The city contends with the end of local industrial production of the chocolate delight.
Two hundred and thirty-three years after the death of Austria’s most famous composer and his burial in an unmarked grave, a little bit of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died a second time in December when Mirabell brand’s last Mozartkugel rolled off the assembly line in Grödig.
Mirabell’s Mozartkugel – perfectly-round chocolate pralines filled with marzipan and pistachio; kugel is the German word for globe or bullet – have been produced in Grödig since 1948.
At its peak, the factory produced 12,000 tonnes of confectionery a year. Alongside the schmaltzy classic movie The Sound of Music, Mozartkugeln became a global symbol of the city, helping rehabilitate Austria’s image after the Second World War. Rising cocoa and energy prices have now made local production uneconomic.
Claudia Stelzel-Pröll takes a final tour through the factory for the local Salzburg newspaper Kurier. It is, she writes, “a dystopian journey back into the past.” The production halls are deserted. In the basement, the chocolate tanks have emptied out. Machines which once hummed with life – an intricate multi-stage manufacturing process, ending with wrapping each Mozart ball in gold-tinted foil with an image of Mozart’s face – are now mostly silent.
One of the factory’s remaining employees is quality control manager Katharina Lindner. For ten years, she has had to decide which Mozart balls can be sold, and which not. Appearance as well as content are key criteria: “Mozart’s likeness must be easily recognisable”, she explains, “his face must not be shrivelled, or appear anorexic”. Lindner intends to commemorate the factory’s closure by burying one of the final batch of Mozart balls in her garden.
But where God closes a door, he always opens a window some place. Kurier reports that American snacking giant Mondelez may shift production of Mozart balls to Poland or Czechia. In the meantime, the best before dates of Mozart balls have been extended from nine months to twelve.
Translator can confirm that there are still options for those eager to sample Mozartkugeln hand-made in Salzburg. Now in its fifth generation, the city’s Café-Konditorei Fürst continues to follow the original Mozartkugel inventor Paul Fürst’s recipe from 1890. An guaden Appetit!
Full original article in German by Claudia Stelzel-Pröll, 6 December 2024, available here.
Kurier is an Austrian newspaper based in Salzburg.
