Herta Heuwer

Herta Charlotte Heuwer (née Pöppel; 30 June 1913 – 3 July 1999) owned and ran a food kiosk in West Berlin.  She is frequently credited with the invention of the take-out dish that would become the world-renowned currywurst, supposedly on 4 September 1949.  The original Currywurst was a boiled sausage, fried, with a sauce of tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, curry powder and other ingredients. 

Heuwer was born in Königsberg.  In January 1951, she registered a trademark for her sauce, Chillup.  

Heuwer moved her business to a larger facility at Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße 59, which, during its heyday, was open day and night and employed 19 saleswomen.  On 29 June 2003, the day before what would have been her 90th birthday, a plaque was dedicated in her honor at this address.  Heuwer died in Berlin, aged 86. 

On 30 June 2013, the centenary of Heuwer's birthday, was celebrated with a Google Doodle. 

Other claims to currywurst 
Other sources claim that currywurst was invented in Hamburg.  Author Uwe Timm contends in his novel The Discovery of Currywurst that he had eaten currywurst in Hamburg as early as 1947, but the inventor of Currywurst in his novel, Lena Brücker, is an admitted literary license.  However, that did not prevent the former Hamburg Senator of the Interior Ronald Schill from honoring Lena Brücker in 2003. 

Food historians such as Petra Foede believe that, as with most culinary creation myths, several rather than a single person were involved in developing this dish, sausage sellers experimenting with various spice mixes in order to replace the tomato ketchup that was unavailable during the immediate postwar years. 

References
m,787

External links

 Deutsches Currywurst Museum Berlin

Category:1913 births
Category:1999 deaths
Category:People from Königsberg
Category:German chefs
Category:Berlin cuisine
Category:Disease-related deaths in Germany