Barbara Geier: A sweet start

Let’s start 2025 on a sweet note, shall we? Or, in other words, time to remind you of the delicious sweets of German origin, chocolates and other, that have become part and parcel of British (and international) supermarket aisles. From Katjes and Haribo to Ritter Sport and Bahlsen – these beloved brands are traditional and quintessential German family businesses that go back to inventive people who in the early 20th or late 19th century turned clever ideas into big successes.

Take Katjes, those lovely yoghurt fruit gums. In 1971, the Katjes makers were the first to come up with the idea of producing fruit gums with yoghurt, or more precisely, skimmed milk yoghurt powder. Today, the colourful sweets are still bestsellers in Germany and beyond – and I wonder how many Katjes lovers are subconsciously telling themselves, “well, there’s ‘yoghurt’ and ‘fruits’ involved, let’s have a few more’”. I certainly have.

The name is Dutch for “kitten”, by the way, because the brand goes back to a Dutch entrepreneur of Italian descent who in 1910 started producing sweets based on a Sicilian liquorice recipe and later used moulds for cat-shaped liquorice. In 1950, his son, Klaus Fassin, founded today’s Katjes company in Emmerich am Rhein in North Rhine-Westphalia. The business is still in family hands, run by his son, and the German fruit gum maker has in recent years also invested in the UK, holding a majority stake in the Candy Kittens sweets business founded by Jamie Laing, he of “Made in Chelsea”.

From one fruit gum maker to the next, who doesn’t love Haribo? The company was founded in 1920 by a certain Hans Riegel. The trained sweet maker set up shop in a backyard in Bonn, invented the “dancing bear”, the precursor of today’s golden bear, and the rest is sweet history. Today, the company’s products are eaten in more than 120 countries, and the Riegel family, who is not involved anymore in the day-to-day running of the business, is among Germany’s 100 richest families. Just in case it ever comes up in a pub quiz: Haribo is not a random brand name but the acronym derived from the first two letters of the founder’s first (Ha) and last names (Ri), and the first two letters of the city of its origin (Bo).

Next, chocolate! And a genius idea that has conquered the world and goes back to a woman named Clara Ritter, who in 1932 suggested the idea of a chocolate that would fit into any sports jacket pocket without breaking. Cue: Ritter Sport chocolate in the super handy format of 16 squares in a four-by-four pattern, or in the words of its legendary German advertising slogan: “Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut” (square, handy, good). Clara and her husband Alfred Eugen had founded their Stuttgart chocolate factory in 1912 and the company, now headquartered in the nearby small town of Waldenbuch, is still family-owned. To continue with the theme of convincing yourself that it’s all part of your five-a-day (loosely interpreted), one of my long-time favourite Ritter Sport flavours has been yoghurt …

Ok, gummies and chocolate are done. What’s missing? Of course, the good old biscuit. Which is called “Keks” in German, and did you know that this German word is actually English? In 1889, Hermann Bahlsen founded the “Hannoversche Cakesfabrik H. Bahlsen” in Hanover and two years later, he launched the “Leibniz Cakes”, named after the Hanover philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. This butter biscuit made the company world famous and Bahlsen, whose descendants still keep the business family-run, is considered the inventor of the German “Keks”: In 1911, he “Germanised” the initially used English word “cakes” into “Keks” which was officially included in the Duden dictionary a few years later as a proper German word. There you have it, another one for the pub quiz. Me, I might have to go and get some Choco Leibniz now. Or something else from the list … I any case, happy New Year and keep it sweet!

Barbara Geier is a London-based freelance writer, translator and communications consultant. She is also the face behind www.germanyiswunderbar.com, a German travel and tourism guide and blog that was set up together with UK travel writer Andrew Eames in 2010.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Discover Germany, Switzerland & Austria.