Lebkuchen, a Christmas biscuit, is a window on German history

The doors of the Düll bakery in Nuremberg open at 6am, but at this time of year, employees work more or less around the clock. Every day a team of 15 make 6,000 Lebkuchen, a traditional German Christmas biscuit. The bakers mix eggs, ground hazelnuts, honey, lemon peel and spices according to a jealously guarded recipe that has been in the family since the 19th century. The sticky brown dough resembles gingerbread and has a similar flavour, but it produces a biscuit that is softer and cakier in texture.

Today Alexander Düll, the great-grandson of the bakery’s founder, oversees operations. It was Mr Düll’s father, Holger, who decided to make Lebkuchen the speciality of the bakery, which now sells the biscuits all year round. (Tourists, ignoring the food’s association with Christmas, buy them even in the summer.) Last year Germany produced nearly 87,600 tonnes of Lebkuchen, up from 84,500 tonnes in 2021. The baked goods are exported to other EU countries, as well as America and Britain.

Nuremberg is proud to be the world’s capital of Lebkuchen. The location of the Bavarian city has been fortuitous for bakers: beekeepers in a forest surrounding the city provide plentiful honey. It also sits on major trade routes from Venice to Prague, meaning goods have flowed in and out since the 14th century. Millions of people visit Nuremberg every year to wander round the medieval town and sample the city’s gastronomic treats that, as well as Lebkuchen, include local varieties of beer and sausage.

Tourists, however, cannot ignore the ghastly parts of the city’s history. Adolf Hitler organised huge Nazi rallies in Nuremberg; Leni Riefenstahl shot “Triumph of the Will”, a propaganda film, at one in 1934. The Nuremberg race laws—which stripped Jewish people of German citizenship and banned relationships between Jews and those “of German or related blood”—were announced at a rally in 1935. After the war, the city hosted the war-crime trials of Nazi leaders.

Today the two histories—of war and culinary invention—coexist, sometimes in a jarring way. Flyers advertise the Christkindlmarket alongside the Documentation Centre, a museum that sits on the former rally ground and examines the “fascination and terror” wrought by the Nazi regime. The antisemitic propaganda published by Der Stürmer, a newspaper that originated in Nuremberg, makes for a sobering read in light of the current war in the Middle East.

Nuremberg used to have a large Jewish population before the Nazis came to power; hardly any survivors of the Holocaust have returned to the city. William Freund, who was born in Nuremberg, has reflected on what the city offered his family and what it took away in his book, “The Cookie that Saved My Family” (2010). He recalls fleeing Germany and arriving in New York with $7 between them. His mother, Paula, earned money by making Lebkuchen. She had memorised the recipe a neighbour, who worked in one of the city’s bakeries, had passed on to her. ■