In Lübeck, archaeologists have uncovered an unusual piece of contemporary history: When digging shafts, they came across a black, charred, but otherwise easily recognizable cake from the Second World War. The pastry, including the largely intact coffee service, had apparently caught fire and spilled during an air raid on Palm Sunday in 1942. Larger pieces of debris then saved the remains of the coffee table from destruction to this day.
A few weeks ago, archaeologists from the Hanseatic City of Lübeck examined the subsoil at the foot of the Marienkirche in Lübeck as part of excavation work. In the process, they came across unusual finds underground under the upper Alfstrasse: they discovered parts of a coffee service and the remains of a celebratory cake under larger debris from the Second World War.
Nut cake with brittle coating and spray decoration
“The cake is heavily charred and blackened with soot on the outside,” reports Lisa Renn, head of the local excavations. Nevertheless, the cake is still recognizable in detail and in all of its facets. Remnants of the glaze, the edge decorations and the spray decoration are visible and even the wax paper in which the pastry was once wrapped is still preserved. “In order to get to the bottom of the secrets of the cake, samples of the filling and the glaze were examined in the laboratory,” explains Dirk Rieger, Head of Archeology at the Hanseatic City of Lübeck. The first investigations confirm that it is a nut cake with a brittle coating.
According to the archaeologists, this is the only pastry of its kind that has been archaeologically uncovered in northern Germany and an extremely significant find – especially for the Hanseatic city. According to the location and dating, this cake must have stood on a sideboard in the former house at Alfstrasse 18 on the night of Palm Sunday 1942. That night Lübeck was heavily bombed and this part of the city was destroyed. Old city books show that a Lübeck merchant named Johann Wärme lived in the destroyed house.
Time capsule of a Palm Sunday coffee table
It could therefore be that the cake and the coffee service came from this merchant and his family and were intended for the holiday, the archaeologists speculate. It is quite possible that crockery and cake were planned for an upcoming festival, because confirmation was often celebrated on Palm Sunday at that time. The excavation and its unique finds allow the story of that day to run in the mind’s eye, so to speak: Everything was ready for the coffee table on Palm Sunday, the good dishes, the cake, and the musical entertainment was also thought of: “There were several shellac records for one Gramophone, including Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata op. 27 No. 2 and the Symphony No. 9 ″, reports Doris Mührenberg, who is in charge of the Hanseatic city’s archaeological magazine.
The cake probably owes its unusual state of preservation to the fact that part of the ground floor slipped into the cellar during the bombing. There was also the kitchen with the cake, which was covered by the large pieces of debris and thus saved from destruction. “It took 79 years until these special contemporary witnesses, who also reflect the direct moment of destruction through their own transience and fragile materiality, came to light again and nobody knew that they existed at all,” says Rieger. After its conservation, the cake will become another highlight of Lübeck’s archeology and an exhibition piece that cannot be found anywhere else.
Source: Hanseatic City of Lübeck