Way of life

Wolfram Siebeck is dead – obituary to a dispute “Esskritiker”

Wolfram Siebeck was understood as the culinary Conscience of Germany.
Now the Gourmet, food critic and book author, has died at the age of 87 years. A personal obituary.

Allegedly ate Wolfram Siebeck until about 80 years ago, his first curry sausage and it was terrible. As a hobby chef, I am since my youth, and as a long-time reader of his time,-I columns, I – added – a special relationship to Wolfram Siebeck. Leg in its radicality has prints of me of course. Because Siebeck sang the song of the True and the Beautiful. He preached quality, unmerciful: shopping at the weekly market, good butcher, the best cheese retailer, the producer, on the spot! This was not only his motto, it was to be a binding prescription for, as he called it, quality of life. But who could afford that? My father had to earn his bread, still hard, had to get five children fed. Thank God there was the Siebeck so disparaged supermarkets. Aldi, Lidl and co. are allowed, then even students like me to buy a cheap steak or a cheese from France.

The popular curry sausage doesn’t taste good at all…

“The Germans spend too little for good eating,” rebuked the enemy of mediocrity. Oysters, goose liver pate, sweetbreads, tripe – such things should land on our plates. Culture, as he understood it, was (and still is) but unfortunately the well-to-do reserved, even in rich Germany. Such an amenity, I felt as bourgeois, if not downright cynical. All the more surprising that Wolfram Siebeck had such a large fan base, the his reviews, columns, books, television shows and, most recently, Internet Blogs really. His reviews were controversial. Many readers were disturbed by Siebecks sometimes arrogant tone. And also, I must admit that I be on the Look worn hedonism was occasionally jealous.

He is the author of merciless reviews

There is also a fascination of this man was. Undaunted Siebeck in star restaurants, and, marched in the kitchen, peeking into pots and pans. He is the author of grace, lots of reviews and met with some of the king of the kitchen from the throne. Just as he was, if it is him, because tasted, the king-maker: The Munich Eckart witzigmann, for example, he wrote to the “chef of the Century” high – to him years later, for the sake of another, again to fall.

Tungsten Siebecks life was not always according to Plan. Around 1950, a little over 20, he started with the good food. A trip to France had brought him in the taste. However, he was not spoiled by the domestic hearth. His mother and grandmother would have cooked “miserable,” he said. Also, it had been in the war years “nothing” to eat.

Good food for Siebeck quality of life

From graphic designers to the food writer

Siebeck, Born in 1928, grew up in Essen and Bochum. Shortly before the end of the war he was as a flak helper in British war captivity. Soon after, he attended the art school in Wuppertal and was a graphic designer. He worked as a sign maker, a Press artist and Illustrator before he began to write for Newspapers and magazines. His journalistic home was the weekly newspaper “die Zeit” and the Gourmet magazine “der Feinschmecker”.

Siebeck and his second wife Barbara, Ex-wife of the famous photographer Will McBride, who brought three children into the marriage, used to cook rarely at home. For this you went like to eat, and traveled around the world to experience the cuisine and chefs of other countries. Stubbornly, the anecdote, the first curry sausage, the Siebeck only as an 80-Year-old bitten. “My Hunger for sausage is breastfed, up to the end of life,” he said afterwards. Now he has died at the age of 87 years at the Baden mahlberg. Wolfram Siebeck, the grace is missing, loose, Incorruptible, Demanding, he told me.