Bertha Gumprich

Bertha Gumprich (born July 28, 1832 in Nickenich ; † August 4, 1901 in Trier ) was a German-Jewish cook and cookbook author .

Life

She was born as the daughter of Jakob Meyer and his wife Anna. She received the Jewish first name Sprinz, but later called herself Bertha. She attended school until she was 12, after which she worked as a cook in various households and at Jewish festivities. She had been married to the trader Josef Gumprich since 1860 and lived in Trier in the building of the former synagogue , Weberbach 65. She had been a widow since 1892 and lived in very modest circumstances. She died in the Elisabeth Hospital in Trier and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Weidengasse.

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Her Complete Practical Cookbook for the Jewish Kitchen was self- published for the first time in 1888 . Self-checked and proven recipes for the preparation of all meals, drinks, baked goods and everything canned for the common and fine kitchen . In the foreword she referred to her more than 30 years of experience as a cook. The edition was 1,000 copies and was sold out after a few years. This is remarkable because at that time there were not many more than a hundred Jewish households in Trier, so the book must have been popular outside the actual target group. In 1896 the second, increased edition appeared with a total of 949 recipes on 251 pages. The third edition of the book appeared in 1899 and comprised 348 pages. After her death, six further editions were published by J. Kauffmann Verlag in Frankfurt am Main (7th edition 1914, 9th edition 1925), to which an appendix on the hygiene of the dietary laws by Dr. Philipp Münz was attached.

Many copies of the book were lost during the National Socialist era. The property of the Jewish population was forcibly confiscated, non-Jews destroyed books in their possession out of fear or compliance with the regime. The book was therefore forgotten and was only rediscovered through research by the Judaist Annette Haller . In 2002 a reprint ( ISBN 3-88476-560-4 ) of the 2nd edition from 1896 was published. Since no copy could be found in Trier, neither in libraries nor in private ownership, the copy from the Freiburg University Library was used as a template .

literature

• Gumprich, Mrs. Josephine . In: Sophie Pataky (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German women of the pen . Volume 1. Verlag Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 294 ( digitized version ).
• Complete practical cookbook for the Jewish kitchen. Self-checked and proven recipes for the preparation of all meals, drinks, baked goods and everything canned for the common and fine kitchen . Edited by Annette Haller and Heinz Monz. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2002. ISBN 3-88476-560-4
• Heinz Monz : Gumprich, Bertha . In: Heinz Monz (ed.): Trier biographical lexicon . Koblenz 2000. ISBN 3-931014-49-5 , p. 158.
• Heinz Monz: Bertha Gumprich, the Trier Jewish cook, born 170 years ago. In: New Trierisches Jahrbuch. 42. 2002, pp. 132-135.

Web links

• Much more than “just” a cookbook . Paulinus 2003, no.26