A sausage icon

It’s a bit of a tired joke in Berlin. “Hey, darling, let’s go out and have an Indian meal tonight!” says a man to his wife. She looks up and sighs: “Does that mean currywurst again?”

The city has long been famed for its “schnellimbiss” (quick snack) stalls on street corners selling the currywurst.
Its popularity took hold after World War II, when the country lay in ruins and fondness for the spicy sausage led comedians to wisecrack about “currywurst — less a meal, more an institution.”
At least, that was the case until the early 1990s, when suddenly fast food chains came into vogue and sales began to dip.
“Selling currywurst just didn’t pay any more,” says Bernd, an ex-policeman who once ran a thriving stall on the picturesque Savigny Platz, near a suburban “S Bahn” station.
By 2000 it had closed, as had scores, if not hundreds, as currywurst stallholders ceased activity in Berlin in the late 1990s amid soaring unemployment and changing eating habits.
But in truth, Berliners have never deserted their favourite sausage, and now there’s a revival.
“Berliners love their currywurst,” insists Matthias Mosgraber, 44, a former Berlin revenue official.
He quit his job in 1990 to take over the currywurst stall set up by his father, Guenter Mosgraber, on the bustling Schlosstrasse in the city’s Steglitz district back in 1949.
“In those early years my father’s stall was near the Titania variety palace. People would crowd his stall after shows, hungry for a currywurst and chips, bockwurst or bratwurst (grilled sausage).”
“In 1999 we celebrated our 50th anniversary in Berlin. Our business is thriving,” says Matthias proudly. “My father is well known in this city district. He’s 81 years old.
“Today we employ 12 people in our business, 10 of them full-time. Seventy per cent of the people who come to us we’ve known for years.”
In Frankfurt, Lars Obendorfer lures his customers with a German-English language mix — “Best Woorscht in Town”. Sometimes customers have to wait 15 to 20 minutes before being served from a queue stretching 50 metres down the road.
Gerd Ruediger, a veteran local radio journalist who authored a book on the currywurst a few years ago, says its origins were in working class Berlin in the 1940s when the city was under occupation.
A local woman, Herta Heuwer, helped pioneer it by patenting a special sauce giving it its unique flavour.
But this Berlin account is hotly disputed in Hamburg, where veteran writers argue the currywurst was a North German discovery, first going on sale in the harbour area of the city at war’s end.