Whoever hears the name “Dallmayr” thinks of coffee. This is likely to be the case outside of Munich, far from the delicatessen of the same name on Dienerstrasse in the heart of the city. In fact, the roasted beans business is now one of Dallmayr’s mainstays. Meanwhile, the business also includes a restaurant, a catering service and the operation of coffee and snack machines all over the world. It was completely different in 1900. At that time, today’s Dallmayr empire consisted only of the shop, which was already in the same place as it is today.
“Colonial goods, tea and cigarettes” as well as “deli foods, wines and spirits” were available for purchase. This is what Lisa Graf describes in her historical novel “Dallmayr – The Dream of a Beautiful Life”. At the center of the book: Therese Randlkofer, who runs the shop after the death of her husband. As a woman – at that time it was a sensation. And it was the inspiration for Graf’s book. “I asked myself: What kind of woman is this, how did she do it?”, says the author. She started researching: for four months she trawled through libraries and the city archive, she found what she was looking for in books, old diaries, photos, application documents and a family chronicle.
After the death of her husband, Therese Randlkofer ran the “Dallmayr”. A sensation at the time.
(Photo: Penguin Verlag)
From this she unfolded the story, which also found its way into the Spiegel bestseller list. It’s about the finest Parma ham, capers in butter sauce, pralines whose cocoa and nuts you “smell, taste on your nose, on your lips, on your tongue and everywhere at the same time and even feel them on your skin (…)” . The small and large dramas of the Randlkofer family also find their place in the book. An illegitimate child, for example, or a brother-in-law who can’t deal with the fact that Randlkofer has put himself at the helm of the flourishing company instead of him. As you read, you are immersed in Munich around the year 1900, where horse-drawn carriages drive down Maximiliansstraße, women wear loose dresses and men top hats, and where a train journey to the Upper Palatinate is like half a trip around the world.
The key historical data are correct. Alois Dallmayr, who gave the business its name, actually sold it to the Randlkofer family in 1895, and his widow Therese took over. But not everything that Graf describes corresponds to reality. “Many people are completely fictitious,” says Graf: After all, a story has to be told through the characters in it. It was clear to her that young people had to appear in the novel and not just people from the middle class.
The author Lisa Graf takes you to Munich around the turn of the century. A lot of things in her book really happened, but some of the characters are fiction.
(Photo: Carina Engle/Penguin Verlag)
And although some sections read in such a way that one would like to rush straight to the store and buy a few delicacies, Dallmayr did not commission the book and Graf did not sign any advertising deal. The company was informed about the book right from the start and a joint marketing campaign was also suggested, she says – but Dallmayr was not interested. She herself wants to use the book to show the opportunities that young women could take at the time, apart from getting married young and running a household – “there were few, but there were a few”. She was fascinated by the development of the business, which was always one step ahead: Randlkofer planned to expand the store, a step towards department stores, where one could get inspiration on a large sales area. The difficulty in writing? “Not to lecture,” says the author, although you know so many details.
Meanwhile, Graf already has his next novel up his sleeve. It is about how the traditional delicatessen business fared at the beginning of the 20th century: first great splendor, then the First World War, which almost meant ruin for the shop, Graf reveals that much. The third volume should then end with the complete destruction of the house in 1945. “You can weave some of Munich’s contemporary history into it – that’s part of it,” says the author.
Lisa Graf: “Dallmayr – The Dream of a Beautiful Life”, Penguin-Verlag, 2021, 640 pages, 15 euros.