German Pork Butchers: A Short History

 

 

The next time you find yourself in front of a shop window with a hankering for a flaky sausage roll, a crusty rissole or a juicy pork pie, you might want to pause and spend a reverent moment savoring the complex layers of such seemingly simple meals. More than just tasty snacks, these familiar pork dishes actually harken back to a wave of highly skilled German butchers who, in immigrating to the British Isles during the Industrial Revolution, brought with them a handicraft honed for centuries at home.

Home for these strapping young men was Hohenlohe, a small but famed agricultural region of green rolling hills just on the other side of the forest from your twin town of Backnang. Denied an inheritance through the practice of primogenitor, these second-born sons packed their skill set and sought their porcine fortunes overseas. As luck would have it, their arrival coincided with a growing need in industrial centers for quick and cheap meals to fuel the workers on the factory floors. The pork butchers of Hohenlohe obliged, and their delicious convenience foods, redolent of the homeland, soon became dietary staples of the British working classes.  

Tragically, this culinary symbiosis was cut short with the onset of the First World War. The sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania especially fueled hostilities towards German immigrants who had become respected members of British society. The butchers, suddenly subjected to riots and internment, were forced either to leave or to erase all traces of their German heritage, including a denial of the handicraft which had made their fortunes.

In a happy modern-day coda, however, the descendants of these butchers journey regularly to the rolling hills of Hohenlohe to explore their family origins. Organized by historian Karl-Heinz Wüstner, the unique tours include cultural highlights of the region combined with insights into the modern German pork industry.  

In a further serendipitous twist, Hohenlohe is also home to the company ZIEHL-ABEGG, a familiar name in the Chelmsford industrial landscape. Personal connections within the Partnerschaftsverein Backnang-Chelmsford made a recent outing with these British descendants possible. On a steamy, hot August evening, the two groups sat down for a meal together. Over cool glasses of bracing, dry local wine and hearty platters of salty pork delicacies, we all agreed that it is a small world, after all.