Konnopke Currywurst

IN 1930 WITH THIRDMAXE FING EVERYTHING

Max Konnopke is 29 years old and has already tried a lot before he comes from Cottbus to Berlin and decides to become a Wurstmaxe. He counted the empty boards that accumulated around other sausage leanings at night in Berlin's busy squares. By day, this street business was still prohibited. But it seemed to be profitable! So now he wants to try his luck with the sale of sausages.

Said and done. He marries his beloved Charlotte, and from October 4, 1930, they both sell Bockwürste, Knacker, Wiener, and Krakauer in Prenzlauer Berg seven days a week from seven in the morning until five in the morning. Max stands at the busy corner Schönhauser Allee / Danziger Straße; Charlotte supplies hungry people on the corner of Schönhauser Allee / Stargarder Straße. Folding table, umbrella and sausage kettle. You do not need more.

Soon, Max has a motorcycle with which he approaches more corners. And Charlotte also pulls her kettle over the construction sites of the city. When the meat is scarce and from 1939 can only be had on brands, they sell just potato pancakes. They have their livelihood.

Would not it be the war? In 1941 Max was drafted into the Wehrmacht. Charlotte must bring the two children, Waltraud and Günter, alone.

1947 FROM THE MOBILE SAUSING BOILER TO THE FIXED SPACE

Back from captivity, Max Konnopke drives on what is needed to build two wooden booths. One he leaves under the municipal umbrella corner Schönhauser Allee / Dimitroffstraße (formerly Danziger Straße), the other on the Antonplatz in Weissensee. He soon replaces both with sausage carts. They are rolled away at night, because that is now a requirement.

Daughter Waltraud learns bakery trade saleswoman, son Günter the butcher trade. The daughter then enters the family business. Husband Kurt Ziervogel is in the party. From 1958 they sell together sausages at weekly markets in Prenzlauer Berg and help out at the two stalls. Also at the Christmas market in Berlin they are on the roasting pan. Your potato pancakes there are a hit!

1960 THE FIRST CURRYWURST IN OSTBERLIN

Son Günter takes his place in 1960 with a butcher in the West Berlin Wedding. And what does he discover there? The currywurst! It does not yet exist in East Berlin. Well that should change ...

The Konnopkes quickly devise a recipe with their butcher, which conjures up a currywurst without intestines from its sausage with intestines. The recipe for the sauce is invented in the domestic kitchen. The whole family is involved and keeps the secret until today.

Now there's the first Currywurst in East Berlin: At Konnopke's! Roasted in pork lard and served whole on a plate. On top of it, the delicious sauce that Mother Charlotte first touches at home by hand.

With a kiosk designed by Max Konnopke himself, in the same year he replaces the cars in the Schönhauser Allee in Prenzlauer Berg and in the Berliner Allee / corner of Mahlerstraße in Weißensee. The kiosk has electricity and water, is powered by propane gas, and it's on its way. There's even a freezer. He is glazed all around. At half past five in the morning, the light behind the windows lures the night owls from Prenzlauer Berg, craftsmen from the surrounding trades and shiftworkers to the kiosk on the "Boulevard des Nordens". Soon they queue up in long lines for a currywurst. There is something going on. This is rumored.

At the end of the 60s, when meat is scarce and fewer sausages are delivered, the Konnopkes know how to help themselves: they put black pudding and home-made potato salad on the dining table. In a roasting pan in front of the shack also fish fillet is sizzling.

1976 KONNOPKE'S CULT

Max Konnopke, the man who can do everything, likes to do everything in his own right and looks at it, falls ill. Therefore, he hands over his two well-known booths to daughter and son. The second generation starts. Günter in Weissensee, Waltraud wants to Prenzlauer Berg. Every day of the week, shortly after four in the morning, she enters her kingdom. Not long, and she is with most customers on you and you, is called Wally or Traudchen and is a kind of mother from the neighborhood. At the shack is bustling. Except on the weekends: It's closed.

In 1983 Waltraud Ziervogel has a new kiosk built, in the style of the time: made of shiny yellow metal. He resembles the numerous Intershops in the GDR. Max Konnopke knows his business is in good hands when he does 1986 dies.

In 1987, Waltraud relented: The kiosk was extended by an extension from which it sold sandwiches from then on. If you want to eat while sitting, you can do so in the snack bar, which you can build next to the kiosk in the same year.

Konnopke's has become an attraction, a magnet for Berlin and your guests.

1990 "TRADITION WITH TASTE" AND WITH A FUTURE

The turn becomes a departure into the unknown. The Prenzlauer Berg is changing rapidly. New customers, new site conditions, new wishes and new regulations. Press, radio and television have a long-standing topic, far beyond Berlin: how is Konnopke's going?

Grandson Mario Ziervogel gives up his job and becomes a sausage seller. His wife Viola, a meat saleswoman, follows him at the bar in Prenzlauer Berg. The third generation has started. A new cooking section will be installed. From now on, there are also chips and coffee. But the currywurst remains one without a gut. What is new is that it is cut on cardboard, with additional curry powder and in five levels of severity.

In 2000 Günter Konnopke sells his snack in Weißensee. The local Konnopke era is over. For this purpose, a new one will start in Pankow-Heinersdorf in 2007, because Waltraud will open a branch there, run by daughter Dagmar is directed.

In Prenzlauer Berg is maintained. Twenty years of uncertainty before a solution emerges at the end of 2009. It will take until May 2010, before the BVG, the district, the monument protection and Waltraud Ziervogel come to an amicable solution on the whereabouts of the building under the viaduct, Charlotte Konnopke no longer experienced. She dies in 2009.

Konnopke's snack in Prenzlauer Berg remains. Until spring 2011, the new kiosk at the old location will be opened, there's Currywurst across the middle island from a bright red sausage car.

Tip for further reading: Petra Boden, The Berlin Currywurst, Berlin: bebra verlag, 2010, 14,00 €