Discussing this book isn't the obvious thing to do when you've been a vegetarian for a few years, but the memory isn't lost.

And those who were allowed to spend the first decades of their lives in Berlin usually have plenty of memories of the doner kebab.

Hearty roasted meat, bedded in warm flatbread and doused, oh no, drowned in mind-numbing liquids called garlic and hot sauce - the kebab is the classic last meal of many a late night.

He has the edge over his local fast-food competitor, Currywurst, in that pieces of tomato and lettuce give him the illusion of healthy freshness;

unlike the sausage, a fully packed doner kebab can also easily be used as a main meal.

Jorg Thomann

Editor in the “Life” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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But something else mixes with the memories, namely a guilty conscience.

After all, one is aware that what is devoured here is ultimately only a hasty substitute for wholesome nutrition and that the meat rarely comes from happy chickens or calves;

the fact that people don't come across as very handsome when eating doner kebabs does the rest.

Part of a social security system

Eberhard Seidel, who can be considered the grand seigneur of the kebab world, agrees that the kebab “is still stubbornly attached to a dingy image today”.

His book, simply called “Döner” and subtitled “A Turkish-German Cultural History”, is based in part on his book “Impaled.

How the doner kebab came over the Germans”.

With his new book, Seidel wants to give the doner kebab “the special and honorable place it deserves in the migration and post-war history of Germany”.

More than any intellectual offensive, this simple dish promoted “intercultural encounters”: “Hans and Mustafa got into conversation not in the adult education courses and at the sites of high culture, but at the snack bar, the plans for the first trip to Turkey matured, became the first learned Turkish words.”

Seidel also chooses the Turkish word for his subject as a tribute to the country's achievements in the area of ​​doner kebabs: He writes "kebap" instead of "kebab", which is borrowed from Arabic.

For him, the doner kebab as we know it today is no longer Turkish, but also no longer German, but “something hybrid”, but undoubtedly “a Berlin creation”.

In Turkey, where meat consumption is a third lower than in Germany, you will hardly find large portions of meat in flatbread like we do.

The Germans are “world champions in doner kebab consumption” anyway.

According to Seidel's research, there are around 18,500 kebab shops and Turkish restaurants in the country and 1,600 stalls in Berlin alone.

"With a retail price of an average of five euros nationwide, the sale of one billion doner kebab sandwiches alone,

Dürüm kebabs and kebab boxes in the kebab shops turned over five billion euros,” writes Seidel.

"That's significantly more than McDonald's with its entire product range."