Mozartkugel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Different Mozart balls in comparison

The Mozartkugel is a confectionery made from chocolate , pistachios , marzipan and nougat . According to the company, it was created in 1890 by the Salzburg confectioner Paul Fürst and named after the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had died almost 100 years earlier . The original name was Mozart candy .

The original Salzburger Mozartkugeln , prepared by hand according to the original recipe, are still made by the Fürst confectionery today and are only sold in their shops and offered for dispatch on the Internet. Due to the lack of property rights of the Fürst company, there are numerous imitation products that are mainly produced industrially.

The original

The master confectioner Paul Fürst, who came to Salzburg in 1884, opened his own shop at Brodgasse 13. In 1890 he presented the Mozart candy for the first time , which he later produced and offered for sale as Mozartkugel . Fürst's achievement was the creation of a spherical praline that was never flattened. In 1905, Paul Fürst presented the Mozartkugel at a Paris exhibition and received a gold medal for it.

The original recipe

The original Mozart balls are still made manually by the Fürst confectionery according to the original recipe and the original method:

First, a ball of green pistachio - marzipan , surrounded by nougat formed. This ball is then placed on a wooden stick and dipped in dark couverture . Then the stick is placed vertically - with the ball upwards - on platforms to cool and harden the mass. Finally the stick is removed, the remaining small hole is filled with couverture and the ball is wrapped by hand with blue-silver tinfoil . In this way, the employees of the Fürst company, according to their own statements, handcraft around 2.75 million Mozart balls per year. In the air-conditioned business premises of the café in Brodgasse / Alter Markt and the branches in Ritzerbogen, Getreidegasse and across from Mirabell Palace , the balls stay fresh for around eight weeks (they are also available by direct mail, but not in other stores ).

Current awards

In its 01/2006 issue, the specialist magazine Der Feinschmecker selected the Original Salzburger Mozartkugel as first place in a test of various Mozartkugel. It was noted that it was handmade and had a nougat taste with a slightly bitter marzipan-pistachio note. At the 2nd international truffle competition at the ÖKONDA confectionery trade fair in Wels , the original Salzburg Mozartkugel was awarded a gold medal in September 2005.

The name

Handcrafted “Original Salzburg Mozartkugeln” from the Fürst confectionery

Origin of name

The specialty, invented by Paul Fürst in 1890 as Mozart candy , was initially copied by other confectionery shops in the city, such as the Holzermayr and Schatz pastry shops that still exist today. The latter - founded by Carl Schatz in 1880 - first sold these pralines as Mozart balls around 1900 , a name that quickly caught on in Salzburg.

Naming rights

The many Mozartkugel imitations ultimately led to a lawsuit brought about by Paul Fürst's descendants, which dealt with the naming rights, not the recipe. The disputes initially only affected Salzburg confectioners, then also the competition from Germany. An agreement was finally reached: the competitors had to be content with other names, such as the Mirabell company based in Grödig near Salzburg with Echte Salzburger Mozartkugeln or the Bavarian supplier Reber with Echte Reber Mozart balls .

In 1996, a copyright dispute between Fürst and a subsidiary of the Swiss food company Nestlé - which wanted to bring an "Original Austria Mozartkugel" onto the market - was decided in a third instance: only Fürst products may be called Original Salzburger Mozartkugel .

Artisanal production

In addition to the Mozart balls from the Fürst confectionery, there are also those from the Schatz pastry shop in the city of Salzburg (in the Schatz passage from Universitätsplatz to Getreidegasse, just after the Ritzerbogen), those from the Josef Holzermayr confectionery , which has existed since 1865 (on the Alter Markt), and those (on their own Recipe) from Café Habakuk (Linzergasse 26).

The Dallmann pastry shop, based in St. Gilgen on Lake Wolfgang, also produces Mozart balls by hand according to Fürst's original recipe. Like the Fürst balls, they are wrapped in silver-gray tinfoil paper with a blue print. A Mozartkugel seminar is also offered there, through which you can train to become a qualified Mozartkugel specialist.

According to a court ruling from December 2017, only the Fürst confectionery is allowed to wrap the Mozartkugel in silver tinfoil paper with a blue print.

The industrial manufacturer

"Real Reber Mozart balls"

Shortly after its presentation in Paris, other Salzburg confectioners copied the Mozartkugel, which had quickly become popular, and the confectionery industry, which was just developing, soon began to produce this popular specialty, because Fürst had not protected the name Mozartkugel .

The leading industrial Mozartkugel manufacturers, Reber and Mirabell, are based in the EuRegio Salzburg - Berchtesgadener Land - Traunstein . The industrially produced Mozart balls do not follow the original recipe, but are based on variants. In addition, they are smaller in volume than the original and mostly flattened on one side. With the Mozartkugeln from the world market leader, the German company Reber, the nougat is in the middle and is covered with one half of white and the other half of green marzipan, and in one place they are heavily flattened and not nearly round. In the Mirabell Mozart balls, the green marzipan core is surrounded by a ring of dark and light nougat cream. In the Hofbauer and Manner Mozartkugeln, the nougat core is enclosed on the inside and the pistachio marzipan, and the Hofbauer ball is flat at the bottom. At Hofbauer, the coat consists of dark chocolate (Hofbauer red) or milk chocolate (Hofbauer blue), depending on the variety. The Mozart balls from the German company Lambertz are also flattened on one side, a hazelnut nougat core is coated with pistachio and almond marzipan, and on top is a layer of dark chocolate. Both Mirabell and Reber emphasize that no preservatives, no colorings and no artificial flavors are used in production.

Germany

By far the world's largest producer of Mozart balls is Paul Reber GmbH & Co.KG from Bad Reichenhall in Bavaria . Reber produces more than 180 million balls annually (500,000 daily) and has a market share of approx. 90% in Germany alone.

The Dreher company had been producing Mozartkugeln since 1931, making it the first German manufacturer of Mozartkugeln.

Since 2000 the Halloren Schokoladenfabrik AG in Halle (Saale) has been one of the producers of Mozartkugeln after the takeover and merger of the Munich Confiserie Dreher, which was founded in 1880. The Lambertz company in Aachen also produces Mozart balls , among others for Aldi and Hofer . The German confectionery distributor Hussel has the Mozart balls "Vienna" in its range.

Austria

Mirabell logo

The largest industrial manufacturer of Mozart balls in Austria is Mondelez Austria , which is based in Grödig near Salzburg under the Mirabell brand and holds the rights to the “Echte Salzburger Mozartkugel” brand. According to the company's own information, over 90 million Mozart balls are produced industrially each year and exported to over 30 countries. According to the company, a total of 1.5 billion Mozart balls have been produced by Mirabell since 1945. Mirabell goes back to the Salzburg company Rajsigl. It was the first to be able to machine completely round Mozart balls. The brand is the only industrial manufacturer allowed to sell concentric spheres. All other major manufacturers have to produce their Mozartkugeln slightly flattened.

There is also the Hofbauer company in Vienna, which belongs to the Swiss Lindt & Sprüngli and offers variants with milk and dark chocolate. Austria Mozartkugeln Victor Schmidt are also produced by the Manner company with production sites in Vienna , Wolkersdorf and Perg .

Litigation

At the end of the 1970s, a legal dispute over trademark rights broke out between the Mozartkugel manufacturers Mirabell or Austrian government representatives and Reber. “In 1981 Austrian government officials tried to get an agreement that would only allow Austrian producers to manufacture and export Mozartkugeln worldwide. Reber had protested against it at the time. The Bonn Bundestag was also concerned with the Mozartkugel question. Finally, Brussels decided on the dispute, the EC officials rejected the agreement. "

Reception in art

sculpture

In the winter and spring of 2006, 80 oversized Mozart balls made of polyester , around 1.60 meters in diameter and designed by artists, were exhibited in Salzburg's old town . On the night of March 27-28, 2006, this action was affected by an act of vandalism. Unknown strangers removed one of the spheres from the floor on Franziskanergasse, on which it was fastened with screws. Then the perpetrators rolled the ball onto the street, causing damage of around 7,000 euros.

Movie

  • 2006: Mozartballs (German: Mozartkugeln ). Director: Larry Weinstein
  • 1996: Stockinger - Salzburg balls . Director: Jörg Grünler

photography

Mozart by Stefan Dokoupil

Web links

Commons : Mozartkugel  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Mozartkugel  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. original Salzburger Mozartkugel: History. Cafe Konditorei Fürst, accessed on November 3, 2014 .
  2. Stéphanie Souron: Mozartkugeln in Salzburg: Only real with nipples. spiegel.de, September 9, 2013, accessed on September 9, 2013 .
  3. Salzburg Window ( Memento from May 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), queried on June 18, 2008
  4. Mozart balls: real or original? on handelsblatt.de , January 28, 2006.
  5. Chocolate war for the original ( Memento from October 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  6. Fürst wins legal dispute over Mozartkugel , ORF, December 15, 2017
  7. Mozartkugel round shops. on: sueddeutsche.de .
  8. a b c Give me the ball, Wolfgang Amadeus! In: confectionery. 3/2006.
  9. ^ Halloren specialties
  10. www.mozartkugel.at , Kraft Foods Austria
  11. hofbauer.com , Lindt & Sprüngli
  12. derStandard.at: Vandal act to Mozartkugel
  13. Entry on IMDB , homepage ( Memento of the original from November 4, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mozartballs.net
  14. Entry on IMDB
  15. "Mozart Project"