Will the pretzel become a World Heritage Site? And if so, where does it come from? – Bavaria

If you were to ask an unbiased, completely neutral committee like the SZ Bayern editorial team where the best pretzels are – yes, they would get a clear answer: in Bavaria, of course! But where? In the south, says a colleague. Under no circumstances outside of old Bavaria, says another. A third then urged caution.

The matter is also clear for Baden-Württemberg’s Cem Özdemir: “Bayern believe that their pretzel is the best and we know that ours is the best,” he said recently. Or in other words, as short as it is provocative: “The best pretzel is Swabian.” Nevertheless, the Federal Minister of Agriculture wants to be lenient – and register the Swabian pretzel together with the Bavarian pretzel as a cultural heritage at UNESCO. And because Austria, Switzerland and Alsace boast similar baking traditions, their pretzels should also be allowed to bear the title. A transnational project despite all tastes.

It is not known what UNESCO thinks of all this. But Bavaria’s Minister of Agriculture Michaela Kaniber, according to the Tagesschau, is said to be impressed by the idea. Which would be surprising, because the CSU otherwise rejects proposals from traffic light politicians as ideological or Bavarian bashing. Even more astounding would be alone if the new unity endured. Voluntarily share a title with the Swabians AND the Austrians? Rather unsuitable for election campaigns, in Bavarian beer tents there are exactly zero points for something like that.

And then there is the eternal dispute as to who the world owes this gift of baked goods to. The Swabians believe in a baker who could only have averted his execution if he invented a cake through which the sun shines three times. For the Bavarians, on the other hand, it has been proven that the pretzel was created in a baking accident in which sugar water and caustic soda got mixed up.

So the situation is more tangled than it seems. And if the Dutch wanted to, their hour could come now: The delicious knot as a cultural asset of the southern German-speaking area, by no means! Finally, as early as 1559, Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted clearly in the “Battle between Carnival and Lent”. a pretzel in.

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