Marzipan – that sweet, pale paste made with almonds – was key to Lubeck’s success. Photo / Supplied
Tamara Hinson satisfies her sweet tooth in the almond-scented city of Lubeck.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a pretzel. Almost as much as I love schnitzels and bratwursts. But I’m also a firm believer that Germany’s food scene is seriously underestimated, partly due to its wonderful diversity. For proof, look no further than Lubeck. Located 80km north of Hamburg, this north German city’s specialty is Lubecker marzipan, protected by the EU’s Protected Geographical Indication law.
Perched on the banks of the River Trave, close to the Baltic Sea, this compact, UNESCO-listed city, founded in the 1100s, was always perfectly positioned for trading. Once a Hanseatic League capital, its highlights include its perfectly preserved old town, where half-timbered merchants’ houses squeeze alongside guildhalls made from rust-red bricks.
Centuries ago, even Lubeck’s poor enjoyed an elevated standard of living, thanks to the belief that philanthropic acts eased god-fearing merchants’ passage to heaven. And marzipan – that sweet, pale paste made with almonds – was key to Lubeck’s success. While some say its origins date back to the 1400s, when poor harvests prompted bakers to bake bread using almonds called marci panis (St Mark’s bread), the more likely scenario is that Lubeck’s marzipan mania began with the arrival of trading ships loaded with almond-based sweets exported from foreign lands. They arrived stamped with the image of an ancient ruler – or “mauthaban” in Arabic.
My first stop is Niederegger Lubeck’s flagship store, on the city’s cobbled high street (at this marzipan specialists’ nearby factory, 30 tonnes of raw marzipan are processed daily, and its biggest markets include Australia and China). The store’s small museum is spectacular, with a Last Supper-style collection of life-sized figures behind a long table. They’re all sculpted from marzipan, and each one honours someone with a key role in Lubeck’s marzipan-related past, whether it’s the trader from Persia, where almond paste was sweetened with honey before it was discovered that rose water and sugar created a much tastier treat, or the late Johann Georg Niedereggger. In 1806 he took over a small Lubeck’s confectioner’s and turned it into the Niedereggger marzipan empire.
Other exhibits include historic stamps used to press images into marzipan slabs, a song sheet from a concert marking the brand’s centenary in 1906, and a map listing the dozens of marzipan manufacturers based here between the 1700s and early 1900s, when tough economic conditions (followed by two world wars) saw this number plummet to 20.
Downstairs on the shop floor, it’s a marzipan paradise. I spot a marzipan sculpture of Lubeck’s twin-towered Holsten Gate, a medieval city gate and symbol of Lubeck, and rows of miniature marzipan fruits and vegetables. Another section is dedicated to regional German delicacies; my favourites are the piles of tiny marzipan bratwursts. There are marzipan hedgehogs, monkeys and lobsters, along with marzipan tea, coffee and liquor. And then there are the flavours. Every year Niedereggger’s marzipan magicians create new limited-edition flavours such as cola, or whisky. This year? It’s cinnamon roll.
Sadly, I don’t have time for Niederegger’s marzipan modelling workshop, so I settle for a slice of the marzipan-topped Prinz Heinrich Torte in the store’s cafe, where I meet Niederegger’s Kathrin Gaebel. She reveals that the brand is regularly commissioned to create bespoke marzipan sculptures; previous examples include London’s Big Ben and Cologne’s Unesco-listed cathedral. My cake is delicious and unexpectedly nutty – as it should be, says Kathrin. “Almonds are expensive, so there’s more sugar in cheap marzipan,” she says. “EU guidance states that Lubecker marzipan requires a fixed ratio of almonds and sugar, and the taste of ours is definitely down to almonds.”
Not that the high price of marzipan was a problem for the merchants who built Lubeck’s grandest buildings. Many are brick gothic, a style typified by black and red bricks such as guildhalls and the Church of St Mary, which houses the world’s highest brick vaulting in its 40m-tall nave. Hanseatic League merchants bankrolled these buildings to showcase their wealth and ease that aforementioned path to heaven. Inside the Holsten Gate, now a history museum, exhibits include donation boxes once placed in Lubeck’s guildhalls and quickly filled by wealthy god-fearing donors.
It’s not just the exteriors of these grandiose buildings I’m wowed by. Take the Schiffergesellschaft (seaman’s society), now a cavernous but cosy beer hall dating back to the 1500s, when it was a seafarers’ guildhall. When storms made setting sail impossible, sailors hunkered down here, sipping steins of beer and biding their time by making the wooden model ships still hanging from the ceiling. A fun fact? It wasn’t just sailors who crafted these intricate replicas. A few years ago, it turns out, items on display at the Niederegger Lübeck store included a marzipan galleon, complete with sails and portholes. Suddenly my recent attempt at a marzipan-topped simnel cake looks somewhat inadequate ...
The writer’s accommodation was covered by the Lubeck tourist board.