Typically German?

Germans love bread, and they don’t like to go without it when they are abroad. If things go as planned, this centuries-old tradition will soon be accepted into the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list – and the chances are looking good.

“Pumpernickel”, “Ausgehobenes”, “Frankenlaib” or “Münsterländer Bauernstuten” – these imaginative names are nearly as confusing for Germans as they are for foreigners, and with more than 700 unique bread types in Germany, the regional differences can be mindboggling. In fact, since the spring of 2011, the German Federation of the Bakery Trade (GFBT) has been building an online bread index in order to pave the way for an application to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Every guild baker in Germany is allowed to enter his/her crusty creations on the site – by the end of August 2011, roughly 2,600 recipes had been logged.

German bread as intangible cultural heritage

“Surprisingly few repetitions came up and we are not done yet,” says the general manager of the federation, Amin Werner, excitedly. The goal of the project is to protect bread as an intangible legacy of German culture. “There are of course historical, social, geographical, biological and commercial reasons why we still produce such an amazing variety of baked goods,” explains Werner, “and you can see that in the successful way the trade has been preserved.” Before UNESCO’s decision, however, one major obstacle needs to be overcome: German ratification of the UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage, which went into effect in 2006. A feasibility study commissioned by the Ministry of Culture contained suggestions for nationwide implementation that have already been submitted, but the federal government and the states still need to agree on how this should be done as there will be obligations and costs that accompany the program.

A nation of bread

Peter Becker, president of the federation, emphasizes that, “Every country has developed practices, skills and handicrafts that are unique around the world: Ugandan bark cloth, Chinese acupuncture, French cuisine or Argentine tango are just a few examples. As such, traditional trades in Germany, such as baking, and the incredible variety of bread that exist here, have a very good chance of being recognized as an intangible cultural heritage – once Germany has finally signed the convention!”

Whether it’s whole grain, mixed grain, rye, yeast bread or sourdough, the variety and regional variations are impressive, to say the least. It is no coincidence, then, that when Germans spend longer times abroad and are asked what they miss the most, “bread” is the most common reply. Christiane, a 35-year-old translator from Frankfurt am Main, can only concur. Every ear she drives to a small town on the Costa de la Luz in Spain to freshen up her Spanish skills and says, “I like dark bread with loads of grains in it.” Fortunately, she doesn’t need to go without when in Spain. There is a bakery in the town that offers German baked goods. “The only drawback is that there is more and more of this mainstream, industrial bread while the small bakeries are disappearing.”

Bakeries are dying, personnel is lacking

“Every year an average of 300 bakeries close down because nobody wants to take them over,” says Werner. In Germany there are currently 14,500 artisan bakeries. At the beginning of the 1990s, there were still 26,000, and the trend continues as increasing numbers of “meister” bakeries throw in the towel. There are two main reasons for the development, the first being cheap prices for bread at discount bakeries, nationwide supermarket chains and even petrol stations, all of which use industrial, ready-made mixtures. No small or mid-size bakery operation with traditional recipes and comparably high employee wages can keep up with that.

The second reason independent bakeries are failing is a massive lack of skilled labor – being a baker isn’t exactly high on the list of desirable professions among young people. The early hours and hard work has kept many people away from the trade, but it actually offers quite a variety of opportunities for the future. “In the last three years we had 4,000 fewer apprentices, which is certainly a result of a demographic shift,” explains Werner. The image campaign Bake your Future (Back dir deine Zukunft) is increasingly using the Internet and social networking channels to inspire newcomers to join the profession. Amin Werner is optimistic, and believes the chances for German bread to achieve UNESCO acceptance are good: “The German Parliament has endorsed entry into the ranks of UNESCO World Heritage and summoned the federal government to write up an implementation and transformation act. We’ve been putting a bit of pressure on them and hope that we can accelerate the process. Germany will in any case join the UNESCO World Heritage program, which makes our application possible.”

A UNESCO title would provide the bakery trade with a massive gain in prestige. Food in France, gingerbread production in Croatia and Spanish Mediterranean cuisine have already made it into UNESCO - why not German bread culture?