His standard work "Abriss der Bierbrauerei", the first edition of which appeared in 1972, should not be missing from any German brewery.

The many students that Ludwig Narziß, as Chair of Brewing Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Weihenstephan, has trained over the decades have carried his knowledge all over the world.

Up until his later years, Narcissus could still be seen at symposia as a calm and modest observer.

Full of curiosity, he observed the development of beer, which gained momentum in the last decade due to the impulses of the craft brewers and argued up to the last state of the art when asked, and he was constantly asked.

With sparkling eyes, brewing students told

Narcissus tried her first beer and said appreciatively: "That's good.

You can sell it like this on the marketplace”.

Uwe Ebbinghaus

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Narcissus, who through his research had made a significant contribution to the industrialization of beer and thus also to the low beer price in Germany, which could hardly be beaten worldwide, and who, despite increasing criticism, remained an undogmatic supporter of the Purity Law, in his last years had the size to admit that with the many advances in brewing science that Germany had to show, the aroma of this beer sometimes fell by the wayside.

He therefore welcomed the "craft beer trend", as he used to say, and felt reminded of the tart beers associated with this more artisanal development of those of his youth, which had a much higher bitter content than the standard beers today.

Only he could answer certain questions about the development of beer taste in Germany.

In an interview with FAZ.NET in 2016, he looked back on his youth, when beer was still part of everyday (work) life in Bavaria.

He remembered the thin beers after the war and the emergence of pils beers in central Germany that accompanied the decline of Dortmund export beer: “You have to imagine: the Ruhr area was badly affected by air pollution at the time.

I was up there in 1957 and had to change my shirt twice a day.

And then suddenly the Pils beers came from the Sauerland, from the undisturbed nature.

That was their big chance.”

As a young management consultant, he himself was involved in establishing Pils in Bavaria.

Narcissus had learned the brewing business from scratch.

The father had been director of the traditional houses Hacker-Bräu in Munich and Lederer in Nuremberg.

The son first did a brewing apprenticeship with Tucher and then studied brewing in Weihenstephan.

After completing his doctorate in 1956 on the "Influence of yeast on the properties of beer" (a typical unpretentious Narcissus formulation), he was the first master brewer at Löwenbräu in Munich from 1958 to 1964, before becoming professor of brewery technology in 1964 at his university.

He held the chair until 1992 and continued to shape it as a sought-after consultant into his last years.

Ludwig Narziß received numerous honors, including the Federal Cross of Merit with Ribbon;

a prize for brewing science was named after him.

He acknowledged the term “beer pope”, which was often given to him, with a wry smile.

It was more alien to the open-minded pragmatist than almost anything else.

The fact that his wealth of experience and his charisma will be missing in the future is a bitter loss for the German brewing industry, which was so fond of being reflected in the man with the robust intelligence and the large, philanthropic eyes, who was energetic into old age.

Also read the interview with Ludwig Narziß from the FAZ beer blog: "How is the taste of beer changing?"