Saxony-Anhalt is associated with specialties such as Harzer Käse (a pungent sour-milk cheese from the Harz), Bördespeck (smoked cheese) or Baumkuchen (layered “tree cake”). The Halloren-Kugel, a small chocolate ball and one of the most popular sweets in GDR times, comes from Saxony-Anhalt. The supposedly oldest beer in the world, Garley, which has been brewed in Gardelegen since 1314, also comes from there. The success story of Rotkäppchen Sekt (sparkling wine) is a Saxony-Anhalt story. After all, Rotkäppchen is one of the few companies with a GDR past that swallowed up their competitors from the West. Incidentally, Baumkuchen from Salzwedel or Wernigerode was, like Christstollen (Christmas fruit bread), a baked specialty people liked to send to their relatives in the West. When it comes to cheese, the people of Saxony-Anhalt have a taste for the unusual. From Würchwitz comes a mite cheese, ripened by cheese mites, which is, however, also known in parts of Thuringia.
A productive land
The soils of the Magdeburger Börde, the plain around Magdeburg, are fertile and productive. A lot of grain and vegetables have always been grown here. In GDR times, everyone also still had their own little patch of land for growing vegetables and keeping small animals. The regional cuisine of Saxony-Anhalt has parallels with the cuisines of Lower Saxony and Brandenburg. The Harz mountains have their own culinary tradition, in which game dishes play a central role. Besides the famous cheese, this is where Schierker Feuerstein comes from, an extremely popular herbal bitter. In GDR times, some people also distilled their own schnapps. At times, sugar was sold to each GDR citizen only in limited quantities. Friends gave the unauthorized master distillers large amounts of it for their birthdays. And when the farmyard gate was bolted from the inside, everyone in the village knew what was going on.
Brands popular across the country
It’s hard to believe, but even in the GDR there was such a thing as brand-name products. Many foods that were especially popular across the country were made in Saxony-Anhalt. These included the Quark desserts (Quark is a fresh curd cheese) called Leckermäulchen (“little sweet tooth”). Halberstädter Würstchen, sausages from Halberstadt, were another product popular beyond the borders of the Magdeburg district, and not always available. Other Saxony-Anhalt products with an excellent reputation were Burger Knäckebrot, crispbread from Burg, or the Kathi baking mixes. And of course every child loved Bambina, a chocolate-coated sweet made by the Zetti company. Zetti also made the tasty Knusperflocken (chocolate-coated crispy flakes) and the Schlagersüßtafel, which took rather more getting used to.
No competition back then
In the GDR, all these products were largely without competition. There was simply one kind of crispbread, not ten. All right, sausages and sweets were also produced in other districts and under other names. All the products mentioned still exist today. That they were able to hold their own on the capitalist market speaks for their quality. And of course, for hundreds of thousands of people, they embody the tastes of childhood. Among the good ones, though, there were also strange products born of scarcity. These included that Schlagersüßtafel, a kind of chocolate substitute that contained only trace elements of cocoa, if any at all.
Mona and Rondo Melange
Mona and Rondo Melange were coffee brands known throughout the GDR, made by the Magdeburg coffee roaster Röstfein. They still exist today as well, although in Bielefeld and Rostock you would certainly have to hunt for them. Coffee was quite expensive in the GDR, as it probably had to be imported for hard currency. In the 1980s, attempts were made to put an odd Kaffee-Mix, coffee stretched with substitutes, on the market. But the people never really took to these creations and preferred to buy “real” coffee for a lot of money, or at the Intershop, the state-run chain selling Western goods, for Western money. Incidentally, products that cost mere pennies were malt coffee (Karo-Kaffee) and beet syrup, which was also made from Saxony-Anhalt beets and was very tasty.