German states debate who invented Bratwurst sausages

A row has broken out between two German states, Bavaria and Thuringia, as to who can lay claim to inventing the Bratwurst sausage.

Until now, the “Wurstkuchl” tavern in Bavaria has claimed to be “the oldest Bratwurst stand in the world.”

Die Wurstkuchl is situated on the Stone Bridge in Regensburg on the Danube River. The oldest documented evidence of a cook or a food stall at the Stone Bridge is said to date back to 1378.

But now, historians in Erfurt, Thuringia’s state capital, have come across a document from 1269 that mentions people who rented a building with a meat-roasting stand (Brathütte) and a roasting pan (Bräter) – more than 100 years earlier than the Regensburg sausage stand.

Historians are now looking for the site in Erfurt where the sausage stand once stood. No restaurant there has claimed the title of oldest Bratwurst stand.

Previously in Thuringia, the earliest written reference to Bratwursts dated back to 1404. It described how “1 groschen for bratwurst casings” was spent in the town of Arnstadt.

Meanwhile in Regensburg, the Wurstkuchl is continuing to make its sausages.

On their website, it says “much has remained the same” since the Middle Ages, with “the open charcoal grill, the homemade sausages made from pure pork ham, the sauerkraut from their own fermentation cellar and the well-known Wurstkuchl mustard.”

In response to the report of an earlier sausage stand, the Wurstkuchl’s landlady Alexandra Meier told German BR24 TV: “To be honest, it doesn’t bother us at all.”

She said she was proud that her family makes sausages and that people come because of the quality of the products. “I don’t think people will say, ‘I’m not going there anymore because it’s only the second oldest.”

It is not the first time there has been a row about Bratwursts.

The Bavarian towns of Regensburg and Nuremberg both used to claim the oldest sausage stand title. Eventually, a decision was ruled in Regensburg’s favour.