Eating in Berlin

Food isn't perhaps the most compelling reason for visiting Berlin. It is a fascinating city with more than its fair share of wonderful museums and a modern history which resonates in one way or another with everyone but when it comes to eating most tourists probably think cabbage, potatoes and wurst. And probably the worst of the wurst is the one that gets the most publicity - currywurst. Supposedly, at least as far as Berliners are concerned, invented by one Herta Heuwer using ingredients available in the British zone after the end of World War Two the currywurst is nothing more than a sausage drowned in tomato sauce with curry powder sprinkled on top, served with chips.

 Irina Dumitrescu ('Currywurst', Petits Propos Culinaires, 98, July 2013, pp.71 - 77) says of currywurst that 'any sane non-German, with properly calibrated taste buds and a sense of the limits to which innovation in food should be taken' naturally recoils from the idea of eating one. Yet it is so much a part of the popular culture in Berlin that there is a museum dedicated to currywurst - imaginatively named Deutsches Currywurst Museum - and there is even a novel about the invention of curry wurst which you can read about here (and an interesting article 'Beyond Currywurst and Döner: The Role of Food In German Multicultural Literature and Society' by Heike Henderson which discusses this work, which you can read here.) Dumitrescu sees currywurst 'as a symbol of troubled German national consciousness in the post-war period', a sign of 'the kind of creative chaos cities like Berlin ... foster so well' and a 'riff on traditional food that keeps it squarely in the middle, even if unrecognisable'. Be that as it may for a whole variety of reasons currywurst holds a significant place in the local food culture, encapsulating memories and tradition for those who can read the message.

 In the interests of gastronomic tourism it was necessary to try this concoction but not at a street stall or at the Currywurst Museum but, perhaps more fittingly, at the Domklause restaurant attached to the DDR Museum.The DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) Museum is all about what life was like in East Germany, and rather than stuffy static exhibits it provides an interactive experience. For example you can wander around a typical apartment - sit in a mock-up of a typical lounge room, rummage through the cupboards in the kitchen and fondle the clothes in the wardrobe. You can also sit in an interrogation room and a prison cell and participate in a rigged election. Along the way the museum answers a good many questions and provides some understanding of what  East Berlin was all about. The Domklause restaurant completes the picture by serving food which was popular in East Germany.

The museum is on the site of the exclusive Berlin Palashotel (1979 - 1992), home of the original Domlkause where official visitors, western tourists and DDR officials wined and dined in style. The present Domklause serves some of the dishes the hotel patrons would have enjoyed such as Erich Honecker's favourite meal (smoked pork, potatoes and sauerkraut) alongside more plebeian fare such as Ketwurst (hotdogs), Krusta (pizza) and Grilletta (hamburgers). The Rationalisierungs- und Forschungszentrum Gaststätten or Gastronomic Rationalisation and Research Centre was responsible for the development of these fast food products specially engineered to give the citizens of the East their own version of the taste of the West untainted by hints of capitalism. Given the choice the East German ketwurst is a better bet than the West German currywurst in my opinion but eating currywurst here posed a thought provoking link between life in the east and the privations of life in the west immediately after the war.  Dumitrescu points out that currywurst was essentially just an inventive way of making the substandard sausage available at the time into something more palatable. Using German sausage, American ketchup, the British contribution of Anglo-Indian curry powder, and French fries a serve of currywurst was West Berlin on a plate.

Whilst the DDR museum is very informative and the restaurant food is fun there is something a little disturbing about the whole experience. Since the project is geared towards western tourists it is heavy with the suggestion that the DDR was both a serious mistake and a bit of a joke, clearly doomed to failure. West was, is and will continue to be, best. There's a sense that this very recent past is all ancient history without any real acknowledgment that in fact Berlin is full of people who have had personal experience of the way of life on display in the museum. For them the difficulties of a life lived in fear of the Stasi, with no political freedom and little consumer choice is balanced by memories of happy family times, of growing up, of friendships, of holidays, of comradeship and purpose. Many people who have lived under a communist regime are not entirely convinced that their lives are suddenly 100 per cent better now that they live in a democracy.

In Berlin they talk of Ostalgie, which is literally nostalgia for the east, for those aspects of their culture like consumer goods, food products included, which disappeared overnight. East Germans essentially became immigrants in their own country, with a yearning for those everyday markers of their identity. Since the 1990s there has been a boom in nostalgia and companies manufacturing products formally only ever available to residents of the DDR. The Original Ketwurst stand at Friedichstrasse station (see also here) is but one example of the places specialising in food nostalgia. Vita Cola (which you can sample at the Domklause) and Spreewald pickles are available again. There is even a game called 'Kost the Ost' (Taste the East) based on cards featuring 46 different DDR food brand labels (only three of which are still available), 10,000 of which were sold in the first week of its release in late 1996. (For more information, if your German is up to it, see here. This site is also the source of the pictures of the cards.)

 'In this business of Ostalgie, East German products have taken on new meaning when used the second time around. Now stripped of their original context of an economy of scarcity or an oppressive regime, these products largely recall an East Germany that never existed. They thus illustrate the way in which memory is an interactive, malleable, and highly contested phenomenon, but also the process through which things become informed with a remembering - and forgetting - capacity.'

 Quoted from Daphne Berdahl, '"(N)Ostalgie" for the Present: Memory, Longing and East German Things' in  On the social life of postsocialism. Memory, Consumption, Germany. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2010 which you can, and should, read here. These comments might just as well apply to currywurst.

The wall which once separated east from west, or what is left of it, is now also a tourist attraction. The Berlin Wall Memorial tells the story of how the wall came about and the role it played in people's lives.  Bits of the wall still exist in various parts of the city. Chunks turn up in odd places as street art.

 This recent article is a reminder of how using the Berlin Wall as a canvas began, not all that long ago.

And to be fair there probably is more to German food than currywurst, cabbage and potatoes. Although I haven't seen this publication myself there is a new book due soon, if not already available, called Beyond Bratwurst. A history of food in Germany by Ursula Heinzelmann, published by Reaktion Books which promises a broader spectrum of culinary delights.