Berlin eats an estimated 70 million currywurst a year — and cannot prove it invented them

01The count

70 million a year sounds like one a week for every Berliner. It is about one every three weeks

The figure is an estimate, made by the Deutsches Currywurst Museum and repeated ever since. Spread over Berlin’s 3,685,265 residents at the end of 2024, it comes to about 19 currywurst each a year. One a week for every Berliner would take 192 million: 122 million more than the estimate.

The Deutsches Currywurst Museum opened in 2009 and closed in December 2018. Its estimate — 800 million currywurst a year in Germany, 70 million of them in Berlin — dates from about 2013, and no newer independent count exists. Nobody publishes a measured figure: Berlin’s number is a museum’s best guess, and the museum is gone.

03The paper trail

The earliest paper behind Berlin’s claim is a trademark for a sauce. Herta Heuwer never held a patent

Her date, 4 September 1949, rests on her own word. The first document is her application to the patent office in February 1958, for the word mark “Chillup” — chilli plus ketchup — registered as no. 721319 on 21 January 1959. A trademark protects a name. No patent was ever granted, and she never published the recipe; when she died on 3 July 1999, it went with her. The plaque the district unveiled at Kantstraße 101 on 29 June 2003 repeats her date.

What rests on her word, and what is on paper, 1949–2003

her own accounta document

04The rival claims

Three cities claim the currywurst. Berlin’s case went public in 1959. Its rivals waited until 1993 and 2024

Each city has a year it claims and a year the claim was first made in public. Berlin’s rests on Herta Heuwer’s word and a trademark 10 years later; Hamburg’s on a novel; Duisburg’s on a book published 88 years after the year it names. None of them can be proved.

Duisburg

claims 1936 · public 2024

A 2024 book by Tim Koch and Gregor Lauenburger, Alles Currywurst – oder was?, says Johann Peter Hildebrand served bratwurst with curry and ketchup at his snack bar in 1936, citing witnesses and a receipt for British curry powder. The snack bar, Peter Pomm's Pusztetten-Stube, is in Duisburg-Marxloh. The city put up a plaque in 2025.

Source: Radio Duisburg, 2025 · Travelbook

Hamburg

claims 1947 · public 1993

Uwe Timm’s 1993 novella Die Entdeckung der Currywurst credits the fictional Lena Brücker, at her stand on the Großneumarkt in Hamburg from 29 April 1945. Timm says he ate one in Hamburg as a child in 1947; nothing firmer is known.

Source: Uwe Timm, 1993 · DPMA, The Spirit of Currywurst · de.wikipedia, Currywurst

Berlin

claims 1949 · public 1959

Herta Heuwer’s word for 1949, and “Chillup”, entered in the public trademark register in January 1959. The plaque on Kantstraße 101 credits her with the sauce.

Source: Bezirksamt Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf · DPMA, The Spirit of Currywurst

05The East Berlin sauce

When the Wall cut off the ketchup, Konnopke’s in East Berlin cooked its own sauce

Max and Charlotte Konnopke started selling sausages from a tray at Schönhauser Allee and Danziger Straße in 1930. From 1960 their stand stood under the U-Bahn viaduct and sold currywurst — East Berlin’s first, the family says. After 1961 there was no ketchup to be had in the East, so the family cooked its own sauce, and still makes it to its own recipe. The stand was demolished in 2010 for work on the viaduct and reopened on 28 April 2011, on the same corner, run by the same family.