A little quiz question from German-German history: What do Meißen porcelain, Thuringian marjoram and the laser technology from Carl Zeiss Jena, which the space shuttle used to navigate through space in Erich Honecker's time, have in common? You never come to that: All three were among the very few export goods of the GDR that brought the state and party leadership one West mark and thus sacks full of foreign currency for each Ostmark. The quality of the marjoram was so good that hardly any worker-peasant-state resident ever saw it, because the entire harvest was carried to the West as a class enemy. Of course, almost nobody knew that, neither on this side nor on the other side of the wall. And little is known to this daythat one of the best marjoram in the world still comes from Aschersleben in the Magdeburger Börde - from Saxony-Anhalt, not from Thuringia, which does not end with the complications.
Herbal well-being helps against everything
Jakob Strobel y Serra
Deputy head of the features section.
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Wolfram Junghanns knows them all and also knows everything else about the Thuringian marjoram of Saxony-Anhalt provenance. Because he comes from a farming family in Aschersleben who wrote the history of marjoram in the Börde from the very beginning - his mother, he likes to tell, went to the West with a rucksack full of marjoram to get the proceeds from the fine herb fabric and buying cut sheets for her wedding dress. Marjoram is Thuringian because the pioneer of its cultivation originally came from Thuringia, but then inherited arable land in Saxony-Anhalt, planted the first fields in 1890 and quickly realized that the region around Aschersleben was made for marjoram. It lies in the rain shadow of the Harz Mountains, which is why it is one of the driest and warmest regions in Germany,The loose loess of the Börde is also entirely to the taste of the herb, which feels even more comfortable here than in its area of origin in Egypt and the Middle East.
Marjoram was grown there as early as the first millennium BC and was valued by all the advanced cultures of antiquity as a spice and symbol of happiness. The Greeks and Romans seasoned heavy meat dishes with marjoram because its essential oils ensure good digestion. Like the poet Catullus, they raved about the herb's stimulating effect and dedicated it to Aphrodite, the goddess of love; she transformed the son of the priest king Amarakos, who made her precious ointments and oils, into a marjoram bush after he broke a shell and fell dead in shock. In the Middle Ages, marjoram was considered a miracle plant against plague, nervous disorders and impotence, was called "little herbs of good cheer", reliably drove away witches and evil spirits, got children to talk,if they did not want to learn to speak, Hildegard von Bingen recommended a medicine against "headache caused by smoke in the stomach". And for Shakespeare, marjoram was nothing less than "the Herb of Grace".