Cabinet · Sweet Dresden
More about – Food!
This cabinet holds exactly one piece at a time: something sweet from Dresden, plus the story no ingredients list will tell you. Between now and Christmas we rearrange four times – the programme is on the wall.
In the display case now
Dresden · since 1474
The Dresden Christstollen
The story behind the piece
1.8 tonnes, eight horses, its own knife
The most famous stollen in history was not baked for Christmas but in June. Augustus the Strong had it rolled out in 1730 for his grand military revue at Zeithain: seven metres long, three metres wide, pulled by eight horses – rations for 24,000 portions.
The pastry itself had started small, and remarkably joyless. It first appears in Dresden’s records in 1474, when the St Bartholomew hospital paid seven groschen for two Christbrote – Christmas loaves – for the poor. Flour, yeast and water was all there was to it: the Church banned butter during Lent. Saxony’s princes spent decades sending petitions to Rome, until Pope Innocent VIII gave in with his 1491 Butterbrief, the butter letter. For a fee, naturally.
For his record stollen, Augustus left nothing to chance: court architect Pöppelmann, the man behind the Zwinger, built a dedicated oven; master baker Johann Andreas Zacharias turned up with sixty journeymen; and a 1.6-metre knife was forged just for the cutting. That is exactly what Dresden’s Stollen Festival remembers today: since 1994 a giant stollen has paraded through the old town every year on the Saturday before the second Sunday of Advent, ending up at the Striezelmarkt – where Christmas loaves were already on sale around 1500.
File
Seven groschen
The first mention, in 1474, is a hospital invoice: two Christmas loaves, given to the poor. No trace yet of later glamour.
Letter
Butter, with indulgence
Without the 1491 butter letter, stollen would have stayed a Lenten loaf. The permission came with an annual levy – the money went towards building churches.
Knife
1.6 metres
The Great Stollen Knife of 1730 lives on as a replica. At the Stollen Festival it makes the first cut, assisted by the Dresden Stollen Maiden.
More Augustus the Strong? The special exhibition “Beyond Dresden – Splendour and Legend” is right next door.
Programme
What goes into the case next
Five pieces between now and Christmas, plus one loan. We rearrange on Advent Sundays – much like the market a few steps away.
From 25 November
The Christstollen
From butterless Lenten loaf to the Zeithain record – with papal permission.
1st Advent · 29 November
Milk chocolate
The world’s first, 1839 – made with donkey milk, rediscovered in a newspaper advertisement.
Coming up
2nd Advent · 6 December
The Dominostein
A praline for hard times – invented in 1936, made famous when the hard times actually arrived.
Coming up
3rd Advent · 13 December
Russisch Brot
The only biscuit you read before you eat. Two letters are missing from every bag.
Coming up
4th Advent · 20 December
The tea bag
In the First World War it was called the “tea bomb” and tasted of nothing. Salvation came from the machine room.
Coming up
On loan from the Inventions
The coffee filter
Melitta Bentz, Dresden 1908: a brass pot, a sheet of blotting paper, world history.
Way out
Only sweets?
For now. Waiting in storage: currywurst, spaghetti ice cream and a soft drink with a wartime past. And if you happen to be in Dresden in December anyway: the Striezelmarkt, Germany’s oldest Christmas market, is just around the corner – with a whole Christmas country behind it, from the candle arches of the Ore Mountains to the toymakers of Seiffen.