Business: Lebkuchen from Nuremberg

Eating and drinking keep body and soul together, this is true more than ever these days with new, worrying Corona news.

With Advent coffee, it can also be a nutritious gingerbread, the mass of which consists primarily of almonds, hazelnuts, egg white and sugar.

Even the monks in the Middle Ages, later also commercial providers, so-called Lebküchler or Lebzelter, understood the processing of these long-lasting baked goods, in which the processing of special spice mixtures plays a special role.

Petra Kirchhoff

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The city of Nuremberg can look back on a long gingerbread tradition, as several European trade routes once crossed here and this is how spice traders came to the city.

The “Nürnberger Lebkuchen” brand can only be advertised today by those who produce them on the spot.

The Lebkuchen-Schmidt company has been doing this according to its own recipes and spice mixes since 1927.

"Frankfurt is real Schmidt-Land"

The gingerbread producer is well known in Frankfurt.

The branch is one of five year-round sales outlets and, with more than 30 years, the longest-running location.

"Frankfurt is real Schmidt-Land," says a spokesman.

The store on Neue Kräme was given up this autumn, however, and it can now be found a little further in the direction of Zeil, on a former bakery area that was empty for a long time.

There is more space here for the new concept that the Nuremberg-based company intends to implement for the first time in Frankfurt.

Frozen yoghurt, coffee and tea will then be sold in the warm season.

Because the renovation is still pending, improvisation is taking place at the moment in a very bright, uncomfortable light.

But that doesn't stop gingerbread fans from stocking themselves generously, not only with gingerbread, but also with cinnamon stars, speculoos, dominoes and shortbread from the Franconian star chef Alexander Herrmann, with whom there is a cooperation.

The cheap bags with gingerbread fragments are popular, cakes with small blemishes that cost between 6.90 and 10.90 euros (550 grams) depending on the quality level.

There are also such bags for Elisen Lebkuchen, which is premium because of its higher proportion of nuts and spices.

Of course, the gingerbreads look even nicer in the colorful tins and chests with nostalgic pictures, of which there are umpteen variants - for example a large holiday chest (78.50 euros) with space for 13 different specialties, among them the "Elisen Queen", gingerbread of the year, which does not contain any flour.

Lebkuchen-Schmidt

, Liebfrauenberg 3, Frankfurt;

Monday to Friday 9.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.