Following the discussion on Berliner, some discussion in the languagehat comments. John Emerson writes:
bq. Well then, why DID the effete Europeans name all their great cities after pastries and sausages?
And Chris Waigl comments on the Amerikaner. Now I thought Amerikaner here were always black and white, but my search today (in the middle of a heatwave) only produced a white one. Here it is nearing the end of its life:
And here (added later) a vague indication of size:
Of course there are Debrecziner and Krakauer, and even Regensburger. And on some translators’ list (pt?) there is currently a discussion about Engländer, Franzosen and Schweden – all of them types of wrench, if I understood it correctly. It can’t have been the Werkzeugforum, because I don’t read that.
LATER NOTE: How could I forget the Weimaraner?
Over here, “Amerikaner” used to be black and white. Nowadays, you can hardly find them. But now and then, I stumble over some that are either black or white.
I’ll have to investigate that the next time I’m in Donzdorf.
I have a feeling these were a cake that was easy to make after the war, and made in the American zone. I think the original raising agent was a simpler one, and the taste disguised by the lemon juice (they have some lemon juice or zest in them). But I haven’t found any details about when they were first made.
Good Gracious! I only now figured out that you are the “MM” that commented at the Language Hat.
And you’re giving me a serious flashback — my brother and niece live in Fürth, and the paper gave me visions of the Erlanger Tagblatt on the kitchen table when I came home from school.
(First I thought, all’s still the same, “da Club” is still losing, but enlarging the photo shows it was the national team that got clobbered.)
Playing in Nuremberg, though!
One or two photos on my now dead weblog Fürther Freiheiten http://groucho.typepad.com/ff/
You must agree that Tatyana’s comment about the size of the Amerikaner is rubbish?
It may very well be, if German papers are much narrower than American ones.
But I’ve never seen a cookie in American pastry shop that huge.
What do I know anyway? Never been to Germany.
I’d say that German pastry in general is of this size, and Amerikaner are no exception. Maybe bigger than American ones, but very much the same size as any cookie available in Germany. Nothing exceptional over here.
Oh, definitely (she said while munching on low-fat “Paille d’Or” raspberry biscuits). And I think you’re right, Margaret, about the Americaner being a simple, postwar sortof pastry. Give me a Nussecke or a Krapfen (with Hiffenmark) any day.
(But still, that paper is smaller than the traditional broadsheet format — it’s called “Berliner Format” I think.)
For pastry photos to have any scientific value, they should include a meterstick in order to establish scale. And no joke metersticks either, please.
Yes, well, I ate it, didn’t I?
I have added another picture for your edification. I couldn’t get a meterstick in the picture. Inches to the top right, centimetres to the bottom left.