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 “Doesn’t
it have elegance? Aroma?” At first glance, Andreas Hamann looks
inconspicuous. His grey wool pullover, jeans and running shoes do not
sport brand names. Then he sniffs Tanja. |
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As
if happiness were a matter of course, Mr. Hamann smiles, closes his
eyes, then takes a bite. The chocolate shell of “Tanja”,
a refined crescendo of caramel, releases sweet cream with a crunch.
At Hamann Works, Wilmersdorf, we are in one of the world’s
oldest chocolate factories, a building designed by Bauhaus icon Johannes
Itten. The third generation proprietor gazes dreamily at the landscape.
The only thing we see is a transmission-powered, granite, three-roller
mill smelling of bark chocolate. A pipe is suspended from the ceiling
through which the raw material for “rum truffle droplets” and “cherries
with a pit” has been dripping for decades. But the confectioner
Hamann seems to see, or rather taste, something more. “Tanja”,
he mutters once again. Then, as if awakening from a dream, he says: “Come
along. You’ll want to see our production line”.
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In
1912, Erich Hamann, hailing from East Prussia, began to manufacture
bitter chocolates in the backroom of a Berlin café – his
little confectionery at Kurfürstenstraße was just around
the corner from a girls’ boarding
school. “And bitter chocolate,” his great-grandson relates, “doesn’t
make you gain that much weight”. This is because it contains no milk and
only a little sugar and because it’s very filling. And because it gives
you pleasure, but not a ravenous appetite for more.
Twelve employees potter about in the sweet fragrance of the Hamann factory hall.
Flambéed Steak Comfit and Durer Hares made of marzipan have survived for
92 years, against such odds as the fluctuating price of almonds, two world wars
and the division of the city. The chocolate bars still look like they did when
the company started. And today the bars, reminiscent of strict Bauhaus theory
of form, also sell well in the backyard shop of design scout Andreas Murkudis.
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The
new desire for old recipes is not a rarity in Berlin. To be sure, the
German confectionery market is dominated by large corporations like
Ferrero, Kraft, or Ritter and monopolization is still increasing. The
Swiss chocolate baron Barry Callebaut has just bought Stollwerk, a
company that not only has huge production lines in Berlin-Marienfelde
but, as recently as 1997, had itself acquired the Berlin firm Sarotti
(“Scho-Ka-Kola”).
But every trend generates a backlash. Let’s leave the factory at Wilmersdorf
and turn to Eberhard Päller, confectioner of “Confiserie Melanie” in
Charlottenburg. Päller well remembers the Sixties, when a bar of chocolate
cost 1.30 marks, which doesn’t sound very expensive today, but back then
it was about the sum paid for a man’s haircut. “And you know what?” Päller
strongly resembles German show master Joachim Fuchsberger as he eases down onto
a barstool. “People didn’t mind paying that. They really enjoyed
the most delicate, minute, but genuine distinctions in chocolates.” |
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For
37 years, 65-year old Päller has been offering chocolates and
other delicate distinctions in his store for his “choice patients”.
But it’s been a long time since the “flavour archivist” last
experienced a run on fancy confectionery or bitter chocolate with
chillies like the one that has been going on these last months. He
used to travel around the world, bringing the taste of a new “drug
for the senses” back to Berlin every time. So, today, in his
shop of more than 4,000 articles, he also offers home-made chocolate
truffles, with flavours like gentian, asparagus and absinthe. “Take
one! Try one!” Eberhard Päller serves us a boletus truffle
with the enthusiasm evocative of a bar hostess. When we take a careless
bite, he cries, alarmed: “No! Don’t!” Then he shows
us how to eat a truffle: Only put half of it in your mouth, crack
the coating with your teeth, “and then suck the filling”.
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