Because this week, it's personal.

On the first of July, I left JFK International Airport on a Boeing bound for Brussels, Belgium, en route to a final destination of Hamburg, Germany.  It was a business trip, but I could hardly contain my excitement: whose eyes do not moisten--whose breast does not swell--whose awe is not inspired at the mere thought of visiting the birthplace of the most celebrated food in our great nation's great cuisine?  (I am speaking not of Brussels Sprouts, which have their merits, but the noble Hamburger.)

Yes, the noble, the magnificent, the revolutionary Hamburger.  I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'd like to provide some perspective for any Hamburger skeptics: nearly one in five "meal transactions" in 1995 involved a hamburger.  Over 4.7 billion hamburgers were sold in 1992.  The average American consumes (eats) three hamburgers a week.  In 1985, one in every six restaurant trips in the United States ended at a McDonalds--an organization that had by 1986 sold twelve times as many hamburgers as there were people on the face of the earth.

The average American does not go to church three times a week.  The average American doesn't go to museums three times a year.  The average American doesn't even vote, let alone show up to cast a ballot on the one or two Election Days he or she may face per annum.  The average American certainly doesn't read three books a week, and isn't likely to call or write his or her parents three times a week.  So there it is: transcending religion, art, politics, literature, and family, towering over American culture with a peerless stature, the epicenter of American cuisine: ladies and gentleman (and subscribers): I present to you, The Hamburger.

(The average American does eat something like seven or eight eggs per week, but eggs are dainty bloodless things, and inspire little reverence.)

As my fellow passengers and I soared across the Atlantic, I fell into a kind of Hamburger reverie.  I hadn't done any research before rushing to the airport that morning--readers of this Almanac hardly need to be reminded that research is not my strong suit--but it hardly seemed necessary to research something as obvious as Hamburgers in Hamburg.  I fantasized about visits to the Hamburger Museum, the Hamburger Theme Park, and the thousand and one Hamburger monuments that were sure to line what I imagined would be the narrow, cobblestone lanes of this ancient German city.  I wondered what sort of souvenirs I might bring back for my nieces--I recollected Mark Twain's delight at having been shown pieces of the One True Cross in every last corner of Italy and the Holy Land, many of them for sale at reasonable prices, during the course of his celebrated travels there.  Was it such a stretch to imagine bits of the One True Hamburger, preserved, perhaps, in formaldehyde or amber, or sealed in plastic bubbles?  Was I really a fool to have imagined kneeling in reverence at the site of the First Hamburger Restaurant?

Alas for my credulity.

Hamburg is a beautiful city. After a little nap to shake off my jetlag Sunday afternoon, I set out for a little exploring.   The natty concierge of the downtown Marriott was as big a fool as I'd ever met: when I inquired about the nearest Hamburger museum, he directed me to some houses of art and nautical history on the banks of the Elbe.  When I asked about the nearest Hamburger monuments, he described a number of statues in the neighborhood--not of heroes from the history of the Hamburger, but heroes of art, culture, politics, war.  When I asked for the nearest Hamburger theme park, however, he seemed to smarten up. "Just zis vay," he said, pointing down some broad strasse.  "Just zis vay, und you find beautiful Hamburger park."

I was off like a shot.

It was several blocks to the park, which from the street appeared to be no more than a vast copse of pines and firs and beeches circumscribed by a mighty iron fence.  Upon entering the gate, however the park opened itself up before me beautifully.  Dirt paths wound their way around the waters of a shimmering reservoir bedecked with brilliant green lilypads, and the heat of the summer sun was mitigated by the shadows of the overarching evergreens and the lush verdure of the grounds.  Brambled hills rose on every side of the reservoir, and stone steps twisted their way up their sides.   Beautiful young men and women sunned themselves on the few expanses of open green; families paced along the paths slowly, enjoying ice creams, wheeling babies along in carriages.  Now and then a jogger trotted by, or some teenager whizzed past on roller blades.

It might have been nice with a lover, or a good friend and a couple of beers, but on my own it was deadly dull.  And worse still, having walked the entire circumference of the park I had come across exactly no references whatever to Hamburgers.

I did not trouble the Marriott's natty concierge again.

That evening I took a cab to meet two of my business associates at a restaurant in the St. Pauli district.   I ascribed a certain ingenuity to my cabbie, as he had apparently made enough money in the hack trade to afford a beautiful yellow Mercedes of recent manufacture.   Unfortunately, he was dumb as a post.  When I asked him where the Hamburgers were, he would only laugh and point up and down whatever street we happened to be barreling down at that particular moment, indicating whatever men and women were quick enough to leap out of our way. "Zare! Zare! Und Zere!" he exclaimed with perverse delight.

This was apparently the German idea of humor.  There weren't any Hamburgers to be seen.  Just a lot of Germans. The cabbie shared the concierge's inability to distinguish a Hamburger museum from an art exhibit, a Hamburger park from a grassy expanse, a Hamburger monument from a statue of Frederick the Great.

Later that evening I pried my dinner companions for information about Hamburg's Hamburger attractions.  They feigned ignorance at first, pretending they didn't know what I meant.  But I was by now emboldened by several glasses of German vinegar and would not back down.

At last they told me the terrible truth: there was no Hamburger museum.  There was no Hamburgerland amusement park.  There wasn't even a single obelisk commemorating Hamburger ground zero.  In fact, they weren't even sure the hamburger had been invented in Hamburg.  Not only that, but they claimed never to have seen a Hamburger key chain, a Hamburger shotglass, or any other little Hamburger tchotchke on the shelves of the local gift shops.

I thought it was disgraceful, and I said as much.  I had grown up a whole town over from Salem, Massachusetts, and yet I knew everything there was to know about witches.   I had been to the Witch Museum and the Witch House, and had shopped at all of the witchcraft stores.  I knew all about the drowning of witches, the stoning of witches, the burning of witches.  I had a Witch Museum shotglass and a "Burn Baby Burn - Salem, MA" tee shirt.  How could they possibly justify this shameful lapse of commercial exploitation?

They couldn't.  And I hold all of Hamburg--nay, all of Germany--responsible.   Because the fact of the matter is, the hamburger was invented in Hamburg.  Its immediate ancestors were the raw steaks that Tartar and Mongol warriors tenderized by wedging them between their saddles and the backs of their horses (hence Steak Tartare).   At some point in history, the idea of tenderized, single-serving sized steaks spread as far west as Germany, and by the nineteenth century the good people of Hamburg had taken the process a step further: they chopped and broiled their tenderized steaks.   The wave of German immigrants that poured into this country at the turn of the century brought the term "Hamburg steak" into popular usage.  The rest is history.

One curious and potentially lucrative footnote supplied by my own grandmother is that her father emigrated to the United States from Hamburg around the turn of the century.   With absolutely no evidence to contradict me, I therefore declare my great-grandfather Schmidt the inventor of the American hamburger, and demand a royalty on every hamburger sold in this country.

See you in court.

Farming Tip