Potatoes
No other plant changed German eating habits more than the potato. The potato broadened the base of the food supply and increased its variety, thus stabilizing the whole food system with regard to calories as well as vitamins.
Potatoes came to Europe from the South American Andes heartland, where 200 wild species with a high genetic variety are known and where they had been domesticated 10,000 to 7,000 years ago from crossing of a wild diploid species of Solanum stenotonum. Later crossings made potatoes resistant against frost and diseases, so that they could be planted in altitudes of up to 4,500 meters (14,760 feet). The Incas cultivated potatoes on a large scale and preserved them for the hard winter as chuno (dried potatoes) and as papa seca (a type of flour). Spanish explorers observed the cultivation of potatoes in South America and reported on this plant in their travel accounts and even brought some plants back to Europe. Around 1570 the first potatoes reached Spain, from whence herbalists, botanists, and farmers spread them to Italy, England, and the Low Countries, from which they finally reached Germany.Initially, potatoes were cultivated only in botanic gardens as a curiosity. It was not clear to planters which parts of the plant were suitable for human consumption and trials of eating the fruits resulted in unpleasant consequences. Farmers therefore grew suspicious of the potato and refused to cultivate it. From 1740 to 1750, rulers and botanists, who had recognized the nutritional and economic virtues of the potato tubers, engaged in promoting the cultivation of potatoes. From 1770 to 1780 another promotion campaign followed, which was much more successful because it coincided with the severe famine of 1771 and 1772, in which grain ran short. Potatoes came to the rescue of many people who otherwise would have starved.
From 1766 to 1805 the size of potato fields multiplied fivefold in the Prussian province of Brandenburg, and the amount of potatoes harvested rose from 6.2 million to 64.6 million pounds (Muller 1964, 635). But due to transportation problems, a national market for potatoes developed only in the nineteenth century. As potatoes were regarded as a food for times of need and for the poor, the upper classes remained rather reluctant to indulge in the consumption of potatoes. Potatoes became the food of the peasants, who profited from the fact that potatoes were exempted from tariffs as long as they were grown for consumption by the peasants.
Already by 1800 potatoes had become an indispensable part of the German food system, although limited to that of the lower classes. In fact, the shortfall in the potato harvest of 1817 and especially of 1845 to 1848 led to a severe food crisis in the German states, as well as in the rest of Europe (especially Ireland). However, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the consumption of potatoes steadily increased. In 1850 the average consumption per individual was around 138 kilograms (304 pounds) and in 1864 it reached 200 kilograms (441 pounds). At the turn of the twentieth century, Germans each ate 300 kilograms (661 pounds) of potatoes each year (Teuteberg and Wiegelmann 1986, 236f.). Overall, the Industrial Revolution and the massive population growth of the nineteenth century would not have been possible without the potato, which ended the dependency on grain alone. Compared with grain, the potato has a higher content of valuable vegetable protein and an especially high content of vitamin C, which contributed to the end of scurvy in Europe.
This enormous increase in consumption was rooted in the myriad of preparation techniques for the potato, which differ from region to region. In northwest Germany, which was orientated toward the Netherlands, potatoes were often eaten with herring, as fried potatoes, potato pancakes, and especially as part of a stew with vegetables and meat.
The south and southeast Germans stuck to the traditional Mehlspeisen—that is pasta, dumplings, grits, and so on—but integrated potatoes into their traditional recipes and created, for instance, potato dumplings. After the turn of the twentieth century, potato consumption began to fall, due to an increase in meat consumption.After World War II, the making of potato dumplings, potato mash (Kartoffelhrei), and prefabricated potato pancakes was industrialized. In 1949 the first prefabricated powder for making potato pancakes and potato dumplings was launched, ten years later prefabricated potato mash followed. With the development of the frozen food industry after 1945, french fries were introduced to German kitchens. They already had been known by the upper classes as a delicacy in the nineteenth century. But as cooking oil had been an expensive, and thus rare, article for the poorer classes, the “straw potatoes,” as they were called, were not daily food at all. This has changed because of the emergence of the frozen food industry and the concept of fast food. French fries are an important article in the fast food sector and are made from frozen prefried products. In 1960 Germans consumed only 1,000 tons of frozen potato products, which made up 4 percent of all frozen foods. By 2001 this figure had increased to 362,611 tons. About 12 percent of all frozen foods consumed in Germany are potatoes. Seventy-five percent of these are consumed as french fries in restaurants. Potatoes are still a defining element of German cuisine.
Ulrike Thoms
References and Further Reading
Hobhouse, Henry. Seeds of Change: Five Plants That Transformed Mankind. New York: Harper and Row, 1986.
Messer, Ellen. “Potatoes (White).” In The Cambridge World History of Food. Vol. 1. Eds. Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University, 2000, pp. 187—201.
Muller, Hans-Heinrich. “Der agrarische Fortschritt und die Bauern in Brandenburg vor den Reformen von 1807.” Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft 12, 1964, 629—648.
Ottenjann, Helmut, and Karl-Heinz Ziessow. Die Kartoffel. Geschichte und Zukunft einer Kulturpflanze. Cloppenburg: Museumsdorf Cloppenburg, 1992.
Salaman, Redcliffe N., W G. Burton, and J.
G. Hawkes. The History and Social Influence of the Potato. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University, 1985.
Teuteberg, Hans-Jurgen, and Gunter Wiegelmann. Unsere tagliche Kost. Geschichte und regionale Pragung. Munster: F. Coppenrath, 1986.