Nur Senf

by

 

Harry L. Stern

 

The Chicago Literary Club

 

March 3, 2008

 


PART I: THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY

 

The Revolution in Western Europe of 1848 was a cataclysmic event; it marked the end of the post Napoleonic era when monarchist regimes had re-established order. They then squashed liberal or reformist tendencies that had been active since the French Revolution of 1789.  A middle class of merchants and tradesmen emerged from the subservient peasantry and village life that predominated well into the 19th century.  The Communist Manifesto published in London in 1848 frightened conservative governments throughout Europe.

            The uprisings of 1848 were particularly virulent in the scores of separate German-speaking duchies, principalities, and mini-states outside of Austria and Switzerland.    German-speaking Prussia was one of the half dozen world powers of that era.  The nation we call Germany did not exist until 1870.

            The upheaval east of the Rhine River at the close of the 1840s had a direct impact on the growth of Chicago, which at the time was just a cluster of cabins where two rivers joined together at a swampy beachfront on Lake Michigan; it was to become a major city in North America.

            Chicago's initial period of rapid growth from a population of 30,000 in 1850 to 110,000 only ten years later coincided with the acceleration of German immigration to the United States.  The city’s population of two million in 1900 was one-quarter German born or second generation. Fleeing the chaos in the numerous German states, resulting from that Revolution of 1848, German – speaking Catholics, Protestants, and Jews flooded into Chicago before the Civil War.  Because one third of all Jews in the German states had been in the livestock industry at that time, it is not surprising that those in Chicago were involved in some facet of the cattle business, meat packing, or the butcher trade. 

            Archibald Clybourn’s early slaughterhouse was built in 1827, at the north edge of town near that branch of the Chicago River.  Clybourn, ahead of those to come, sold his meat door-to-door.  Other abattoirs followed in the 1830s serving not only the growing local population, but also the shipping trade that was expanding on Lake Michigan.

One of the most prominent of those engaged in the meat business later in the1800s was Nelson Morris, whose meat packing firm was organized downtown in 1859.  One year earlier, Morris Berg had already established himself as a cattle dealer at 42 Clinton Street, a block west of what is now the Ogilvy commuter railroad station.

            Morris Berg's brother, David, was about 19 years old when he fled from his birthplace, Frankfurt am Main, in the aftermath of the upheaval in the Rhineland that was caused by the 1848 Revolution.  David spent several years in the area around Liverpool, England, where he honed his skills in the meat trade and met his wife.  The pair emigrated from Germany to the United States in the later 1850s, presumably ending up in Chicago because his brother Morris was already there in business.  There is a family legend that the newly married couple had briefly lived in Woodstock, which was about 50 miles northwest of Chicago in McHenry County, before Chicago, but that cannot be substantiated because all the McHenry County records were destroyed in a fire in the 19th century.

            The David Berg Sausage Company was founded in 1860.  It was first listed as a butcher shop and meat market at 118 Madison Street, and was listed next at 162 Clark Street, and after the Civil War at 95 Wells Street between Lake and Randolph.  The company was wiped out by the Great Fire of 1871.  This devastating conflagration leveled every building downtown from the River south to Taylor Street, and north of the River to Fullerton, east of Halsted.  Before this fire, David Berg's brothers, Adolph, Siegmund, Moses, and the aforementioned Morris all had worked for him at various times.  Their residential addresses in Chicago and affiliations with their brother David at his various business addresses are well documented in the annual commercial directories published from 1859 to 1900.

            Frankfurters are named for the city of their origin, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica; but the encyclopedia incorrectly listed that they were introduced into the United States about 1900 in New York.  The website of the records of the David Berg Sausage Company notes that his round, half-foot long one inch thick frankfurters were a popular item at the Republican National Convention where Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency in 1860.  That Convention was held at the Wigwam, a huge, newly constructed facility on the southeast corner of Wacker and Lake Street. Because this was only four blocks from David Berg’s establishment, it is possible that his frankfurters were eaten there by delegates.  Shopkeepers regularly also peddled goods in their own neighborhoods.

            It is worth digressing briefly to examine how Lincoln won that nomination against four

 

stronger candidates including frontrunner William Seward of New York.  It turns out that

 

Lincoln's advisers printed hundreds of counterfeit tickets that were distributed to his followers

 

with instructions to show up early at the Wigwam.  Votes shifted among the candidates, without a

 

winner, until the third day of the convention when the Lincoln men were admitted early with

 

their counterfeit tickets.  They took the place of frontrunner Seward's supporters who were

 

locked out after arriving later. Abraham Lincoln then took the prize.

 

            And thus was born the Chicago style of dirty politics more than a century before Richard J. Daley's delegation was locked out of contention in the 1972 Democratic Convention when George McGovern was nominated for President.  We can only surmise that David Berg was pleased, because more of his frankfurters were undoubtedly consumed by hungry delegates and their boisterous supporters in the gallery on days two and three of the 1860 Chicago Convention.

            The United States Department of Agriculture was incorporated as a wartime federal entity on May 15, 1862.  The David Berg Sausage Company received Inspection Approval number one, which it still holds today in 2008.  Swift and Armour received theirs in 1875, and Oscar Mayer garnered its in 1883.   Presumably, the prominent Nelson Morris showed up late in May of 1862 to receive his certificate just three years after he established his business.

            After the Chicago Fire, David Berg re-established his firm on 22nd Street, far south of the burned out district.  His only child, my great grandmother, Fanny, who died when I was fifteen, often told me stories of her family’s flight to escape the smoke and flames, as well as the trauma after the total loss of their home and possessions.

“Traditionally understood as the turning point of Chicago’s early history, the Great Fire cemented the reputation of the rising metropolis as a place of opportunity, renewal, and future promise.”    These are the words of Jim Grossman’s 2007 publication: Encyclopedia of Chicago.

            After the Civil War, Chicago held a unique position because of the railroad hub that connected the rural areas of the Midwest and trans-Allegheny south with the east coast markets where domestic consumption of commodities was growing.  Along the Atlantic coast were numerous port facilities, New York, Baltimore, and Savannah, for example, where goods could be easily exported overseas to Europe and developing regions elsewhere.  The completion of the transcontinental railroad, in 1869, united California with Chicago and the rest of the country with just a few days of internal travel.  Previously, California’s connection with the eastern United States required weeks of ship travel to Panama followed by an overland crossing of the Isthmus, and, finally, a second voyage north in frequently stormy seas.

            The completion of the transcontinental railroad across the central route to California in 1869 was followed by that of a northern route to Puget Sound in 1880, and southern routes in 1881 and 1883.  Meanwhile the 1880s and 1890s witnessed the beginning of two events that profoundly affected Chicago’s future as a major urban center where immigrants swelled the population seeking opportunity in the West.

            The first was the swift growth of telephone communication and the second that of electricity used as a power source.  Telephones and electric lighting revolutionized the way business was conducted the same way that the computer has changed our lives during the past 20-30 years.  Communities formerly days apart were linked together by instant communication.  The use of candles and oil lamps gave way, in a short time, to factories lighted similarly as they are today.  Horse-drawn wagons were replaced in cities by electric public transportation lines expanding the distance workers could live from job sites. We can surely conclude that the modern economy of the United States had rapidly reached adolescence in the decades from 1870 to 1910.

            The final three decades of the 19th century witnessed the growth of Chicago from a regional crossroads like Cincinnati, Detroit, and St. Louis to become the dominant urban center in the Midwest.  The population had soared from 300,000 in 1870 to 1,700,000 in 1900, partly due to the internationally celebrated Columbian Exposition of 1893; it publicized a city of future  potential for immigrants throughout the world who hoped to better their lives.  Chicago had become the transportation hub of the nation’s interior as railroads carried agricultural and beef products from the countryside to markets in the east.  Plants and factories processing this bounty eagerly employed the immigrants who had arrived at Atlantic ports seeking their fortunes in the west.

            David Berg resurrected his business after the Chicago Fire at 174 22nd Street on the southern end of the Prairie Avenue district.  This was the Gold Coast of that era, where the city’s elite then resided.  Berg moved to 1191 State Street in 1879 and 2550 Wabash in 1885.  Meanwhile a son-in-law, who had married Berg’s daughter Fanny, joined the firm in the early 1880s.  Their final move to 731 37th Street in 1893 was the result of a need for a larger modern plant to bring their sausage production in line with the growing market for their German style frankfurters. 

            The deplorable working conditions in the slaughterhouses and sausage factories is one of the dramatic muckraking stories relating to Chicago’s business history at the close of the 19th century and dawn of the 20th.  Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published in 1906, made the public aware that unsanitary conditions in our production facilities were an important health issue.  President Theodore Roosevelt concurred, and his administration enacted pure-food laws that are still in place today.  Since David Berg had moved to a clean modern plant in 1893, the public could enjoy frankfurters made under sanitary conditions with worry free consumption.

 

PART II: AND NOW THE REST OF THE STORY

 

The American sport of baseball developed on the east coast in the decades before the Civil War.  Its popularity spread to the Midwest after that conflict.  A conference was held at Philadelphia in 1867 to standardize the rules; the money paid to players had become an issue.  The changes resulting from the Philadelphia conference led to the formation of the National League of professional urban teams in 1876 and the American Association in 1882.  The further consolidation of the two leagues in 1900 remained static until the expansion from the original 16 teams in the latter part of the 20th century.

            Charles Comiskey, a famous baseball player of the 1870s, was born in Chicago in 1859.  He attended St. Ignatius School, the near south side Jesuit high school which nurtured Chicago’s burgeoning Irish community in the 1870s.  He spent many years as a player, manager, and owner of baseball teams in the last quarter of the 19th century. 

When Comiskey moved his St. Paul Saints to Chicago in 1900 he found a suitable playing field at 39th and Princeton on the near south side.  The David Berg Sausage Company was already established in 1893 at 37th street, a block west of Princeton on the edge of the Bridgeport Irish neighborhood.  Hungry White Sox fans at American Grant Field were soon chomping down David Berg frankfurters hawked fresh from the nearby plant.  Comiskey and David Berg became friends as their mutual business interests grew.  When the White Sox defeated the Chicago Cubs in the 1906 World Series, Comiskey became a Chicago hero.  He decided to build a larger facility to accommodate the increasingly large number of baseball fans.  It was situated four blocks north of the old field and closer to David Berg's sausage factory. 

Chicago became the national center of the cattle trade and meat-packing industry during the Civil War.  The Union Army required huge numbers of live cattle, and vast amounts of processed beef to feed the troops.  Competing cities like Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis were too dangerously close to the front line to become important supply zones.  The meat-packers lined the two branches of the Chicago River where the rail terminus and stockyards were located.  Driving cattle and hogs through the downtown area for processing and shipping became a traffic and pollution nightmare as the volume of incoming live animals swelled.  The Union Stockyards, around 35th Street, were opened on the south edge of Chicago in1865 to alleviate the congestion and stench.  This new facility remained the national center of the livestock industry well into the 1940s, even as Chicago itself grew way beyond it to the south and west.

But back to David Berg. David Berg attended the game on opening day at Comiskey Park, July 1, 1910, with his great grandson, six-year-old Gardner Stern. Gardner Stern was my father.  My Dad kept his ticket stub, which he showed to me and my three brothers as we watched the final game played in Comiskey Park 80 years later on September 30, 1990.  The five of us all ate David Berg frankfurters while watching that last game at Comiskey.  Although the David Berg Sausage Company had changed hands in the 1920s, the brand had been sold there continuously.  The arrangement remained the same at the new facility constructed to replace Comiskey, known as U. S. Cellular Field since 2003.  The original secret recipe for seasoning the meat has remained unchanged since 1860.

            The David Berg Sausage Company continued to prosper after the founder died in 1911, under the leadership of his son-in-law, Max Weinberg.  Max, as mentioned earlier, had married David Berg’s only child, a daughter named Fanny, in 1881.  The firm was sold ultimately to David Manister in 1928 after Max Weinberg and his son-in-law, an attorney named Harry L. Stern who handled the company’s legal affairs, both suddenly passed away.  Harry L. Stern was my grandfather.

            What David Berg had brought to Chicago in the late 1850s was the concept of an all-beef

 

sausage.  He used only skeletal meat from the front quarter of the cattle carcass in line with

 

Jewish custom.  He did not produce a strictly Kosher product, however, because the slaughtering

 

process was not supervised and blessed by a rabbi, criteria for Kosher meat.  David Berg’s

 

frankfurters were made strictly from domestic corn fed bull meat and then hickory smoked.  The

 

 formula used then has remained unchanged at the company for nearly a century and a half. We

 

should note, as an aside, that hogs were butchered only during cold weather in the 1860s until the

 

use of refrigerated railroad cars became widespread late in the 19th century.

           

David Manister, and, ultimately, his daughter Paula, continued selling the high quality David Berg frankfurters until the company was sold to Vienna Beef in 1992.  Vienna was founded in 1893, supplying meat products to vendors at the Chicago Columbian Exposition.  Both the Manisters and Vienna continued selling David Berg frankfurters at Comiskey Park and U.S. Cellular Field, and, later, at Wrigley Field.  It is significant that Cub fans and Sox fans have long been enjoying David Berg frankfurters while watching their floundering teams.  But there is a distinct approach to sausage culture that separates north-siders from south-siders.  It is more akin to the cultural difference between Yankee and Boston Red Sox fans than that between the Yankees and the New York Giants.

            The Chicago Cubs have been a local professional baseball team since 1870, playing under different names until 1905.  They dominated the National League in the 1880s winning five pennants.  They lost the World Series in 1905 to the White Sox in the only city-series ever played.  The Cubs, however, rebounded with pennants in 1906, 1907, 1908, and 1910, including two world championships over the Detroit Tigers.  They won their next pennant in 1918, but lost the World Series to the Boston Red Sox, led by pitcher Babe Ruth.

            The modern era for the Cubs began in 1920 when the team was purchased by William Wrigley.  The current stadium, built in 1914, became Wrigley Field in 1926.  The Cubs won pennants in 1929, 1935, 1938, and 1945 before the Wrigley ownership passed to the Chicago Tribune in 1981.  The team has been struggling ever since, despite fielding a number of world-class players and despite a cadre of loyal fans.  Baseball organizations around the country are in awe at the commitment of Chicago Cub bleacher bums who support a team that can’t seem to shed its losing image.

Today, north-side baseball fans tend to be Philistines.  The rowdy drinkers exiting Wrigleyville bars for the stadium drown their frankfurters in catsup, consuming them after piling on relish, onions, peppers, and other detritus to disguise the flavor of the meat.

Why do Cub fans shun mustard?  Sumerian documents indicate that mustard seeds have been known as a spice for the past 5000 years.  Mustard plants are mentioned frequently in Greek and Roman texts.  Mustard seeds are a symbol of faith in the New Testament.  They have been used medicinally for centuries.  Mustard has long been used as a condiment, particularly to enhance the flavor of sausage.

When we learn that north-siders in Wrigleyville relish (pun intended) their frankfurters loaded with tomato sauce and other nasty foreign ingredients, we can understand why the Cubs cannot win a pennant or a World Series.  What we do know for certain is that superstitions are legendary in the game of baseball.  They run the gamut from lucky bats, gloves, and charms, to the movements and silent prayers of the players.  The White Sox did win a World Series in 2005 for the first time since their defeat of the Cubs in 1906.  I submit that the only difference between the two teams is that White Sox fans rely on mustard as the principal condiment.

Now, if the Cubs really aspire to a championship, they must do what my great great grandfather told my Dad nearly a century ago.  When the six –year- old asked the old sausage maker what to put on his frankfurter, the crusty German from Frankfurt-am-Main answered: "Nur Senf" – only mustard.