggs, one tbsp vinegar (acquire wine vinegar, which you will need in the kitchen regularly anyway), 3 tbsp olive oil, and 1 cup of lukewarm water. Season this with one tsp of oregano and a little salt, then work it into a dough from the centre towards the edge. If the dough should be too stiff, add more water. Knead the dough, remove it from the bowl, lay it on one hand and strike it with the other until it forms bubbles. Then set it in a warm oven to rise. Now, the dough can be placed on a greased baking sheet, draw it out, and flatten it with both hands until the entire sheet is covered evenly with dough which should now rise once more. You can also distribute it across several round baking sheets, e.g. the cheap sheets on which we usually bake the layers of cakes (Tortenböden), and bake the pizza in two or three turns. The dough must be quite thin.
The topping: It is essential that plenty of oregano and grated cheese go on top of the pizza. It you want it to be ‘genuine’, use mozzarella. What else goes on the pizza is lest to your taste, your fancy, and your capacity to improvise.
E.g. Simply cover it in tomato slices, OR add sliced garlic with the tomatoes OR add onion rings AND anchovies AND artichoke hearts AND black olives, AND sliced mushrooms, AND salami slices (not pseudo-salami, rather none than that), AND pickled peppers AND SO FORTH.
Finally, once the topping has been composed, scatter oregano and cheese over it, drizzle it well with olive oil, and bake it in a preheated oven at 250°C for 20 minutes at most. All must be well done, both dough and topping, but the pizza must not be dry. You’ll have it figured out by the third try at the latest. Always eat pizza straight out of the oven, with salad and dry wine. Do not let anyone talk you into buying sweet plonk (süßliches Gesöff)
(Peter Fischer: Schlaraffenland, nimms in die Hand. West Berlin, 5th edition 1981, p. 78)
This is interesting in all kind of ways. Few people today would put herbs (or eggs) into a pizza crust, and we still see no trace of the tomato sauce that has become ubiquitous. Further, the concern over authenticity (real mozzarella) and quality continues. This recipe is written for a very different world, though. It belongs in an urban, unconventional , freewheeling life of flatshares, activism, and hedonism. Culinary knowledge, low-key wine connoisseurship (rejecting the mid-century love of sweet wines), and the hint of a liberated sexuality were widely aspirational. A few young people actually lived like this, and many more dreamed of doing so.
When they ate their pizzas and planned their rebellion, what did these young people come up with in 1969? They developed a shockingly successful scheme combining protest and mutual aid. Identifying themselves by a red dot on white, the symbol of their movement, groups of young people boarded tramcars without buying tickets and explained their purpose to other passengers. Others built the basis of a boycott. Motorists sympathetic to their cause placed the red dot on their windshields, stopping at prearranged locations to pick up riders. Organisers guided traffic and kept track of destinations, making the operation run as smoothly as possible while doing their best not to disrupt the normal flow of traffic. Meanwhile, demonstrations actively blocked trams, stopping traffic, while handing out leaflets to passers-by demanding the fare increase be revoked.
Initial demonstrations in early June were met by a massive police presence, water cannon, and mass arrests, but the demonstrators succeeded in blocking the tram network on several occasions. As the protest gathered momentum, the response by the wider public proved broadly sympathetic. People could see the point and many, also irked at the higher fares, joined the movement, refusing to use the trams or offering rides in their cars. At the height of the boycott, all traffic on the network came to a standstill between 12 and 19 June. Labour unions and even the city council, long unhappy with a for-profit tram owned by outsiders, came out in support. It was estimated that up to 50% of drivers displayed the red dot, volunteering to take passengers through the city, and the widely expected chaos failed to materialise. Confronted by this shockingly united front of determined protest, the tram owners gave in. The boycott was ended on 18 June to complete victory. Fares returned to their previous level, and the city purchased the trams from their private owners to integrate them into a wider public transit network.
To be fair, this was not the first instance of this, just the most impressive. A fare hike in Bremen the previous year had led to blockades and riots, also forcing the city to return to the previous price. Protests at higher fares subsequently erupted in other German cities around this time, often adopting the red dot symbol, and while none were as completely successful as those in Hannover, many achieved partial victories. This stood in striking contrast to many more abstract political causes and illustrates what is possible when shared concrete interests create solidarity.
Castles hold a special place in our imagination of the Middle Ages, but at the time, having one in the vicinity was not always good news. The people of Saxony learned in the 1060s that armed imperial retainers ensconced behind impenetrable walls were not safe neighbours for the local villagers. The Brunonis de bello Saxonico liber, admittedly a partisan source, gives an accusing, but not incredible account: “The troops assembled in these castles began to commit predations in their vicinity, forcing free men to render corvée labour like serfs and raping wives and daughters. Then they understood what those castles meant, and they dared not resist or defend themselves. Eventually, the people they had injured secretly sent their complaints to those who lived far away from the castles and had not yet suffered these evils. By refusing to help those already suffering, the unaffected would allow tyrannical powers to rise in their midst as well.” The response was prompt and forceful.
A very imaginative reconstruction of Saxon rebels desecrating the chapel crypt at Harzburg (c. 1862), image courtesy of wikimedia commons
We do not have a very good understanding of what exactly happened in Saxony in the 1060s and early 1070s. Accounts are partisan and cursory, and most focus on the deeds of noble leaders, not the fates of the common people. What we do know is that the plan by emperor Henry IV to bolster his authority by building castles in the north ended in a rebellion that threatened the very fabric of the Empire. By all accounts, the peasantry played a major role in these events.
Saxony, which then meant the northern part of the Empire, not the state known by that name today, had a long history of recalcitrance. Its people lived under a law of their own and had violently resisted both Christianisation and feudal dues. Freeborn Saxons defended their customary rights as tenaciously as their nobility did its independence. The revolt of 1073-75 belongs in this tradition.
Dining scene, 1818 reproduction of a lost 11th century original, image courtesy of wikimedia commons. Note the Brezel to the right of the main dish!
Not much is recorded of the lives of most people, and what records we have are often questionable. Archeological finds suggest a hard life working the land, but there are also indications of modest wealth and comfort. Interestingly, a hint of what people ate day-to-day is provided in a poem of the time, the Ruodlieb:
She, who used to go unbelted in her youth, raises her tunic high so as not to dirty it, as if she wanted to tread beans in order to make a porridge (pultem).
Fava beans (Vicia faba, not the American phaseolus beans more popular today) played a key role in the medieval diet. It has even been suggested they made the European population growth of the High Middle Ages possible by boosting women’s life expectancy. Though their status was humble, they provided necessary protein in a diet often poor in meat and dairy. Excavations at the Elisenhof site in Schleswig-Holstein suggest they were adopted early and eagerly in the north.
Recipes or even descriptions of food from the 11th century are rare, so we mainly depend on extrapolating from known kitchen equipment and later references to reconstruct what actual meals would have looked like. We need not imagine bean porridge insipid or disgusting. Ekkehart of St. Gall specifically prays for it to be flavourful (suave), understandable as it was a staple of monastic diets. Specifics do not show up in written sources until much later. The fifteenth-century Dorotheenkloster MS instructs:
69 Mashed beans (prein von pon)
Take the beans and make them pretty (shell them) with lye. Set them to cook in a pot and let them boil dry so they do not become soft. Take a clean scheffel (a small wooden vessel) and rub them just when you are about to serve them, that way they stay white. Make milk with this of whatever kind you can get, but it must be sweet. Add that and serve it.
70 Mashed beans (pon müs)
Take the remaining mashed beans. Take pea broth and put the beans into it. Add oil and make it thick. Serve it hot. That is a mues. Do not oversalt it.
We find similar instructions elsewhere, together with a recipe for a bread-thickened sauce of beer, vinegar, and caraway (or possibly cumin) that is actually quite good. Caraway goes well with beans. Another thing that seems to go back before the time it is first recorded is adding fat and meat, specifically lardons of fried bacon, to porridge dishes. We mainly learn of them because fifteenth century writers tell us how to make lookalikes for Lent. We can then picture a dish of mashed beans (not stepped on with unwashed feet – that process was for shelling) cooked in a flavourful broth and topped with butter or bacon fat, fried bacon pieces, or perhaps already the fried onions so popular come the sixteenth century. On fast days, oil could take the place of animal fats, though few farmers would have had any. Served with a piece or dark bread and maybe a few pieces of boiled meat or smoked ham, this made a humble but adequate meal to sustain the people as the contested their right to remain free.
It did not begin as an armed rebellion. As far as the sources tell us, it started with a petition presented by nobles from Saxony, and though they disagree why this process failed, violence only began after it had. Saxon troops besieged the emperor in the Harzburg, one of his new castles, and legend has it he only escaped through a secret passage leading out from a well, dropping his crown into the water in the process. For what it is worth, a passage from a well was actually discovered in the twentieth century, though the crown remains lost.
The fact that Henry IV, having escaped to the loyal south of the Empire, found very little support suggests that at least some of the stories painting him as a tyrant are true. On a battlefield near Hersfeld in January 1074, his small force faced a significantly larger Saxon army that consisted mostly of peasants, and royal blood was about to be shed. Except this did not happen.
Again, our sources do not help much, but modern historians have suggested an explanation: The Saxon nobility entered into negotiations because they were worried a victory would make them dependent on their militarised peasantry. That would mean there could never be castles or feudal lordship in their lands, and it wasn’t that they objected to oppression, they just didn’t want foreigners to be doing it. The peace of Gerstungen obliged the emperor to destroy the castles that had caused so much trouble, and the peasant army went home. As so often in history, this proved fatal.
The emperor had the outer walls of the Harzburg destroyed, but he dragged his feet on the buildings until local villagers decided to take things into their own hands. They destroyed the castle, including a chapel with the graves of the emperor’s son and brother. Chroniclers considered this a major turning point, but it may have been little more than a convenient excuse for the emperor who had spent his time mending fences with his South German vassals. A much larger army of armoured cavalry moved against Saxony and defeated the erstwhile rebels decisively. Contemporary writers describe the day as a clash of cavalry against footsoldiers, much as Hastings is imagined to have gone, and the outcome was similar.
However, the emperor was soon distracted by events in Italy and proved unable to maintain the loyalty of his vassals. Saxony returned to its hostile stance and at one point, Saxon nobles forbade him to enter their land – technically part of his Empire – turning him back at the border. In the end, imperial power in the north simply evaporated. Where the heavy hand of the crown had failed, though, local nobles would eventually step in. Saxony did not escape the feudal oppression that much of Europe suffered, but the peasants who had played so pivotal a role in their victory had earned a respite the day they drove Henry from the Harzburg.
It is hard not to speculate what might have been. The farmer-warriors of Saxony were different from the aristocracy who fought wars in the knowledge safe captivity and ransom payments were the likely wages of defeat. In their world, rank treason and horrific cruelty were routinely forgiven. But what if the army of Saxons had defeated the emperor that day? Would he have survived the encounter? Might we have seen the execution of a crowned head by his angry subjects? It is impossible to say. Conversely, we can be fairly certain that, had the Saxon villagers not banded together to drive out their oppressors in 1073, their traditional freedoms would have been lost as thoroughly as those of their distant cousins in Norman England.
If there was a period in the history of Hamburg properly called its golden age, 1896 must come very close to it. Germany’s leading port, one of the largest in the world, was growing by leaps and bounds. Through its wharves and warehouses, built on an innovative principle copied throughout the world, passed the riches of the globe while its proud shipping liners carried millions of emigrants across the oceans. Run on scientific principles, an machinery of ships, boats, railways, roads, cranes and hoists was combined in the intricate dance that contemporary writers marvelled at. But on 21 November 1896, all of it suddenly stopped.
The Speicherstadt warehouse complex in 1890, courtesy of wikimedia commons
Wilhelmine Germany was by all accounts a rich country, but wealth had a way of defying gravity. It collected upward, and the government of the Reich and especially the Republic of Hamburg were more than happy to help it along. Meanwhile, life for the people whose work kept the port running was far from pleasant. The city had gone through Europe’s last great cholera outbreak in 1892, its spread fuelled by insanitary conditions that had noted physician Robert Koch reprove the council: “I have never seen such unhealthy homes, such dens of pestilence and breeding grounds for every germ … I could forget I am in Europe, gentlemen!” Work in the harbour was always precarious, dependent on ships coming in. Wages, fixed by contract in the 1880s, stayed stuck while new tariffs drove up the cost of living. The barriers to importing meat to help domestic agriculture was especially unpopular. Many workers had also been forced out of their homes by urban development projects and now travelled long distances to their jobs, forced to pay for omnibuses and ferry boats.
Like any large port, Hamburg was an ecosystem of specialised labour. Cargo handling depended almost entirely on human power, from sailors who manned the ships and Schauerleute who loaded the cargo to Ewerführer operating cargo boats and Quartiersmänner employed in the warehouses of the new Speicherstadt. All had seen their standard of living drop, and they shared their grievances in the puds and hostelries of the port where they ate what they could afford. In their world, meat was especially coveted, the centrepiece of any proper meal, and rising prices forced many to economise and stretch what they could afford. Labskaus, a dish still popular in Hamburg and much of the North Sea shore, could serve this purpose admirably.
A working-class pub in 1899. These hostelries doubled as recruiting offices for dockworkers, leading to various abuses. Image courtesy of wikimedia commons
Nobody knows where Labskaus (lobscouse in English)originated and what its original form was, but it was probably born as a shipboard dish. It is originally described as made from ship’s biscuit, salt meat, and onions, but by the time it shows up in German literature, potatoes have replaced the hardtack. Today, there are many dishes all around the North Sea known by similar names, but the German variety is distinct, more a mash than a soup.
As early as 1878, we find a description in a guide to nautical terms, and by 1900, it was considered a traditional maritime food, but actual recipes are slow to make their way into cookbooks. Labskaus was not a proper dish, it defied the classifications of bourgeois cuisine, a hot mash that made no distinction between meat, potato, and vegetable. For a long time, it was most likely made with whatever was to hand, and recipes still differ regionally and by family. The earliest recipe I could find is included in the 1938 edition of Hedwig Heyl’s ABC der Küche, and this lacks a key ingredient of the Hamburg tradition:
Labskaus of meat or fish (for 4 persons)
1 1/2 kg of peeled potatoes, 1l water, 40g bacon cubes, 2 tbsp onion cubes, 500g cooked, deboned fish or cooked meat, 10g salt
Preparation: Boil potatoes in salted water until soft, or steam them. Pour off almost all the water. Sautée bacon cubes until yellow, then fry onions with them until done. Mix with pieces of meat or fish and potatoes, heat thoroughly, and salt to taste.
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Particular Remarks: The dish should be juicy, so do not discard all potato cooking water
This is the most bare-bones version imaginable, not surprising in a book that prides itself on economy, but it is reasonably convincing for a starting point. Traditional Hamburg Labskaus ashore always includes beetroots, usually boiled with the potatoes and meat. Salt is not required since the beef (rarely pork) is normally salted, often tinned corned beef, the most basic of supplies. Sometimes, pickled cucumbers were also added to the mix, and richer versions might include butter, nutmeg, cloves, and bay leaves. A plate of hot Labskaus today is served with pickled cucumber, pickled herring, and fried egg. It is not certain how far back this tradition goes, but it fits what we know of 1890s German cuisine.
Sharing plates of this stuff, and most likely drinking the cheap spirits that sailors and longshoremen were expected to consume before the publicans, who doubled as recruiters, would offer them work, gripes and shared frustration led to organisation and solidarity. By the 1890s, Hamburg’s working class was strongly unionised and no longer willing to suffer exploitation meekly. The summer of 1896 saw a rise in the economic fortunes of the city followed by years of slump, and labour unions saw a prospect of negotiating long overdue wage increases. The employers’ side actually offered a modest raise, but only on condition bonuses for handling hazardous cargo would be cut, leaving many workers worse off. In response, a vote was taken and the members decided to strike.
At the outset, nobody expected this to go on for more than a few days, ending with some concessions, but as employers categorically refused to negotiate with labour unions, the strike lengthened. Funds from unions all over the country and donations from allies supported a strike fund, and union organisations involved the wives and daughters of the dockworkers in mass mobilisation. At the height of the strike, over 16,000 workers took part. Public meetings and demonstrations continued through the winter as the profits of shippers and traders crumbled and the authorities escalated their response. The harbour was placed under a state of siege with police protecting strikebreakers, collecting donations was outlawed, and strike funds confiscated. The strikers retaliated by sabotaging loading operations and attacking strikebreakers and their recruiters. tension rose through a cold December and January while international attention focused on the city.
“Strike in the Port of Hamburg! No worker who values his honour will take a bit of work in the port during the strike!” Handbill, 1896/97, courtesy of wikimedia commons
In the end, the deeper pockets of the employers prevailed and the unions, deprived of financial support, had to call off the strike. In the following days, clashes between former strikers and strikebreakers, the latter supported by police, rocked the city. Leaders of the strike were arrested and many sentenced for violence or intimidation, and many of the workers blacklisted. The total victory that corporate negotiators had pursued seemed at hand, the unions defeated. The workers, though, refused to give up. Union membership increased and smaller unions joined with larger ones. The impression of the strike eventually led the government of Hamburg to intervene. They knew how much they stood to lose in another confrontation. Publishing a report on working conditions and abuses in the harbour, they went on to address some grievances. Recruiters were cut out of labour contracting, wages paid through offices rather than in pubs, working hours were limited, and unions included in future wage negotiations. Employers offered permanent jobs rather than casual labour to secure a loyal core workforce and by 1898, they entered into union contracts setting standardised wages for their workers. This was how many strikes of the era ended. The authorities could not be seen to concede anything to rebellious workers directly, but the demonstration of their power often led to reform.
Picture the scene: A business premises owned by a fence turned snitch, surrounded by militarised law enforcement in massive numbers. A gang of violent criminals is cornered, their escape foiled, their weapons sabotaged. After a vicious gunfight, they are arrested and taken to prison. Detroit in the early 2000s? Kentucky in the 1920s? No, this scene played out on 14 January 1771 in the village of Osterzell in the foothills of the Alps, and the arrestee was der Bairische Hiasl, the famous poacher and outlaw Matthias Klostermayr.
A “Displeased Sleigh Ride” – an official account celebrating the capture of Klostermayr and mocking the captive, image courtesy of wikimedia commons
Early Modern Germany had restrictive hunting laws that reserved most game as well as fisheries and timber to the feudal lord holding authority over the land, and these rights were jealously guarded both for the income they generated and the status they conveyed. Especially in the southern and western regions, where hundreds of technically sovereign mini-states ruled over often tiny territories, tension over this remained a sore point for centuries. Peasant farmers could be called up to serve in their lords’ hunts as drivers, build hurdles or fences, or house and feed hunting dogs quartered with them. Meanwhile, the game laws forbade them from laying a hand on deer and boar that broke into their fields and orchards. Especially among the poor, poaching became a widespread form of resistance, breaking the law both to defy its obvious injustice and provide some much-needed meat for their families.
An extensive study of poaching in southwestern Germany by Wilfried Ott indicates that most game thus taken was simply boiled and eaten in a stew, the way that most meat was in poor households. However, not all poachers were poor, and often enough there was a market for venison among the more respectably members of rural society. Interestingly, two recipes for game in Marcus Looft’s Nieder-Sächsisches Kochbuch of 1758 look like they are direct descendants of much earlier medieval ones. This may well be how illicit venison came to the tables of successful poachers and their customers:
Regula 292 Wild Boar Meat in a Cherry Sauce
The wild boar meat is cut in dainty pierces, well watered, and cooked in water with a little salt until done. During this time, you prepare a brown roux according to Regula 16 with a bit of sugar, so it takes on high colour. Then add a few handfuls of pounded dried cherries along with cinnamon and lemons, stir it all over the fire, and add water and vinegar. Cook it slowly so it comes out bound, black in colour, and quite thick. Pass it through a sieve. Once the meat is done, it is cleaned neatly and added to the sauce. Then it is sweetened properly (lit.: fully) and boiled together a little. That way, it is proper and good.
(…)
Regula 294 Deer or Wild Boar Meat in Juniper Sauce
The meat is also cut in pieces, watered, and cooked in water and salt until done. Then you prepare a brown roux with onions and add good broth or meat soup to boil with that. Finally, add pounded juniper berries, cloves, salt, vinegar, and sugar, then put in the cooked meat and boil it all together a little. That way, it is properly made.
The first is reminiscent of the sauces made with raisins or other dried fruit and dry bread in medieval recipe collections while the second is almost unchanged from the roux-basedpfeffer saucesof that era. We can easily imagine steaming bowls of these dishes, accompanied by thick slices of crusty bread, butter, and cheese on the table of a treacherous host as the soldiers of the Prince-Archbishop of Augsburg closed in through the snowbound darkness to turn a famous criminal into a local legend.
Frontispiece of a book purporting to be a portrait of Hiasl, 1772, courtesy of wikimedia commons
Hiasl – short for Matthias – was by all accounts a proud and charismatic man who did not take to submission well. He lost a stable and well-paid job because he mocked a senior clergyman’s lack of hunting prowess and later seduced the daughter of a farmer while working as a farmhand there. We also read great things of his skill as a rifleman and hunter, but these legends must be interpreted with caution, perhaps belonging more alongside the story that he was magically bulletproof and could render himself invisible. The tale of Hiasl probably outpaced the reality of a skilled and smart poacher in his lifetime and became firmly cemented by a flurry of publications following his execution.
The reality we can reconstruct was a man who made a business of poaching, deftly evading the authorities by crossing over the many territorial borders in his neighbourhood and cultivating a network of buyers, hideouts, and informers among a population heartily sick of their lords pampering game to shoot at their leisure. His gang included a number of dedicated followers and though legend places him in the forest, he probably slept most nights at inns or in farmhouses of sympathetic locals. Later stories elevate him to a local Robin Hood figure robbing the rich to give to the poor, and there is probably some truth to this. Unlike the ruling nobility, he lived among the peasantry and depended on their goodwill and support for his survival. Some records suggest he offered his services to village communities eager to see game reduced in their neighbourhood to limit crop damage, and the bounty of meat and leather he brought in found ready buyers. We also know that he enjoyed humiliating the agents of government and showing up the impotence of the rulers. That goes a long ways towards explaining both his legendary status and the brutality of his execution.
Following the capture, trial, and death of Hiasl, official accounts were publicised widely (and the parts of his broken body displayed publicly in four different towns). The unofficial story, though, proved more convincing and more popular, making its way into songs and legends, print publications, and even great literature. It served as inspiration for the work of a budding playwright named Friedrich Schiller whose play Die Räuber (The Robbers) caused a nationwide scandal by portraying outlaws as rebels against tyranny and ultimately sympathetic figures. Today, a small theme park is dedicated to his exploits.
Violent crime was a fact of life in Early Modern Germany, but under a repressive and exploitative government, criminals, especially if they defied unpopular laws, could become heroes to the people. The cheers that greeted Hiasl when he came to a village inn showed a degree of dissatisfaction with tyrannical authority we find it hard to imagine today.
In 1872, the Prussian army, freshly returned from its overwhelming victory against France, was considered the best military in the world, and the Leibgarde regiments the finest in its ranks. On 26 July of that year, the man of Gardegrenadierregiment No. 1 were called out to ready for action. The enemy: working-class people from the suburbs of their own capital city.
Life in newly imperial Berlin could be harsh. Caught between low wages and rising rents, working-class families faced a precarious existence. While the standard of living had risen – at least in comparison with the hungry times of the early 19th century – people often enough had little or nothing left over after paying for the roof over their heads. An fascinating source on their diet is the 1868 report of the Volksküchen, a private initiative selling basic hot food at affordable rates. Among other things, they served Bouletten, a Berlin favourite ever since. Their recipe is plain and clear:
Nr. 19: Mashed potatoes and Bouletten with sour sauce
Bouletten: 3 lbs (1.5kg) beef, 3 lbs (1.5 kg) pork, 1/3 Metze (1.15 litres) of grated Semmel bread, 2 Metzen (6.9 litres) grated boiled potatoes, 1/2 Mandel (seven) eggs, pepper, spices, onions and salt, 1 lb (500g) of fat to fry 100 Bouletten.
Mashed potatoes: 2 1/2 – 3 Scheffel (110 litres) potatoes, 8 Quart (9.12 litres) milk, 3 lbs (1.5 kg) salt
Sauce: 1 lb fat mixed with 2 lbs flour, 1/2 lb flour added dry to the roux, 2 Quart (2.28 litres) good vinegar, 1 lb sugar, pepper, spices and onions, the necessary quantity of water. Cooking time: 1/2 hour
Among the offerings of the Volksküche, this was one of the richer meals. Far from starvation, it still compares unfavourably to how the upper half ate, but these were popular and not everyone could afford them every day. Bouletten (more usually Buletten today) or Frikadellen belong to the ancestry of the hamburger. They are patties made of ground meat, onions, spices, egg, and a vegetable filler. These consist of more potato than meat, held together with egg and breadcrumbs and fried in hot fat to produce a crust with the coveted Maillard flavours. Depending on how densely the grated potato is packed and how large the eggs are, they should come in somewhere around 80-100 grammes apiece, which is about where a modern-day Bulette weighs in.
The main component here, though, is more potatoes, boiled and stirred to a smooth consistency with milk. On top of about a litre of this mash, a single meat patty and a brown, sweet-sour onion sauce completed a hot, filling meal. A large number of Berlin’s inhabitants had to take recourse to the inexpensive offerings of the Volksküchen regularly, but far more had even less than this, and that goes a long way towards explaining what happened in July of 1872.
This situation had exploded into protest before, and an eviction on 25 July over unpaid rent, in itself a routine affair, provided the spark. By the end of the day, thousands of people assembled in the street, pelting the police with paving stones and building improvised barricades. The next day, news arrived that the police were clearing out homeless settlements and destroying the possessions of the inhabitants they evicted in preparation for a summit meeting of the emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia in September. People from the settlement and workers from a nearby factory joined the protest, and together they succeeded in driving the police from their neighbourhood and occupying a police station. Protests spread to other working-class quarters and the emperor, away taking the waters, sent indignant instructions to restore order forcefully.
In the end, the police chose to deescalate instead. Perhaps someone had figured out that the people in the streets were angry, but not revolutionary. Though their rulers were spooked by the recent nightmare of the Paris Commune, these were mostly skilled workers and artisans, men who used to have a respectable existence and expected their labour to at least afford them a home. They had no wider political goals, and short of provocation, the unrest dissipated.
There were arrests and trials, and the press spent weeks debating the justice or injustice of the protesters’ cause. The government opened a second homeless refuge and relaxed the harsh conditions attached to aid there, but the Berlin housing crisis was not resolved for over a generation, and never fully. Urban unrest continued in many industrial centers of the German Empire, usually in a similarly unorganised fashion, and the authorities managed to hold it at bay in the same haphazard fashion. Progress towards the beginnings of a welfare state began about a decade later, headed by a conservative government frightened of losing the lower middle classes to the spectre of organised Socialism.
Not much time to write tonight, but here is a recipe from Staindl that is so close to the earlier manuscript tradition we can assume direct transmission.
Preserved nuts
ccxliii) Take the nuts while they are still unripe (koßlig), about nine days before St. John’s Day (24 June) or just until St. Margaret’s Day (prob. 13 July then, today 20 July). Drill six holes into each nut crosswise and lay them in fresh water for twelve days. Drain them off often and pour on new water, but boil it first. After you have soaked them, lay them out on a clean board and dry them completely. Stick them with cloves, cinnamon, and ginger afterwards. Lay them into a glazed dish, boil honey, pour it on them, and leave them standing like that. But if you preserve them in sugar, boil them up once in clarified sugar and then let them stand a while in that.
If you would make pickled nuts, take the nuts eight days before solstice (subenden) and take an awl. Poke five holes into each nut and let them lie in water for eight days. Then peel them (put them) in wine and boil them a little. Then let them rest for a day. Then boil them in honey. Take them out again and stick them with cloves, ginger, and cinnamon. Then take a pure honey and make it boil and prepare it with good ginger spice (ginger and other spice?). Lay the nuts in it and keep it in a small vat or a glazed pot.
There are some differences here – the more generous timeframe in Staindl, the different number of holes, the parboiling in wine and honey, and clearer definition of spices – but the structure and phrasing is close enough to suggest a fairly close relationship. The intended result clearly is the same: unripe nuts studded with spices and suffused with honey, preserved for the winter. I have not yet tried this, but if I have time in June this year, I may (I say that every year).
Balthasar Staindl’s 1547 Kuenstlichs und nutzlichs Kochbuch is a very interesting source and one of the earliest printed German cookbooks, predated only by the Kuchenmaistrey (1485) and a translation of Platina (1530). It was also first printed in Augsburg, though the author is identified as coming from Dillingen where he probably worked as a cook. I’m still in the process of trying to find out more.
I like to keep the content here fairly strictly food history related, but recent events have impressed me very deeply, and I think it is time to address the slide into authoritarianism and the people who put their lives on the line resisting it, however indirectly. This will be a look at revolt and resistance in German history and the food that we know, or can plausibly believe, was eaten at that time and place. Today, the focus is on the 1525 Peasant War (far from the only Bauernkrieg in German history, but the greatest) and there is a recipe from Balthasar Staindl with plenty of parallels elsewhere, A simple, satisfying dish:
Broadsheet of the Twelve Articles, 1525, courtesy of wikimedia commons
To cook peas
cclxxvii) Take peas that are nicely white in lye (kaltgus) and rub them between the hands. They release their skins. Then wash them and dry them again. When you want to make a pease puree (Erbesmueß), set a piece of pork (to cook) and pour that same broth (of the pork) in with the peas. Let them boil this way until they are soft. Pass them through, or if you have a lot of them, grind them in a scheyben so they turn all thick (haesem), and mix it with pork broth so it ends up as thick as you cook a thin porridge (als man ain breyn kocht). Boil it in a good, clean pot. When you are about to serve it, cut good bacon in small cubes, fry them briefly, and put them into the pea puree. Lay a slice of bread into the middle and place a piece of pork on it. At times, you also add a bit of cream.
This is the kind of no-nonsense, filling, rich, and tasty food we can see well-off peasants sitting down to as they discuss the harvest, the taxes, and what to do about the demands of their lord. It is laborious to make, but needs neither complicated equipment nor expensive ingredients. We begin with dried peas which are shelled by soaking them in lye – modern supermarkets sell pre-shelled peas which spare our hands this process. To cook the peas, you first make pork broth, and we are most likely talking about salt meat as a base given fresh pork was very much a seasonal product. The peas are cooked slowly in hot broth, but probably not at a rolling boil (the word einsieden is not specific in this regard, and other recipes call for a simmer). Once soft, they are strained out, mashed, and diluted to a semi-liquid consistencv with broth and, possibly, cream. The mash is served in a bowl with fried bacon pieces sprinkled over it, each portion accompanied by a slice of bread, a piece of the boiled pork, and most likely a good quantity of beer or wine.
The world of South German peasants in the 1520s is hard for us to imagine. Many were personally unfree, bound to a landlord legally as well as economically, and all were subject to an oppressive and unequal tax burden and high rents. Additional exactions and fines, but above all the frequent and often disproportionately long corvée labour (Fron) that took them away from their own fields. The landlords, themselves under pressure to defend themselves from the encroachments of territorial princes and survive in an increasingly monetised economy, appropriated commons and natural resources to turn them into revenue sources, depriving the peasantry of things like pasture, firewood, or foraging opportunities they had relied on in earlier years. Legal recourse was expensive and rarely successful, and the authorities enforced claims on the poor brutally.
It is not surprising to learn, then, that between the second half of the fifteenth century and the end of the sixteenth, German history records many peasant uprisings. The greatest took place in 1524/25, encompassing most of Southern Germany as well as the Alsace, parts of Austria and Switzerland. Rebellious peasants, often supported by working townspeople, met to form preliminary governments in the areas they controlled and formulated a list of demands that circulated through the country: The Twelve Articles. These called for the abolition of serfdom, the free election of parish priests, rent control, a transparent and fair tax regime, an end to new and arbitrary fines, and a limit on corvée labour. These were not revolutionary demands. The peasants mainly wanted to return to arrangements that left them a greater share of the things they produced. The nobility nonetheless felt mortally threatened and responded with brutal violence.
Though the peasant rebellion of 1525 was suppressed and brutal vengeance exacted in the immediate aftermath, the ruling classes realised that continuing as they had put them at perpetual risk. In the coming decades, serfdom disappeared from most of the Empire west of the Elbe river (though it was newly introduced and enforced in the east, where it had been rare). Legal recourse against unfair practices became possible to subjects, though the courts remained expensive and slow. Revolts still occurred, but they were localised and became rarer as time progressed. It is hard to call this a success, but despite their military defeat, the new situation seems to have been largely bearable. That is, in fact, how many revolts under the ancien regime tend to end – not in revolutionary victory, but with the realisation of the rulers that they need to find an accommodation or risk losing their heads.
Staindl’s cookbook includes another recipe using sourdough starter, and I’m baffled.
To prepare Gayßlitz
cclxix) Have oats milled, but they must not be milled too finely. Then take sourdough (urhab) and soak it as though to make bread, (the quantity) according to how much you want to make. Prepare a starter (dümpffel) until it begins to become sour (seürlacht). Then pour water into it, stir it well together, and work it with the hands (blaß mit den haenden auß). That way, the thin part (das duenn) stays in the water. Then strain it properly and store it cold. That is the Geyßlitz. If you want to cook it, grasp the bottom (layer) or stir it all together. Grease a pan, and when it thickens, pour it out on a bowl and let it stand. That way, it develops a skin. Take that off and cut thin pieces. Fry those in fat to make them crisp, and do not use too little. Afterwards, pour on the boiled Geyßlich and thus boil it. Set it over small coals, set a proper lid over it with coals on top, and then put fried pieces (of bread?) on top (roeste aber brocken darauff). Add raisins and figs and also almond kernels. You can also cook it in a reyndel (a type of pot) that way.
So, what is going on here? I’m not sure. We start out making a starter dough with sourdough and oatmeal. This is left to ferment, then dissolved in water, worked, and strained. I am not sure how much water would be used and thus how thick the resulting liquid was, but the mention of a bottom (probably a bottom layer of sediment settling) suggests it was fairly thin.
This liquid is then cooked in a greased pan until it thickens. I assume that the oats will do that, but I am not sure what exactly this will look like. Perhaps a kind of thin gruel is the expected result. It is left to cool until it develops a skin on top, something we know from custards and hot milk dishes. The skin is peeled off, sliced, and fried in fat, so it seems to be a desirable ingredient. It looks as though they are removed from the pan before the remainder of the gruel is added and cooked, with heat from above and below.
This will call for a lot more experimenting than I think I will have time for. But it is an absolutely fascinating description I didn’t want to sit on until inspiration hit. So now you know.
Balthasar Staindl’s 1547 Kuenstlichs und nutzlichs Kochbuch is a very interesting source and one of the earliest printed German cookbooks, predated only by the Kuchenmaistrey (1485) and a translation of Platina (1530). It was also first printed in Augsburg, though the author is identified as coming from Dillingen where he probably worked as a cook. I’m still in the process of trying to find out more.
This is a very interesting recipe from Balthasar Staindl’s cookbook. His name for it translates as ‘dust soup’:
Staub soup
cclxvii) Take three egg yolks to a table (auff ain tisch). Salt them and beat them well. Then take the staub. First boil it up (woel in am ersten), let it cool, and then pour it in with the egg yolks. Boil it like wine soup. If the staub is quite sour, pour on some water. If it is too sour for women in childbed, boil a spoonful of sugar in it. You also use cream in place of the eggs. That is also not bad. It clears out the stomach.
How to prepare the staub at the start
cclxviii) Take wheat bran (Waitzen kleyben), nicely stirred with water (schoen kleyben angeruert), mix it, and stir in a little sourdough leaven (urhab). Thus make a starter (dümpffel) with the above-mentioned bran. Let it stand over night and it will turn sour. When it has turned properly sour, pour fresh water in with it and stir it often, that ways it turns sour. The bran must not be too spare (oed), but must be mealy (ain melbige). From this staub, you prepare staubsuppen as is described above.
When I read the title, I was nonplussed. Staub means dust in modern German, and meant much the same thing then, but the second part makes it clear what the recipe is all about and suggests where its name may come from. The dish belong to a family of sourdough soups that are still customary across North Central Europe, known as zurek in Polish and kyselo in Czech. German cookbooks often call the modern version Schlesische Saure Suppe.
Modern versions tend to include meat, mushrooms, and other vegetables, and it is possible that these were already included in the sixteenth century. Staindl’s chapter on soups – and yes, there is an entire one and I will post the recipes – tends towards the purist, though, and that makes sense when you think of soup as one course of several. Thus here, we get only sourdough soup.
The process is involved, but manageable. Wheat bran – ideally including a fair bit of flour still stuck to it – is mixed with sourdough, allowed to rise, then stirred into water and the liquid drained. This liquid – confusingly named staub, presumably after the flour bust stuck to the bran – then becomes the base for a soup bound with egg or enriched with cream. This would normally be served with bread and butter either as part of a large meal or as a small one by itself.
I find it hard to imagine what this would taste like, but it sounds worth trying out when I can get my hands on some fresh sourdough. Alternatively, while this is not normally sold in Germany, soup manufacturer Knorr actually makes an instant version.
Balthasar Staindl’s 1547 Kuenstlichs und nutzlichs Kochbuch is a very interesting source and one of the earliest printed German cookbooks, predated only by the Kuchenmaistrey (1485) and a translation of Platina (1530). It was also first printed in Augsburg, though the author is identified as coming from Dillingen where he probably worked as a cook. I’m still in the process of trying to find out more.
ccxxxviii) These are red berries that you plant in gardens. Also break them off (the stalks) neatly and strain them through a cloth. Then boil it until it becomes thick. Boil honey or sugar in it, then pour it onto (plates like?) another electuary. Dry it, cut it into small rounds (wecklen) and lay them into a lidded box. This is very curative (labhafftig) for sick people to eat.
Griendling (apple) electuary
cccxxxix) Take beautiful griendling apples, peel them carefully as though for an apple purée (apffel koch) and steam them (dünst sy ab) in a clean, new glazed pot. Pass them through a sieve. Boil honey, skim off the scum carefully, and pour it onto the puréed griendling apples. Boil it until it turns black, add good spices, mainly cinnamon, spread it out on a board, and dry it. Afterward, slice it into small rounds and put it into a lidded box. Sprinkle anise or spices on it. This is good for sick people.
Though they are described as a sauce and an electuary respectively, these recipes are really for the same thing. The principle is simple enough: Cook fruit puree with honey or sugar and continue cooking it down until it is thick enough to set into a firm jelly. The interesting part is that these are spread out on boards or plates to dry, cut into portion size, and kept in a decorative box to be served out as required. Though Staindl writes they are meant for sick people, other sources describes electuaries as ingredients in luxury cuisine or sweet treats, so it is likely that is also how these were used at times.
As an aside, while I suspect Perni are redcurrants, then a novelty in German gardens, I cannot be sure, and there are a lot of red berries you can grow. Griendling apples are a cultivar, but again, we know the name and little else. Etymologically, it could relate to Grünling, a green apple, or to Grind, meaning a rough, uneven exterior. So in both cases, are are not sure which fruit exactly to use, but coming close should be enough. The method is common all over Europe, from dulce de membrillo to Quittenbrotand marmelad. The mode of serving reminds me most of the way French pate de fruits is treated today – not an ingredient, but a special treat.
Balthasar Staindl’s 1547 Kuenstlichs und nutzlichs Kochbuch is a very interesting source and one of the earliest printed German cookbooks, predated only by the Kuchenmaistrey (1485) and a translation of Platina (1530). It was also first printed in Augsburg, though the author is identified as coming from Dillingen where he probably worked as a cook. I’m still in the process of trying to find out more.
