Gray bread, Gouda, pickles – done before the “Tagesschau”: the cliché of the German dinner. But the culture change is clearly visible. Will the classic supper die out after a hundred years?
Berlin – “Abendbrot” is often called dinner in Germany. It is consumed between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. This is also how Germany travel guides or books about German as a foreign language explain it.
But in the modern world of work and the globalized age of low-carb dinners, i.e. the recommendation of many nutrition experts to eat low-carbohydrate in the evening: the meal of slices of bread with cold cuts may die out. Is supper imminent? Is it twilight now?
In any case, the sausage industry is slightly alarmed. However, the growing range of vegan and vegetarian meat substitute products is not causing concern – as one might think. “We can make a sausage product out of a mass of raw materials. Whether there is meat or peas in it is secondary,” Sarah Dhem, President of the BVWS (Federal Association of German Sausage and Ham Producers) recently told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”.
“The time of gluttony is over”
The change in eating habits as a whole is more consequential. Instead of lunch or dinner with a sausage topping, other dishes are increasingly being served. The sausage industry is in the process of repositioning itself, said Dhem, with a view to falling meat consumption. “The time for gluttony is over.”
In countries like Spain and Greece, where Germans like to vacation, the evening meal is usually warm – and also later than in Germany. Bread with sausage and cheese is there at most as a starter and not as a full-fledged meal that you finish quite Teutonic in time for the evening news on television.
According to cultural scientists, the German custom of eating cold food in the evening dates back to the 1920s. At that time, industry increasingly dominated everyday life – in contrast to the more agricultural structures in countries such as Italy and France. There were more and more canteens in factories. Those who ate there at lunchtime often no longer wanted a warm meal in the evening. Since work has also become less physically demanding thanks to technology, many people prefer it easier in the evening: bread, sausage, cheese, a bit of raw food, that’s it.
After the war, supper became even more popular. At that time, the number of employed women also increased. The quickly made supper became a tradition in many families. By the way, the sandwiches in the evening were never boring. Germany is known to be proud of hundreds of types of bread and sausages, often decorated with gherkins, radishes or hard-boiled eggs.
A life without an evening liver sausage sandwich
Nevertheless, millions of Germans today lead a life without an evening liver sausage sandwich: the trend away from cold snacks is clearly recognizable from Sylt in the north to Allgäu in the south.
The Allensbach study “So is(s)t Germany” for the food company Nestlé revealed that weekday dinner has become the most important meal for many people. In 2019, 38 percent named dinner as the main meal of the day, up from a third of the population ten years earlier.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has left millions working at home for months, has enabled many families to get together in the middle of the day. But experts don’t see a real revival of lunch despite working from home. Nestlé spokesman Alexander Antonoff says that everything indicates that the mega trend towards a warm main meal in the evening will continue. The social campfire in the evening fits more into the increasingly destructured everyday life of millions of households in Central Europe.
Despite all this, the artist and Gießen university teacher Ingke Günther does not believe that the evening meal, which used to be popular, will disappear completely in Germany. However, it has lost its dominant role for decades: “This is because the realities of work and life have become more diverse. But for older people and in families with children, supper is often still the norm.” And in some urban milieus, where organic bakeries have developed a new bread culture, there is a conscious return to supper.
Günther describes herself, among other things, as a “supper researcher”. She says: “The concept of sitting together at the table and making your own bread is simply impressive. The images of having dinner together are very vivid in the minds of many people – even if it is only celebrated at the weekend.” dpa
