Was The Döner Kebab Invented In Berlin?

Each year more than 17 million of these moveable feasts are sold throughout Germany – in Berlin alone there are over 1,000 eateries dishing out Döners to the city’s 3.7 million residents, and the millions more visiting tourists.

Officially, the Döner Kebab even outsells what is often considered the city’s most famous snack, the Currywurst. Making this hefty shaved elephant leg sandwich Berlin’s fast food snack of choice and an undeniable staple of the German diet.

In-fact, the record for the largest Döner Kebab in the world was set in Berlin, back in 2017 – weighing in at a heartbreaking 423kg.

Despite – or perhaps because of – its obvious popularity, the origin of the humble Döner has been much disputed.

Was it really born out of the demand in 1970s West Berlin for a cheap portable eat, as is often speculated; or does its date back even further into the distant past of Ottoman Turkey?

When Turkish-German immigrant Kadir Nurman died in 2013, news outlets worldwide published obituaries for the man it would appear had single handedly transformed street food culture in Germany.

But to ask most Berliners – the name would seem entirely unfamiliar. Not so, say, for Herta Heuwer – the woman credited as having invented the Currywurst in Berlin back in 1949. Many older Berliners at least – both West and East – would be well acquainted with her name.

It turns out Herr Nurmann is not the only person to have claimed to have invented the Döner Kebab. Not even the only Turkish-German immigrant to have done so. Nor the only one in Berlin, for that matter.

In the 1960s, thousands of Turkish guest workers (Gastarbeiter) made their way to West Germany to work, following the waves of Italian, Spanish, and Greek workers who had preceded them. The economic boom period of the 1950s, the so-called Wirtschaftswunder, had led to labour shortages – made more acute by the dramatic reduction of East German workers in 1961 (following the construction of the Berlin Wall).