PURUJEET PARIDA
India is blessed with fertile lands enriched by mighty rivers, favourable monsoon winds bearing the gifts of the Indian Ocean and hard-working people enabled by the knowledge that allows them to harvest up to three crops in a year from the same patch of land. Not all countries are so fortunate. Almost half the population of the world resides outside the tropics and they do not live on peninsulas bordered by cloud catching Himalayas. In the high temperate zones, close to the arctic, a vast conifer forest blankets the earth from the permafrost of Northernmost Russia to the icy deserts of Mongolia. We can find these forests across the pacific in Alaska extending all the way across North America to just before the permafrost grasslands of northern Canada. The short summer and unyielding earth has kept those vast stretches uninhabited, but humans have populated everywhere that lay to the south. Maintaining a balance between short bursts of summer bounty followed by deepening gloom of looming winter is hard and most of northern Europe, Russia and northern central Asia have historically been sustaining themselves on one bountiful crop in a year. So how have they survived so long without enough food to sustain themselves?
The answer lies in food preservation. Here in India we do not need to look further than our spicy and sweet treats that we call aachar (pickle) and chutney. Throughout the breadth of our motherland, we have independently devised ingenious methods of preserving food by using natural preservatives like salt, oil and the drying power of our benevolent sun. We pickled our items at the end of summer to preserve them while the sun was still strong and the days, still long.
Without an option to dry prepared food under sunlight, the Europeans had to come up with their own methods, which would not need sunlight to be ready and remain edible for as long as a year, if not more. They developed methods of smoking, jam making, pickling with oil and vinegar and most importantly, they adapted the process for all parts of their sparse diet, from vegetables, to fruits to all the variety of meat they consume. Their process could be performed throughout the year with excess harvest or produce, ensuring sufficient stock. Indians made (and still make) aachars and chutneys to go with our snacks and spicy recipes, the Europeans made sausages, ham, haggis, sauerkraut, fruit and berry jams to be their sustenance through the bleak winter. They also improved upon the ancient practice of fermenting excess grain and fruits into alcoholic beverages. These drinks heated their bodies from within when the lakes froze over and the snow covered the land and houses but they also served another purpose – they took their minds off the bitter cold months and made them more comfortable on thick furry pelts spread around warm hearths.
The methods of preserving meat by stuffing it into cleaned intestines and/or smoking and salting it were well known to ancient Greeks and Romans. This was a way of efficient butchery, where every edible part of the animal were processed to minimize wastage. By using natural connective tissue, blood and organs along with spices and starchy fillers like stale bread, they ensured that all parts of the animal were used. Sausages began as minced meat and tissue stuffed into cleaned intestines, Haggis is made from an animal’s cleaned stomach sack stuffed with assorted organs and intestines along with fillers. While the process of manufacturing these items may not sound palatable, they were very well liked by peasants and noblemen alike. The traditions of preserving meat were continuously improved over the ages by the Gauls, the Anglo Saxons and the Germanic tribes, borne out of culture and necessity. With the Industrial revolution, processed tissue was started to be used as covering instead of intestines and pre-cooking the sausages became the standard in order to improve shelf life. Today, they have dried raw sausages like salami and Mettwurst which have a very long shelf life, fully cooked sausages (called Bruhwurst) which do not keep for so long, like weisswurst and jagdwurst. There are just too many varieties to list and one has to just visit Germany to understand that one could have different sausages every day and it would still take months to cover all the sausages produced in all the old Germanic countries – Germany, Austria and Poland. By the 18th and 19th century, Germans had already emerged as the world’s largest consumers of Sausages and Ham and they had over two hundred (by some accounts, nearly a thousand) varieties of sausages, differing on the contents, covering, spices, fillers and type – if at all – of pre-cooking.
In those times of German feudal society presided over by Royal and noble houses, royal celebrations were occasions of massive feasting, involving untold amounts of alcohol in the form of beer and incredible varieties of food on offer. So, when in 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig wed crown princess Theresa at Munich, a 16 day feast was organized in the fields in front of the city gates. Even today, more than 200 years later, the people of Munchen celebrate that wedding feast by throwing the world’s largest Volksfest (people’s festival) on the same fields, now known as Theresienwiese (Theresa’s Meadow) or just Wiesn. This festival, which draws over 6 million tourists from all over the world, is the Oktoberfest, which starts this year on September 16 and goes on till October 4.
Traditionally, Oktoberfest is a people’s celebration with a parade honouring the royals, beer, music, dancing, horse racing and fairs including games and prizes. The first sausage or bratwurst shops opened in the late 1800s, and the first beer served in glass mugs was only in 1892. Apart from being cancelled during the numerous wars that Germany took part in, Oktoberfest has been growing every year. Today, even with all the modernization, the essence of the festival, where a Bavarian parade led by MunchenKindl marches through the city of Munich towards the festival grounds, followed by a 12 gun salutre and the traditional ceremony of tapping the first keg of Oktoberfest beer which is 2% stronger than regular beer. This kick starts 16-18 days of revelry featuring local brewers presenting their concoctions in massive boot shaped glass mugs called Beer Bootsor decorative collectible stone/wood/horn mugs called Beer Steins carried by dirndl dressed beer-tent waitresses. There are also shows, parades, massive open air partiesand more. With all the show, the role of the humble sausage, served roasted (BratWürst) or with curry (CurryWürst) in filling stomachs of hungry, drunk revelers is hugely underplayed.There is also a wide variety of traditional foods including Schweinebraten (roast pork), Steckerlfisch (grilled fish on a stick), including preserved foods like Schweinshaxe (grilled ham hock), Würstl (sausages) along with Sauerkraut or Rotkohl/Blaukraut (pickled red cabbage) along with such Bavarian delicacies as Obatzda (a spicy cheese-butter spread) and Weißwurst (a white sausage).No person in the middle ages could have predicted that fermented grain and preserved meat would be mass manufactured as the main ingredient of festivities in 21st century Germany.
Since its inception, Oktoberfest has not been organized on 24 years – due to the 19th century wars, a few cholera epidemics, hyperinflation in the 1920’s and of course, the two world wars. The festival has survived them all and is going strong even after its bicentennial in 2010. In reality, Oktoberfest is not only an economic boon for Munich and its 6 main breweries, but also a Bavarian cultural ambassador to other countries around the world. During Nazi rule, the fest was repurposed for politically nefarious purposes, but it rose from the ashes of the Third Reich to bring hope to Bavaria in West Germany. After reunification, the fest has grown larger every year and is today the largest secular gathering of people in the world. No one in the middle ages could have predicted that alcoholic drinks would bring about diverse people from the world, together in peace and celebration, for its own sake. In this way, the Oktoberfest not only symbolizes the determination of the Germans to bounce back after umpteen tragedies, it is also proof that happiness in celebration always eventually triumphs over violence in conflict.