Gerda in the Stollwerck district
Ich bin’s wieder – die Gerda: Heute möchte ich euch etwas über mein Veedel erzählen – das Vringsveedel
Gerda – The Chocolate Girl
Gerda is the chocolate girl from Cologne's Südstadt district. This series of entertaining stories about the Cologne Chocolate Museum, the history of chocolate and the cathedral city of Cologne is all about her. The stories provide an insight into the Chocolate Museum. What interesting things there are to discover in the museum, how the museum came about, what links it to Cologne and the names Stollwerck and Imhoff.
Gerda is the bronze sculpture of the Stollwerck chocolate girl brought to life. A typical Cologne girl, cheeky, not a mouthful - but with her heart in the right place. And it beats for chocolate. She loves nothing more than that. No wonder. Because she was born in the "Severinsklösterchens", the "Hospital of the Augustinian Sisters" in the Severinsviertel, founded in 1874. Incidentally, anyone born there can call themselves a true "Kölsche". The scent of chocolate, which the nearby Stollwerck factory spread across the southern part of the city in her day, therefore wafted through her nose from the very first day of her life.
In 1990, a bronze statue was erected in her honor on Cologne's Severinskirchplatz. It was created as part of a competition to make Severinskirchplatz more beautiful. The result was the sculpture by Sepp Hürten. It was named after the most common female first name at the beginning of the 19th century. The reference is based on the former Stollwerck chocolate factory, which shaped Cologne's Südstadt until the 1970s. Many young women were employed in the factory to pack the chocolate by hand.
Travelers at the beginning of the 19th century reported two things in particular from the south of the city. A sweet smell hung over the district and there were the so-called chocolate girls. As married women were only allowed to work with their husbands' consent at the time - and this was the case until 1958 - it was mainly young women who worked in the chocolate factory. 84 hours a week - that is 12 hours a day, including Sundays. That didn't leave much time to learn how to run a household - because that was what young women were supposed to do at the time. In order not to expose the girls to this criticism, the Stollwerck company made sure that the girls received cooking and housekeeping lessons. These took place on Sunday afternoons and the girls were expected to attend.
Hey everyone, it's me, Gerda, the Cologne chocolate girl.
Are you saying you don't know who I am and have never heard of me? Well then you're not from Cologne or you haven't really gotten to know the city yet. But we can change that. If you want, follow me here on my blog. I'll take you by the hand and show you my world. My neighborhood, the factory where I work and tell you everything I know about chocolate. You like chocolate, don't you? But who doesn't like chocolate? I don't know anyone - and I should know. After all, I go around Cologne every evening after work and sell delicious chocolate bars and chocolate sweets. They cost 10 pfennigs. Not cheap, but the ones from Stollwerk are something very special and really tasty. Have you ever tried them? If not - shh - I'll tell you something: you have to go to the Cologne Chocolate Museum. There's a fountain there that gushes chocolate all day long. And you can get it there completely free of charge. Man, it would have been nice if it had existed back then, at the time I come from.
I see. You don't even know that yet. I have to tell you. Because I don't actually live in the present, I'm from 1922. What, you don't believe me? Then let me tell you.
Exactly at midnight - I remember it so well, because it was at the twelfth stroke of the bell of St. Severin - a Catholic basilica in the Romanesque style, part of whose construction dates back to the 10th century - I was magically brought to life. Next to me was a basket of delicious chocolate.
At first I didn't know what was happening to me, because now I was alive. It was very strange, because at that moment there was no one else on the square apart from me.
When I think about it today, I still can't believe it. Oh, that reminds me of something else I have to tell you. Did you know that it was here in Cologne - the first cinema screening in German film history? That was - let me think - in April 1896, just a few months after the birth of film in 1895. I know this so well because my mother had already told me about it when I was a little girl. She had also worked at Stollwerck and was there. It was a big day for my mother and all the other Stollwerck workers, because the very first screening took place in the company's own "people's kitchen" on the Stollwerck site. It wasn't until four days later that everyone else in Cologne had the pleasure. And who did it? The company Gebrüder Stollwerck. At the time, they were already big in the vending machine business with Deutsche Automaten Gesellschaft (DAG) and rented a hall at Augustinerplatz 12, where the Hohe Pforte is today.
Twelve short films were presented on the second floor of the building. For an admission price of 50 pfennigs (reserved seats cost one mark), the people of Cologne were able to marvel at the new invention of "living pictures" for the first time. If you want to find out more about it, take a look here: www.koeln-im-film.de/filmgeschichte/die-ersten-filmaufnahmen
Those were exciting times, 100 years ago, when I lived and worked in the Severinsviertel. Incidentally, we Cologne locals call it "Vringsveedel". The history of Stollwerck goes back to 1815, when the founder, Franz Stollwerck, was born. More on this later.
The stories come from the ideas of Klaus H. Schopen, the spokesman for the Cologne Chocolate Museum, and the Cologne storyteller Klaus-Peter Hausberg.
This post was written by:
Astrid Gebhardt
Ich bin Astrid und schon seit mehr als 10 Jahren im Schokoladenmuseum im Marketing unterwegs. Das ist ja auch einer der schönsten Arbeitsplätze in Köln und es gibt immer wieder tolle Geschichten rund um das Thema Kakao und Schokolade zu erzählen. Wo bitte hat man so einen tollen Blick auf den Rhein direkt vom Schreibtisch?
