Trude Herr and chocolate
She would certainly have changed her mind at the Chocolate Museum. Trude Herr and chocolate. Everyone likes chocolate. Don't we? After all, Woody Allen made a whole film about it. But, as we all know, tastes differ.
Asterix and the Aztecs
Cocoa in ancient Rome?
Gluttony, remedy, or even deadly ice cream? If you want to know how people used to think about chocolate, you have to look at very old writings. In the fall of 2025, we delved deep into history and researched the origins of cocoa in a joint project with the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Cologne—a project funded by the Chocolate Museum. Together, we did some real detective work and translated texts that hardly anyone had been able to read for centuries. Olaf Vortmann, our museum educator, takes you on a search for clues between ancient libraries and modern display cases...
Asterix and the Aztecs – No, right?
We're sorry, but this Asterix comic book is not available. But we felt a little bit like that because we had to delve very deeply into Latin texts. How did you come to study Latin texts at the Chocolate Museum? Was chocolate already around in "ancient Rome"? That would be sensational! But the answer remains the same – no! Cocoa only reached Europe in the early modern period and its home is the American continent, hence the Aztecs in the title. But why Latin texts then?
From the New World to the display case
We have redesigned our exhibition in recent years. A very beautiful area of our museum deals with the cultural history of chocolate. Here, we trace the path that cocoa and chocolate have taken around the world using many original exhibits. From its beginnings in America, through its first contact with Europe, to industrialization and the beginning of mass production.
Remedy, sin, or aphrodisiac?
Many exciting questions arose during the planning of the exhibition. In which writings can historical chocolate recipes be found? What did people actually think about chocolate when it first arrived in Europe? What kind of writings were actually written on this topic? If you follow these clues, you quickly discover that there was a major medical debate about chocolate. Can chocolate be used as a remedy, or is it even poisonous?
Theologians, on the other hand, were keenly interested in the question of whether chocolate was permitted or prohibited during the prescribed fasting periods. There are attempts at an initial botanical classification and, time and again, morality! Morality? Yes, because chocolate was said to have a stimulating effect, including on the sex drive. So be careful, Kinder chocolate seems to have a different meaning here! It is reported that the consumption of chocolate led to long-awaited pregnancies. And isn't its consumption fundamentally a form of gluttony – a deadly sin!
Latin: The language of chocolate science
Where can we find such details, which seem curious from today's perspective? If you search for historical writings in libraries, they almost always have one thing in common—they were written in Latin. Anyone who associates Latin only with ancient Rome is forgetting something very important.
Until modern times, Latin remained the language of all European universities. Whether in the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment, anyone who wanted to read a scientific text had to master one language—Latin.
Detective work between university and museum
This rule applies to almost all theological and medical texts from these periods. However, they are not easy to read unless you are a professional Latin scholar. We do not have any such experts at our museum, which is why we entered into an extremely exciting and, for us, very fruitful collaboration with the University of Cologne, or more precisely with its Institute of Classical Studies. This is where we found exactly the professionals we needed. The project description is a bit cumbersome: "The aim of the project is to find, translate, and comment on Latin source texts on the history of cocoa and chocolate, with a particular focus on Mexico and their reception in early modern Europe." Doesn't sound very exciting? Far from it!
Musk drink and the danger of chocolate ice cream
Many of the texts found did not exist in German translation and therefore had to be translated into German for the first time. It seems that this detective work was enjoyable, as more and more texts with truly fascinating content were compiled. Historical recipes for chocolate are the most boring, even if some of them don't seem very tasty from today's perspective. What do you think, for example, of musk-flavored drinking chocolate? The medical texts, on the
other hand, are much more exciting. For example, they warn in all seriousness against eating chocolate ice cream, as it could cause "sudden death." This expert opinion does not seem to have gained acceptance. But there are also many positive things to report. According to the assessment, a wide variety of ailments can be cured by eating chocolate.
Why we still think the same way today as we did back then
However, it would be wrong to read these writings merely as curiosities from a bygone era. They are not without significance for today, because don't we still secretly wish that chocolate were healthy? Don't we still consider it a small but forgivable sin? And why do many people fast from sweets of all things? Many of our ideas are older than we think! And that's why we sometimes have to look up Latin texts. Or come to the Chocolate Museum and see our new cultural history exhibition "Time Travel of Cocoa."
If you are interested in learning more about this topic, here is a link to an article about the project from Herder Korrespondenz: "Brought
by Adam – How Christianity appropriated cocoa": Read the article
Sometimes our daily research work leads to quite exciting results – and sometimes it even inspires the press!
The well-known historian and WELT journalist Berthold Seewald became aware of our current research project. The result? A fascinating article about the history of chocolate that dispels quite a few myths: Read the article
This post was written by:
Olaf Vortmann
My name is Olaf and I have been working for the Chocolate Museum since 2002. As a museum educator, I am responsible for our guided tours and tastings. That's very practical, because it's hard for me to imagine life without chocolate. But my annual consumption remains a secret!
