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Wafer thin

Czech claims on historic sweet draw criticism from Germany

By Michael Heitmann
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 21st, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Foreign confectioners say Czech sugar wafers, such as Opavia's, are also produced elsewhere and should not receive EU protection.
Two thin sheets of wafer held together by a layer of filling are at the heart of a recently erupted trade dispute between the Czech Republic and Germany.
In a bid to protect the region’s culinary heritage, the Czech producers of spa wafers, or oplatky, applied earlier this year for the European Union’s Protected Geographical Indication label. The application seemed on track until, at the last minute within the set six-month procedural timeframe, German producers of spa wafers filed a complaint against the bid with the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, this month.
At issue in the German complaint is an inconspicuous part of the application related to the spa wafers’ region of origin, which are described as coming from “the area of the municipality of Mariánské lázně [called Marienbad in German] and of the municipality of Velká Hleďsebe, which forms part of the administrative district called Mariánské lázně.”
The Association of the German Confectionery Industry (BDSI) is now trying to hoist the Czech wafer makers upon their own petard. The BDSI alleges that Czech wafers made by KLS Klimentov and Opavia-LU, both of which underwrote the EU application, do not hold up to closer scrutiny.
Most importantly, the BDSI claims that the Czech wafers are not made in the spa region of west Bohemia at all. Opavia, which is owned by the French multinational Danone, declined to comment on the German allegations.
“We are confident that Brussels will decide in favor of the worldwide community of wafer bakers,” said Hans Hackspacher, whose family owns the Wetzel waffle bakery in Bavaria.
The Czech Republic’s justification for their application is more than specious, he said, as it was German Sudetenland bakers who laid the foundations for the product’s worldwide fame in the first place.
“The German Sudetenland producers brought the knowledge of how this specialty is made into the world,” Hackspacher said.
The family of Marlene Wetzel-Hackspacher, Hackspacher’s mother, was forced to leave Czechoslovakia during the expulsion of Sudeten Germans after World War II, he said. Wetzel-Hackspacher managed to take a waffle iron along with her into Germany and founded a wafer bakery in northern Swabia, in the small town of Dillingen on the Danube, in 1948.
It’s not pizza
The description of the wafers in the EU application would describe both the Czech and German products: “They are round and regular in shape with a slightly crumbled edge, break with a distinctive crack and bear a characteristic relief in the form of a stylized garland of leaves around the circumference.”
According to Hackspacher, in Germany and Austria the snacks are not commonly called Marienbad spa wafers, but are rather named after a neighboring spa town, Karlovy Vary, or Karlsbad in German.
“The product label ‘Karlsbader Oblaten’ has become a generic term for spa wafers, no matter if they are made in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, the United States or elsewhere,” he said.
Hackspacher added that the wafers had never been exclusive to the spa region of west Bohemia, and have been baked at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna since 1912, for example. In general, today’s Czech-produced spa wafers are of questionable quality, which can only be explained by the bakeries’ limited knowledge, he said.
The mayor of Mariánské lázně, Zdeněk Král, disputed this notion.
“Our wafers are the best, and, as long as the European Union does not forbid their production, I have no concerns about sales,” he said.
According to Král, the Sudetenland German wafers cannot compare: “Their wafers are practically inedible. There is only one kind of Marienbad spa wafer — those made in our town. It’s not possible to produce them in Australia, for example. This is not a pizza.”
“We are not built on wafers, however,” he added.
The EU’s Protected Geographical Indication label would be useful for Czech wafer producers, said Martin Stašek, spokesman at the Representation of the European Commission in the Czech Republic.
“The quality of Czech products is of course a compelling argument [on its own],” he said. “But labeling as a protected brand offers assurances against plagiarism and can also be used for advertising purposes. It’s without a doubt of benefit to the holder.”  
The Czech Republic does not trail other new member states in its number of applications, as some newspaper reports have claimed, Stašek added. On the contrary, it has filed quite a few. So far, the European Commission has stamped 10 regional specialties of Czech origin with approval, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s Petr Vorlíček.
From a purely scientific viewpoint, the discussion of what constitutes the “right” spa wafer is a moot point, said Stanislav Burachovič of the Karlovy Vary museum.
“For the domestic and foreign manufacturers of spa wafers it is a question of business, political and economic lobbying — a managerial maneuver that has nothing to do with the historical wafer tradition in the west Bohemian spa towns,” he said. “There are too many different types of wafers and related recipes in both the Czech Republic and foreign countries to determine fairly which wafers are the ‘real’ Karlsbad or Marienbad spa wafers.”

Michael Heitmann can be reached at mheitmann@praguepost.com


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