Saxony's state library preserves a rich stock of culinary art, including three prominent collections. It has long been an important address for research on the subject - and now its center.
Dresden (dpa / sn) - The German Archive for Culinary Art is intended to promote research on the art of cooking, table and food culture. It was founded on Monday by the Saxon State and University Library (SLUB) and the Technical University (TU) in Dresden. The basis is the collection on these topics that is available at the SLUB and is unique in Germany. The stock should also grow through further acquisitions and parallel interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, said SLUB General Director Katrin Stump. To do this, menu cards, manuscripts and books would be digitized, scientifically indexed and made accessible online via a dedicated culinary portal.
The "Food Studio" is also intended to be a place for social discourse on nutrition and food culture. Parts of the inventory were stored there in the past. Nutrition and table culture are also considered with regard to language and up to the history of technology and food chemistry. Dresden is predestined to draw attention to the culinary tradition in Germany, said Professor Josef Mazerath, who researches the history of nutrition at the TU. Because of the court, the city has a cooking tradition that can be traced back to the 16th century.
In the past, the SLUB has amassed an extensive culinary collection by purchasing books, manuscripts, menu cards, graphics and photos. This includes the estate of the gastronomy critic Wolfram Siebeck with menu cards from the most prominent French chefs such as Paul Bocuse and Alain Chapel. The collections of Ernst Birsner, head chef at the Burda cooking studio, with over 40,000 menus and menus from German and European princes and royal houses from the 19th and 20th centuries, and the first German 3-star chef, Herbert Schönberner, also belong to the collection.
