Having fun at work: Emma Göttfert has been working in her father Mirko's steak shop since she was 14. © Fridolin Thanner
Kreuth – Emma Göttfert is enthusiastic about her father's craft. She has been helping out at the Kreuth steak forge for years, and now she is starting an apprenticeship as a butcher there.
Mirko Göttfert took over a butcher's shop in Kreuth four years ago. From the very beginning, he had support from the family. Daughter Emma quickly became enthusiastic about the craft and works with it regularly. In September, she begins an apprenticeship as a butcher with her father.
Slaughtering, dismantling, processing – for Emma Göttfert, this is more of a leisure activity than work. She stands in the slaughterhouse with a white butcher's apron, rubber boots and headscarf, washing the blood from the floor. That morning, she slaughtered three cattle with her father Mirko – first the two were at a grazing shot, then in their own slaughterhouse.
"Humane slaughter is important to me," explains Mirko Göttfert, "the animals have absolute peace and quiet with us." If they are not shot directly in the pasture, the farmers take them to the slaughterhouse themselves. "They don't have any stress at all," explains the butcher, "in the end you can taste it." He only slaughters and markets cattle, heifers and oxen from the Tegernsee Valley and the surrounding area, and sets high standards for both husbandry and feed. "My grandfather told me that the most important thing is animal welfare, then you get maximum quality out of it." And for Göttfert, this also applies to slaughter – although he himself worked on a piecework basis for many years.
In 2019, that changed completely. He did a house slaughter and then received the offer to take over the previously empty butcher's shop Walch in Kreuth. Göttfert restored everything and invested, "there was no longer any EU approval". He received it in September 2019, and since July 2020 his steak forge has been certified organic.
And since day one, when she was 14, daughter Emma has been helping out. She used to want to be a doctor, "but when dad started her own business, I had a huge crush on the profession." She doesn't want to do anything else, she prefers to go to the butcher's shop in Kreuth after school to work. From September, after graduating from secondary school, she can and must come along first thing in the morning. Then she starts an apprenticeship as a butcher with her father. He has already shown her a lot – from cutting up to seasoning the sausages. "It's amazing what the girl does," praises the father. It's physical labor. "Emma just has to work more with her brain and think about how to approach the tasks." Especially when slaughtering and cutting, men with the power have an advantage. "She just has to solve that with technology," says the master and has no doubt that his daughter can do it. She has ambition anyway: "I want to be able to compete with dad and be as fast as him."
But she already relieves him of a lot of work and has her own ideas, for example for the sausage. Weighing, seasoning, that's also a lot of fun for Emma. "It's just nice to do something with your hands and see what you've created," she enthuses about the craft. But there is also something else waiting.
"I'm sure she'll sit there for another hour until all the administrative work is done," estimates Papa Mirko. The bureaucracy after slaughter is time-consuming. Here, too, he is happy to have support. And although Mirko Göttfert cannot open the shop belonging to the butcher's shop due to a lack of staff, at least the next generation in production is taken care of.
