Munich - Herta Heuwer was stuck in her snack stall in the western Berlin district of Charlottenburg. She was finished cleaning up for the day but it was raining cats and dogs and she had no umbrella. So she started to experiment. There was no more mustard left for her fried sausage. But tomato ketchup and curry powder were on hand, according to Zurich resident Olaf Boehme, the husband of Heuwer's niece Brigitte. It was Sunday, September 4, 1949, and Heuwer's curious curried sausage went on to become a German institution.
Asked to describe "classic" currywurst, Boehme pointed to the original. Heuwer, who died in 1999, fried the sausages until crispy on the outside, cut them in half and stuck a toothpick in either end. Her sauce consisted of tomato ketchup mixed, and then sprinkled, with curry. The currywurst was served with a soft bread roll, which was good for mopping up the sauce, on a porcelain plate.
On the knotty issue of "classic" currywurst, Werner Siegert asserts that "it doesn't exist!" Siegert lives in Munich, a city known for weisswurst, a very different kind of sausage. He is the author of "The Small But Absolutely Indispensable Currywurst Manual."
"Currywurst becomes currywurst the moment it's baptized with the sauce," he said.
Germany's fast-food stalls and restaurants have a wide variety of currywurst, which can be with or without skin, halved or chopped up, or served on a paper plate or porcelain.
There is an East-West divide on the matter of sausage skin, noted Meike-Marie Thiele, artistic director of the German Currywurst Museum in Berlin, which opened in August. Western Germans prefer normal sausage, while Easterners tend to go for sausage in the buff, skinless.
Berliners sprinkle curry on boiled sausage that has been fried and then slathered in red tomato ketchup. Rhinelanders use bratwurst, covering it with dark sauce that already contains the curry powder. "You'd provoke disdain if you ordered that in Berlin," Thiele said.
The spicy dish is so popular that Germans have many affectionate nicknames for it. Thiele said she had experienced a "really wild combination" in Germany's industrial Ruhr Valley. Called "Taxi Plate," it consisted of currywurst with mayonnaise, gyros and tzatziki. Some places even offer "deluxe" currywurst garnished with 22 carat gold leaf and washed down with sparkling wine.
The regulation-happy European Union, of which Germany is a member, does not specify the type of sausage or sauce required for currywurst, Siegert noted. So just about anything can be called "currywurst." Siegert said he found that odd, but also quite heartening.
Currywurst therefore remains an unconquered stronghold of sorts, "the last bit of freedom we have," Siegert declared. "I hope it stays that way."
