December, Ig9II 
450 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
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Something New in Christmas Cakes 
By Gunther von Helmuth 
of Lebzetter, were given the right to manufacture, though 
they were strictly forbidden to employ sugar in their wares, 
as that would encroach upon the prerogatives of the 
Guild of Confectioners. 
The first Honey-Cakes were made by the monks and the 
or Honey-Cakes, for which Munich and nuns in the old monasteries and convents before Martin 
Nuremberg are especially famous, and which have also Luther's time, although tradition has it that the first recipes 
come to be part of the festal array of holiday time in our were given out from the nunneries and borrowed by the 
monks of that day, who taught the secrets of 
Honey-Cake making to the laymen. 
Around the middle of the fourteenth cen- 
tury the various towns that were breaking away 
from feudalism derived a goodly income from 
their various Lebzetter Guilds. With the 
Renaissance the art of the Lebzetter reached 
its historic high-water mark, as those who may 
have visited the Germanic National Museum 
in Munich will see by examining the remark- 
able collection of Honey-Cakes displayed there, 
a collection which has been gathered by Herr 
Max Ebenbock, a noted antiquarian, who has 
searched the land for the old Lebkuchen molds, 
from which new impressions have been taken. 
There, also, one will find a remarkable collec- 
tion of old Honey-Cake molds, and very im- 
portant have they often proved to be in his- 
torical research, since every old-time German 
nobleman had his arms molded by his own 
Lebzetter on the occasion of every festival, 
having the cakes for his household table 
molded from them. 
Thus these old molds 
have often served as 
missing links in trac- 
ing records of early 
heraldic bearings. 
Christmas in Nur- 
HERE is something as dear to the heart of 
every German, and as delectable to his 
palate, as ever the plum pudding has been 
to the Briton at Christmastide or the tur- 
key to the American; this is the Lebkuchen, 
own country, being now extensively imported 
for such occasions. Nowhere else in the world 
will you find them making such wonderful 
Christmas cakes as they make in these old 
Teuton cities, quite putting to shame even the 
most ingenious caraway-seeded ones of our 
own, so extraordinary are they in their various 
forms. There in the quaint old bakers’ shops 
these Honey-Cakes will always be found dis- 
played throughout the holiday season; little 
ones, big ones, simple ones, elaborate ones, 
cheap ones and ones that cost almost a small 
boy’s whole holiday fortune. You will find 
them decorated with colored sugar icings of , ’ 
every hue known to the solar spectrum. More- bo feshrvie diseahlossele | 
over, some of Germany’s greatest artists have Mery unrsre Lteb begriindel sein 
not thought it beneath their dignity to turn 
their skill to the making of designs for the 
Honey-Cake bakers, thus aiding in bringing 
them to perfection. Jules Diez, for instance, 
who is one of the leading painters of Ger- 
many, Hans Glatz, Frau Kohrt, Hermann 
Stockman, Max Leib- 
er and Fritz Unger 
are among the notable 
German artists who 
have made designs 
for Lebkuchen, some 
of which find their 
even in homely subjects 
Honey-cake makers find inspiration 
way into our own Ameri- 
can confectioners’ shops 
at Christmas time. 
The history of Christ- 
mas cake-making in Ger- 
many is not without in- 
terest. “As far back-as 
1694 the Bavarian Elec- 
tor, Max Emanuel, pro- 
mulgated laws applying 
to the making of these 
Honey-Cakes which a 
certain Guild, the Guild 
emberg always finds the 
shop windows of that 
medieval-looking old 
town bright with gaily 
colored Lebkuchen, and 
there one finds Honey- 
Cakes decorated with 
everything, from pictures 
in icing of Albrecht Dur- 
er’s house to presentments 
of St. Nicholas and Kris 
Kringle, the favorites of 
German Christmas cards. 
A Honey-cake caricature of a 
Bavarian peasant 
