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1940s: What is the story behind the curried sausage?
The Invention of Curried Sausage
What you need to know before your trail
An ingenious, revealing, and delightful novel about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food. Currywurst first appeared in Berlin in the 1950s, but the author seems to recall having eaten it much earlier, as a boy in his native Hamburg, at a stand owned and operated by Lena Brucker. So, he decides to check it out.
Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory – about how Lena Brucker met, seduced and held captive a German deserter in Hamburg, in April, 1945, just before the war’s end-that is the tastiest part. Timm draws gorgeous details from Lena’s fine-grained recollections, and the pleasure these provide her and the reader supply the tale’s real charm.
Locations
Reset- Germany - Hamburg
- A: Großneumarkt
- B: Brüderstraße
- C: St. Katharinen Church
- D: Currywurst Express
Travel Guide
Travel to Hamburg for Food
Grosseneumarkt
The food stand the author mentions is here. To the West, St Michael’s Church on the square in the afternoon during the way that part of the city had been virtually destroyed by bombs.
Mrs Brucker’s curried sausage stand is very well known to the author!
Bruderstrasse
An aunt of the author used to live there and this is the area known as Little Moscow. Lots of good cuisine there too if the curried sausage isn’t quite enough.
The curried sausage debate
Has curried sausage been invented by anyone in particular? This is what “Isn’t such food a collective achievement? Food slowly created out of the logic or prevailing conditions, as may have happened with meatballs, for instance: People had left-over bread and just a little meat but wanted to fill their stomachs, so the obvious thing to do was to take both and then enthusiastically mash them together.
But curry and sausage come from different ends of the globe surely?
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Invention of Curried Sausage
Destination: Hamburg Author/Guide: Uwe Timm Departure Time: WW2, 2000s
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