Enlarge image
Snack bar illustration: time for new doner kebab narratives
Photo: Laura Fronterré / March Verlag
The German doner kebab turns 50 this year, at least according to Berlin's official capital portal.
The city cites statements from the »Association of Turkish Doner Kebab Manufacturers In Europe«, according to which a brave foreign worker named Kadir Nurman
invented the first doner kebab
to go in 1972 across from the Zoo train station.
It's understandable that Berlin doesn't just stand for Eisbein.
But this origin myth is highly controversial in the Turkish community.
Reutlingen also claims to be the cradle of the doner kebab.
And my mother swears that she ate kebab meat in bread in Istanbul back in the 1960s.
Nevertheless, the »Döner« with three different sauces and coleslaw, which is typical for our country, is an absolutely German dish.
Nobody in the world celebrates meat-in-flatbread-with-salad as much as Günther and Gaby.
In
Almanya
, the Bosphorus burger is more popular than Currywurst and McDonalds.
The kebab cult in numbers: an estimated 2.5 million doner kebabs are sold in Germany every day.
With 365 shopping days, that makes over a billion a year.
more on the subject
How German is the kebab?: Everything revolves around the kebab by Tobias Becker
At least that's what the journalist Eberhard Seidel, probably Germany's most prominent rotisserie expert, estimates.
Just in time for the presumed anniversary, he is publishing a book that is well worth reading: »Döner.
A German-Turkish cultural history”.
It is an updated edition of his first kebab compendium from 1996 »Skewered.
How the doner kebab came to the Germans«.
After reading it, you see the Federal Republic with different eyes and understand: Döner Kebab is more than just a snack bar.
He's a politician.
For the housewife of the 1980s, it meant a vacation from the stove, for the common people inexpensive feasting and for the East Germans a taste of freedom.
The German doner kebab, the chateaubriand of the working masses.
Stuck relationship
The Anatolian folding sandwich is now world famous.
When asked what he likes to eat in Germany, Tesla CEO Elon Musk replied on Twitter 2020: "döner kebap".
And every self-respecting travel guide recommends kebab shops.
But instead of including the kebab bag in the national cultural heritage, the population is divided over their special national dish.
"The consumption of doner kebabs is like going to a brothel," writes Eberhard Seidel.
"Hundreds of thousands do it every day, but those who provide the service are denied social recognition." That's exactly how it is.
The doner kebab still leads a shadowy existence in the public eye.
Or why do the investigators in crime scene thrillers almost always stand in front of sausage stands?
Does ARD deny the reality of street food on German streets?
And why no one has the history of the German
Doner kebab filmed?
In literature, even sauerkraut receives more publicity than kebab.
And you won't find a kebab museum either.
(Although two young men have started an action.) And why have German entrepreneurs never invested significantly in this billion-dollar industry?
Why is the doner kebab largely ignored by business, culture and politics?
Probably because kebab is still perceived as foreign.
As something that tastes good but doesn't belong.
How covert the relationship to the vertical roaster can be was shown when the police and media at the NSU spoke of "kebab murders", as if a spit roast killer were on the move and not a murdering neo-Nazi troop.
Or when a "kebab mafia" was quickly identified in the rotten meat scandal of 2006, even though the main suspect, a Munich wholesaler, was called "Georg B."
Not every kebab makes more beautiful
Of course one can criticize that the gastronomy branch has hardly developed after half a century.
And some takeaway operators use ingredients that are so bad that according to the Döner Purity Law (yes, there is such a thing) their product is more like a “kebab style kebab” that is better not to be eaten.
advertisement
Seidel, Eberhard
Döner: A Turkish-German cultural history
Publisher: March Verlag
Number of pages: 257
Publisher: March Verlag
Number of pages: 257
Buy for €20.00
price query time
02/24/2022 1:01 p.m
No guarantee
Order from Amazon
Order from Thalia
Order from Weltbild
Product reviews are purely editorial and independent.
Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the retailer when you make a purchase.
More information here
But the new kebab era is slowly dawning.
In Berlin's luxury hotel Adlon, in addition to the currywurst with gold leaf, there is also a doner kebab with truffle cream.
The starred restaurant Tulus Lotrek works with reminiscences of the doner kebab.
And not far from the Zoo train station, where the doner kebab was allegedly invented 50 years ago, »027« offers the latest evolution of the doner kebab: Anatolian bowls in a hipster ambience.
Of course also in veggie and vegan, and working on the spit: a woman.
The business can hardly be more adapted.
I think it's time for new doner kebab narratives.
The
German dream
is a kebab dream.
Countless parents have made it possible for their children to get an education or study in the blazing heat of the roaster.
And many Turks and Kurds, as courageous integration pioneers, have contributed to multiculturalism being incorporated as a leading German culture even in the furthest corners of the republic.
Maybe kebab is the cement that holds German society together.Typically German?
The love of doner kebabs.
Let's finally celebrate.