A Sausage Born of War, Solidarity, and Austrian Industrial Power
By Eben van Tonder and Christa van Tonder-Berger, 18 April 2026
EarthwormExpress | Earthworm Writing and Research Studio
Introduction: A Sausage Stand Conversation in Graz
It began with a pack of sausages. Christa placed them on the table one morning in Graz, and the smell alone was enough to start a conversation. They were Burenwurst, she explained. A simple enough product. A coarse, fatty, boiled sausage sold at every Würstelstand in Austria. However, behind the familiar smell and the russet skin lay a story that stretched from the cobblestones of Vienna to the dynamite works of Johannesburg, from the guerrilla ridges of the Transvaal to the bankers and archdukes of the Habsburg court.
The story of the Burenwurst is not simply a story of meat and political solidarity, of an empire that officially did nothing and yet did everything. It is the story of how a small, coarse sausage became an edible act of protest. It is also the story of a man who built a factory that made the Boer War last three years instead of three months. It is, in short, the story of how food and power and explosives are not always as far apart as we might prefer to believe. This article draws directly on previous research published on EarthwormExpress [1], [2], [3], on the official Austrian Food Code [4], on the primary scholarship of historian Peter Payer [5], and on verified archival and published sources cited throughout. We have not invented anything. Where evidence is limited, we say so.
The Sausage Lineage: From Monastic Cellar to Vienna Street
To understand what the Burenwurst is, it helps to understand what it came from. Two sausage traditions converge in its making: one from the monasteries of medieval Slovenia, and one from the politics of turn-of-the-century Vienna.
The Krainer: The Coarse Ancestor
The Krainer sausage originates from the Carniola region, known in German as Krain, which is today part of Slovenia. Its roots are monastic. Monasteries throughout Central Europe functioned as centres of agricultural and culinary innovation during the Middle Ages, and the preservation of pork through curing, smoking, and filling into casings was a practice refined over centuries within these institutions. [7] The Krainer sausage carries this heritage directly. It is coarsely chopped, seasoned with garlic, salt, and pepper, and smoked. It is a robust product, designed for preservation and sustenance rather than refinement.
Culinary scholar Michael Krondl notes that monastic traditions of curing and smoking pork in Central Europe established the foundations of many regional sausage styles. [8] The Krainer became a Protected Geographical Indication product, reflecting the depth of its regional identity. It is heavier, coarser, and more pungent than the Vienna Frankfurter. The progression from the Krainer to the Burenwurst is therefore not simply a technical evolution. It is a cultural one, rooted in a moment of political crisis that Austria experienced vicariously through the suffering of a distant people.
The Birth of the Burenwurst: A Political Act in Casing
The Second Anglo-Boer War began on 11 October 1899. Within weeks, the news had reached Vienna. Within months, it had transformed the city’s sausage stands. The Burenwurst appeared in Vienna’s markets and taverns during the height of the war and was introduced as a deliberate act of solidarity with the Boers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Peter Payer, the foremost historian of Vienna’s sausage culture, describes the new sausage’s reception directly. He writes that it became extremely popular, quickly earning the nickname “Burenheidl” or simply “Haße” in Viennese dialect. In butcher’s language, it was technically a “Klobasse.” [5] The Slovak word “Klobása” means farmer, just as the Dutch word “Bur” means farmer. The Boers were themselves a farming people, and the naming therefore carried a double resonance that Viennese consumers understood immediately.
The sausage was served boiled, never grilled or fried in the original form. It was eaten hot, with sweet mustard, bread, and a sharp peppered oil. This simplicity was itself a political statement. The Burenwurst was the antithesis of the refined Frankfurter. It was coarse, fatty, direct, and unpretentious. It represented, in edible form, the Boers themselves as Viennese romantics imagined them. Farmers. Fighters. Free men.
As one Vienna newspaper, the Neues Wiener Journal, wrote on 5 May 1900: “The Burenwurst is more than sustenance. In every bite, the people find a way to stand against the imperialist forces of England, expressing their solidarity with the brave men of the Transvaal.” [9] Taverns across the city became gathering points for public discussion about the war. To order a Burenwurst was to make a statement. One tavern-goer of the period was reported as saying, “With every bite of the Burenwurst, we defy the British Empire and stand with the Boers.” [2]
What Made the Burenwurst Different
The technical distinction between the Burenwurst and its relatives is precise and meaningful. The Frankfurter was finely ground pork, or in the Vienna adaptation, a blend of finely ground pork and beef. The Krainer was a coarser pork sausage with garlic and smoke. The Burenwurst was coarser still, combining beef and pork with bacon and sometimes small pieces of ham, seasoned with paprika and garlic. [6] The inclusion of paprika reflects the Eastern reach of the Habsburg Empire. The coarser grind reflects the deliberate rusticity of the product. The combination of beef, pork, and bacon together was distinctive and placed the Burenwurst in a category of its own.
The Austrian food writer Heinz-Dieter Pohl, in his encyclopaedia of Austrian kitchen language, confirms that the Burenwurst belongs to the tradition of the Brühwurst category, which is a scalded cooked sausage, and that its coarse character distinguishes it from all the finer sausages that Vienna had previously produced. The product sits at the intersection of the Slavic klobasa tradition and the Central European smoked sausage tradition. It is a product of the empire’s own complexity, expressed through a single casing.
The Official Composition: What the Austrian Food Code Says
The Österreichisches Lebensmittelbuch, which is the Austrian Food Code, codifies the Burenwurst under Kodex Kapitel B14, Sorte 3b. [4] The official composition is as follows. The sausage mass consists of 37 parts Rindfleisch II (second-grade beef) or Schweinefleisch II (second-grade pork), 25 parts Speck I (first-grade bacon fat), 20 parts Salzstoß (salt batch comprising salted, comminuted connective tissue, muscle membrane, small amounts of fat and meat), and 18 parts Trinkwasser (drinking water). This composition reflects a product that is genuinely coarse and fat-rich, designed to be scalded and eaten hot. The Salzstoß component is technically significant. It provides binding through heat-denatured connective tissue proteins and contributes to the characteristic texture and moisture retention of the sausage.
The Austrian Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry notes that the original Klobasse, which is the metered version of the same sausage cut from a long continuous strand, is in fact meatier and coarser, with a 5 mm grind, and is twisted in pairs. It tends more toward paprika seasoning because of its closer connection to the eastern regions of the Habsburg Monarchy. The Burenwurst as sold in single units at the Würstelstand is the standardised urban form of the same tradition.
Austria and the Boer War: A Nation Divided Between Neutrality and Passion
Austria-Hungary maintained official neutrality throughout the Anglo-Boer War. The Emperor Franz Joseph’s government was unwilling to confront British interests directly. When Britain sought to purchase war supplies, including horses and grain, from within the Dual Monarchy, Austrian officials agreed only on condition of secrecy, in order to avoid provoking the public. [3] However, official policy and public sentiment were entirely different matters.
The Boer War coincided with a powerful surge of nationalist sentiment within the Austrian half of the empire. Many Austrians identified with the Boers as a small, agrarian people defending their sovereignty against an overwhelming imperial force. This identification was not merely sentimental. It was politically resonant in a society where German-speaking Austrians felt their own identity submerged within a supranational empire that contained dozens of nationalities. The Boers were, in the imagination of the Austrian public, what Austrians themselves aspired to be. A people. A nation. Free.
Who Documented Austria’s Support
The most thorough documentary record of Austrian public support for the Boers comes from two main sources. Peter Payer’s scholarly work on the Viennese Würstelstand records the emergence of the Burenwurst as a cultural and political phenomenon. [5] The Vienna newspaper archives, held at the Austrian National Library and covering the Neues Wiener Journal and Die Neue Freie Presse from 1899 to 1902, document the rallies, the editorials, and the public statements of key figures. [9]
The scholarly synthesis of Austrian support in all its forms, from public rallies to volunteer soldiers to industrial contributions, is documented in the EarthwormExpress research series on Austria and the Boer War, compiled from these primary archives and from secondary works by Austro-Hungarian military historians. [2], [3]
Baron Anton von Goldeck: Austria’s La Fayette
The figure who did most to bring the Boer War into Austrian homes was Baron Anton Freiherr von Goldeck, a nobleman from Carinthia who traveled to South Africa and joined the Boer forces as a volunteer. He led a small reconnaissance unit of Austrians and Hungarians attached to the Boer commandos and served simultaneously as a war correspondent. His letters were published in the Wiener Zeitung and Die Neue Freie Presse and were read avidly across Austria. [2] He became known, with deliberate historical flattery, as Austria’s La Fayette.
In a letter published in the Neue Freie Presse on 16 April 1901, von Goldeck wrote of his Boer comrades: “The Boers’ courage is unshakable, their spirit unbreakable. In them, I see the mirror of our own national aspirations, as they struggle not just against an enemy but for the right to exist on their own terms.” [10]
In an earlier dispatch, written on 15 August 1900, he described a skirmish with characteristic vividness: “We were vastly outnumbered, yet the Boers fought with the heart of lions. They moved like shadows through the valleys, taking advantage of every ridge and rock. I have never seen such fierce determination in any army.” [10]
Von Goldeck also wrote of a moment of peace amid the war. He described sitting around a campfire after a battle while a Boer fighter played a violin, a scene that humanised the conflict for Austrian readers and transformed distant strangers into brothers in arms. These humanising stories were the fuel that powered Austrian public sympathy. A contemporary observer noted that “Goldeck was not just an Austrian fighting in a foreign war; he was the embodiment of Austrian national pride, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Boers in their fight against a global empire.”
Von Goldeck survived the war and returned to Austria as a celebrated figure. He served as a rallying symbol for Austrian nationalist sentiment for some years, though his fame faded as the empire faced its own existential crises in the years before 1914.
Karl Lueger, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Archduke Leopold Salvator
The pro-Boer sentiment in Austria was not confined to adventurers and volunteers. It reached the highest levels of Viennese public life. Karl Lueger, the influential and powerful Mayor of Vienna, declared publicly that “the Boers are fighting not only against British imperialism but for the rights of all nations who seek freedom from oppression. Their struggle is our struggle.” [2] The young poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who would later become one of Austria’s most celebrated literary figures, was also among those who voiced open support for the Boer cause.
At a rally in Graz attended by more than 3,000 people, Archduke Leopold Salvator, a brother of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and therefore a member of the innermost circle of the Habsburg imperial family, remarked: “What the Boers fight for today is what many of us, within this very empire, have long fought to preserve. Our right to our own identity and sovereignty.” [2] The presence of a Habsburg archduke at a pro-Boer demonstration was extraordinary. It demonstrated that sympathy for the Boers had penetrated the imperial family itself and was not simply a street-level phenomenon.
The Press and the Public Voice
Austrian newspapers provided extensive and largely sympathetic coverage of the Boer War throughout its duration. The Neues Wiener Journal and Die Neue Freie Presse published front-line dispatches, sympathetic editorials, and the letters of Austrian volunteers. [9] Reports of British scorched-earth tactics and the concentration camps for Boer women and children, which began to emerge from 1901, caused outrage among Austrian readers and intensified anti-British sentiment significantly.
The Vienna press also noted, approvingly, the emergence of the Burenwurst at sausage stands across the city. The connection between a simple food product and a political statement was understood by readers and vendors alike. Ordering a Burenwurst was a visible, public act of solidarity at a moment when direct political action was unavailable to ordinary citizens.
The pro-Boer rally in Vienna on 25 March 1900 drew thousands of participants. Banners carried the slogan “Unsere Bruder in Afrika, Freiheit fur die Buren!” (Our Brothers in Africa, Freedom for the Boers!). The crowd included students, workers, intellectuals, and nationalist leaders. [2] It was one of the largest public demonstrations in Vienna in years, and it occurred against the backdrop of an official government policy of studied neutrality. The disconnect between government and public could not have been more visible.
The Deep Industrial Connection: Franz Hoenig, Alfred Nobel, and the War That Dynamite Made Possible
Behind the public sentiment, the sausages, and the rallies lay a structure of industrial and financial power that connected Austria directly to the war in South Africa. The connection runs through Alfred Nobel’s explosives empire and through one Austrian engineer who, more than any other individual, determined the outcome of the war.
Nobel’s Austrian Empire
Alfred Nobel established dynamite factories across the Habsburg Empire from the 1860s onward. His Austrian operations were centred initially on the facility at Zamky near Prague, established in 1868, and subsequently on the major plant at Pressburg, now Bratislava, established in 1873. [11] By 1873, the combined Austro-Hungarian operations were large enough that Nobel renamed his company the Deutsch-Osterreich-Ungarische Dynamit AG. In 1886, Nobel’s German, British, and Austro-Hungarian interests were merged into the Nobel-Dynamite Trust Company, headquartered in London but with operational centres in Vienna. [11]
The internal government correspondence from the Staatsarchiv Wien, in the Handelsministerium files of 1887 to 1891, reveals that senior Austrian officials regarded the dynamite trade as a strategic economic opportunity. [12] The Ministry of Commerce described it as a means of securing the empire’s economic sovereignty through peaceful exports. This was not naive commercial thinking. It was a deliberate strategic posture. Austria would not fight wars. It would supply the infrastructure of war to others.
Nobel’s Austrian and Hungarian investors included prominent figures such as Viktor von Springer and Gyula Andrassy Jr., men who had direct access to the imperial court. [1] The lines between industrial investment, financial interest, and political influence were blurred by design. Those who profited from the Nobel Trust were also those who moved through the corridors of the Hofburg.
Franz Hoenig and Modderfontein
Franz Hoenig was an Austrian chemical engineer deployed from Nobel’s Pressburg facility to the Transvaal Republic in the mid-1890s. He was appointed as the founding manager of the Modderfontein dynamite factory, situated northeast of Johannesburg. [1] He designed the plant, supervised its construction, recruited its workforce, and managed its operations. He returned to Austria at the outbreak of war in late 1899.
The Modderfontein factory began construction in 1895 and was operational by 1896. At its peak it covered over 800 hectares and included its own power plant, hospital, and transport infrastructure. It produced between 400 and 800 tons of dynamite per year by 1899, according to Nobel Company production data from the period. [13] This made it the largest explosives facility in the southern hemisphere and one of the largest on earth. According to British mining correspondent E. Ashmead-Bartlett, writing in 1899, the factory alone could have sustained a year’s worth of Boer explosive needs for sabotage and skirmish campaigns, even if all other supply routes had been closed. [14]
Contemporary British military intelligence reports confirm that the factory’s output was critical to the Boer military effort. A British War Office report from 1901 estimated that Modderfontein produced enough explosive material in 1899 alone to fuel the sabotage of every railway bridge from Bloemfontein to Komatipoort twice over. [15] Kitchener’s own assessment acknowledged that without Modderfontein’s domestic production capability, the Boers would have been entirely dependent on smuggled imports, which the British naval blockade of Delagoa Bay made progressively impossible from 1900 onward.
The plant’s residence for its founding manager, known as Franz Hoenig Haus, was constructed in 1896 from imported German materials and modelled on Viennese bourgeois villa architecture. It stands today as a preserved heritage site in Modderfontein and carries a blue plaque from the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation. [1]
The Factory That Changed the War
The Transvaal’s industrial dependence on Modderfontein had direct military consequences. The dynamite produced there powered the sabotage of British railway lines and telegraph stations throughout the guerrilla phase of the war. It supplied the Begbie’s Foundry in Johannesburg, which the Boers commandeered on 12 October 1899 to manufacture artillery shells. [3] The foundry was staffed by skilled European workers, including Italians and Austrians, who provided the metalworking expertise needed to cast shells and maintain military machinery.
On 24 April 1900, Begbie’s Foundry was destroyed by a massive explosion. Contemporary reports placed the initial death toll at 17 men, predominantly Italians and Austrians, with later accounts estimating approximately 30 dead and 54 injured. [3] The dead were interred in the Catholic section of the Braamfontein Cemetery in Johannesburg. There is no memorial to them there. The contribution of these European artisans to the Boer war effort has received almost no historical attention.
The Boers suspected sabotage. William Begbie, son of the foundry’s original owner, was arrested and accused of causing the explosion. He was a British subject who had been forced to continue operating the foundry under Boer command. The Boer authorities expelled all remaining British subjects from Johannesburg within days of the explosion. The political fallout was immediate and significant.
Hoenig’s Return and His Influence in Vienna
When Hoenig returned to Austria in late 1899, he brought with him a detailed knowledge of Boer military preparations that no other Austrian possessed. He had built the factory. He knew Boer leadership. Archival leads from the Transvaal State Archives suggest that his name appears in correspondence related to industrial licensing and plant inspection visits by ZAR officials, including from the State Secretary’s office. [1] A 1898 memorandum from State Secretary F. W. Reitz to President Kruger references a senior Austrian engineer supervising the explosive works at Modderfontein as a key figure in the republic’s preparedness efforts.
A British intelligence report compiled by British field officers in 1901 lists Hoenig among foreign engineers who liaised closely with State Secretary Reitz and frequently advised General Schalk Burger on technical matters pertaining to explosives and bridge demolition. [15] The memoir of Boer artillery officer Captain H. J. Boshoff, preserved in the National Archives in Pretoria, records that “the Austrian Hoenig at the powder works had much to say about where and how the English might be delayed.” [16]
After his return to Vienna, Hoenig reportedly briefed influential figures in Austrian ministries and delivered technical lectures on modern explosives manufacturing at events attended by staff from the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to records from the Maschinenbaukammer Wien in 1903. [17] He was not a public advocate. He did not march in the streets. However, he moved among those who shaped the narrative. He spoke to politicians, financiers, editors, and investors. He framed the Boers as a courageous people with genuine industrial sophistication who were resisting imperial aggression. He was, in the analysis we have published on EarthwormExpress, perhaps the most important silent voice behind the coherence of Austrian support for the Boer cause. [1]
The Burenwurst as Living Memory
The war ended in 1902. The sausage did not disappear. It has been part of Viennese life ever since, accumulating cultural meaning that goes well beyond its origins. That accumulated meaning begins with the name itself.
The Name: Bur, Bauer, Klobasse
The etymology of the name Burenwurst is genuinely contested, and this ambiguity is itself historically interesting. The Austrian Ministry of Agriculture identifies two competing theories. [18] The first holds that the sausage was named in direct solidarity with the Boers of South Africa during the Second Anglo-Boer War, given that the sausage rose to prominence precisely during the war years of 1899 to 1902. The second holds that the name derives from the word “Buur” or “Bure” in northern German dialect, meaning farmer, and that the sausage is therefore simply a “farmer’s sausage” with no direct connection to South Africa.
The two theories are not mutually exclusive. The Dutch word “Bur” means farmer. The German word “Bauer” means farmer. The Boers were themselves called Boers because they were farmers. The Slovak word “Klobasa” derives from a root meaning farmer. All of these semantic threads converge on the same point. The sausage of the farmer and the sausage of the Boer were, in the Viennese imagination of 1900, the same thing.
Payer confirms that in butcher’s trade language, the Burenwurst is technically called a Klobasse. This term is derived from Slavic roots, specifically from the Hungarian Kolbasz and the Slovak Klobasa, both of which simply mean sausage or, in some usages, farmer’s sausage. The word carried into Viennese usage as a relic of the Habsburg Monarchy’s multilingual reach. The sausage therefore carries in its very name the linguistic complexity of the empire that created it.
The Sausage in Vienna’s Cultural Life
The Burenwurst did not disappear when the war ended. It became a permanent fixture of Viennese street food culture and has remained so to the present day. The Austrian band STS immortalised the sausage in their celebrated hit “Furstenfeld,” in which they complain, with affectionate exasperation, about the quality of Viennese Burenhautl. The songwriter and founder of Austropop, Wolfgang Ambros, referenced it in his 1975 song “A Gulasch und a Seitl Bier.” [19]
In 1977, media figure Hans Pusch released a single titled simply “Burenwurst,” with cover art by the illustrator Manfred Deix. [19] The work of H. C. Artmann, one of Austria’s most distinctive literary voices of the twentieth century, includes a collection titled “Im Schatten der Burenwurst” (In the Shadow of the Burenwurst), published by Residenz Verlag in 1983. [20]
The literary and musical record confirms something that the historical record also suggests. The Burenwurst is not simply a sausage. It is a cultural artifact. It carries within it a history of political solidarity, of public protest, of industrial power, and of the complicated relationship between a European empire and a distant war. Every Würstelstand in Vienna that sells a Burenwurst is, whether it knows it or not, selling a piece of the Boer War.
The Recipe: Burenwurst According to Austrian Master Butcher Tradition
The recipe below is derived from the Österreichisches Lebensmittelbuch Sorte 3b specification [4] and from the formulation documented by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture. [18] It represents the classic Viennese Burenwurst as made by Austrian master butchers. The Klobasse variant, which is meatier and ground at 5 mm, is noted in the production instructions below.
Ingredients per 1 kg of total mass
| Ingredient | % of final product |
| Beef, second grade, forequarter (Rindfleisch II) | 21.44% |
| Pork shoulder, second grade (Schweinefleisch II) | 14.62% |
| Pork back fat, first grade (Rückenspeck) | 24.37% |
| Salzstoß (salted comminuted connective tissue, muscle membrane, minimal lean) | 19.49% |
| Drinking water, cold | 17.54% |
| Curing salt (Nitritpökelsalz, 0.5% sodium nitrite) | 1.75% |
| Black pepper, ground | 0.19% |
| Paprika, sweet | 0.19% |
| Garlic, fresh, finely minced | 0.29% |
| Coriander, ground | 0.10% |
| Total | 100.00% |
Method
Step 1: Preparation of the Salzstoß. The Salzstoß component is prepared by mixing comminuted connective tissue, muscle membrane trimmings, and minimal lean meat with curing salt at a ratio of 1.8% of the Salzstoß material. This mixture is allowed to cure under refrigeration for 12 to 24 hours before use. The Salzstoß contributes binding and textural integrity to the finished sausage through the partial heat denaturation of collagen during scalding.
Step 2: Grinding. The beef (Rindfleisch II, meaning secondary-grade forequarter beef carrying connective tissue, intramuscular sinew, and some fat, not a lean trim) is ground through a 3 mm plate. The pork shoulder is ground through a 5 mm plate. The pork back fat (Rückenspeck, meaning firm hard back fat from the dorsal region of the pig, not cured or smoked belly bacon) is cut into small cubes of approximately 8 mm and chilled to near freezing before use. The Salzstoß is ground through a 3 mm plate. This differentiated grinding is what produces the characteristic uneven, coarse texture of the Burenwurst. It must not be homogenised into a fine emulsion.
Step 3: Mixing. All ground and cubed components are combined in a bowl cutter or paddle mixer operating at low speed. The spices and garlic are added at this stage. Cold water is added gradually. The mixture must be worked only until the components bind sufficiently to stuff cleanly. The temperature of the mixture must remain below 12 degrees Celsius throughout. The coarse texture must be preserved.
Step 4: Stuffing. The mixture is stuffed into pork or beef middle casings of approximately 38 to 42 mm diameter. Traditional Austrian production uses straight natural casings and the sausage is then tied at lengths of approximately 20 cm, or produced as continuous metre-length Klobasse and wound for portioning. For the Klobasse variant, the 5 mm plate is used for the pork and the mixture is kept somewhat drier to produce a firmer, meatier bite.
Step 5: Scalding. The filled sausages are scalded in hot water at 72 to 75 degrees Celsius until the core temperature reaches 68 to 70 degrees Celsius. This requires approximately 20 to 25 minutes for sausages of 40 mm diameter. The Burenwurst is never fried or grilled in the original Austrian tradition. It is served from hot water at the Würstelstand, where it is held at approximately 75 degrees Celsius until sold.
Step 6: Serving. The sausage is served hot, with sweet Austrian mustard (Süßer Senf), a slice of bread or a Brotscherzel (bread heel), and a small portion of sharp oil-marinated pepperoni (Ölpfefferoni). Fresh grated horseradish (Kren) is traditional in some regions.
What a Sausage Remembers
The Burenwurst is, in the strictest technical sense, a coarse scalded pork and beef sausage with a defined composition that is regulated under Austrian food law. However, technical definitions do not exhaust the meaning of food. The Burenwurst carries within it a memory of 1900, of a city that was officially neutral and privately outraged, of banners in the streets and speeches in taverns, of an engineer who built a factory that made a war last three years, and of farmers on the other side of the world who were, in the imagination of Vienna, fighting the same fight that Austrians recognised from their own history.
Franz Hoenig built the factory. Alfred Nobel’s network funded it and supplied the industrial knowledge. The Nobel-Dynamite Trust connected the explosives trade of Pressburg and Vienna directly to the Transvaal. The investors who profited from this arrangement moved in the same circles as archdukes and ministers. The archdukes who attended pro-Boer rallies in Graz addressed the same crowds who went home and bought their Burenwurst at the nearest Würstelstand.
The connection is not imaginary. It is documented. It is precise. And it is embodied, with remarkable concision, in a coarse, fatty, boiled sausage that you can still buy in Vienna today for a few euros, wrapped in paper, with sweet mustard on the side.
What the Sausage Tells Us About the Cow
Every sausage is a document. Not just of taste and tradition, but of the animal that produced the raw material and of the people who processed it. The Burenwurst, when you read the recipe carefully, tells a precise story about the cattle of the Austrian Alps in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It tells you how old they were, how hard they worked, what they were bred for, and how their bodies changed over years of alpine farm life. We prepared a full technical evaluation of this subject, published at EarthwormExpress and cited here as reference [25]. What follows is a plain-language account of its main findings.
The Animal: A Triple-Purpose Mountain Cow
The dominant cattle of Styria and the broader Austrian Alpine region from the nineteenth century onward was the Fleckvieh, the spotted cattle that Austria still uses today. However, the Fleckvieh of 1850 or 1900 was a fundamentally different creature from its modern descendant. From approximately 1830, local Alpine stock was crossed with Simmental cattle imported from Switzerland, producing an animal bred for three things simultaneously: milk, beef, and draft work. [25] That last function is the one that shaped the sausage.
A cow that pulls ploughs, carries loads, and walks steep mountain pastures up to summer grazing and back down each autumn builds muscle and connective tissue in proportion to those demands. The working muscles of her shoulders and forequarters become dense and bound together by tough fibrous sheets of protein called collagen. Every season of hard work adds to that structure.
Because these animals served three functions, farmers kept them far longer than any modern commercial system would. A cow that was past her best milk years might still be useful for draft work. These animals were typically kept for eight to twelve years before slaughter, compared with the 18 to 20 months typical of a modern young Austrian Fleckvieh bull raised for beef, or the 5 to 7 years of a modern culled dairy cow. [25] The difference in age at slaughter is enormous, and it shows directly in the composition of the meat.
What Years of Hard Work Do to Meat: The Collagen Story
Collagen is the protein that holds muscle fibres together. In young animals it is soft enough that normal cooking converts it to gelatin, which is why young beef melts in a braise. In old animals, the collagen develops what scientists call mature cross-links, chemical bonds that form progressively over years and resist heat. The older the animal, the more of these heat-stable bonds are present, and the tougher the connective tissue becomes, even after prolonged cooking. This is documented in peer-reviewed meat science: it is well established that connective tissue toughness in high-connective-tissue muscles increases with beef cattle age, with collagen heat solubility decreasing as cattle age. [25]
The measured baseline data, from Casey et al. (1986), who dissected thirteen beef carcasses from modern commercial cattle, found that collagen in the forequarter averaged 3.2% on a wet fat-free basis, with the shin cut reaching 4.8%. [25] For the historical Alpine working cow slaughtered at 8 to 12 years after a life of sustained draft and locomotor work, the technical evaluation projects forequarter collagen in the range of 3.8 to 4.6% wet fat-free, with the shin reaching 5.3 to 6.6%. [25] These are not simply higher numbers. The collagen present in that old cow was chemically different, bound by mature cross-links that resisted heat and could not be dissolved by standard boiling. An eight to twelve year old Alpine working cow presented the butcher with forequarter meat that simply could not be incorporated into a sausage as untreated trim. The connective tissue was abundant and it would not dissolve.
The Salzstoß: Austria’s Unique Technical Solution
This is precisely where the Austrian master butcher did something that his German counterpart never formalised. He developed the Salzstoß. The Austrian Food Code, the Österreichisches Lebensmittelbuch, formally defines the Salzstoß as a named ingredient category comprising salted, comminuted connective tissue, muscle membrane, and minimal lean meat, prepared before incorporation into the sausage mix. The equivalent German food code, the Leitsätze für Fleisch und Fleischerzeugnisse, does not contain this category at all. [25] The German butcher, working more often with younger and more purpose-bred beef animals where draft work had been displaced by mechanisation earlier in the northern plains, did not face the same processing challenge with the same frequency.
The Salzstoß process takes all that tough connective tissue and first grinds it very fine at 3 mm or below, breaking the physical structure of the cross-linked tissue. Salt curing at 1.8% of the Salzstoß mass before incorporation begins protein extraction and assists binding. The pre-processed Salzstoß then incorporates into the sausage matrix during mixing, and during scalding the collagen converts to gelatin, contributing moisture retention and the characteristic soft, yielding bite of the finished Burenwurst. [25]
The Burenwurst formulation in the Austrian Food Code confirms the picture directly. [4] It calls for 37 parts of secondary-grade beef or pork, 25 parts of hard back fat (Rückenspeck), 20 parts of Salzstoß, and 18 parts of water. That 20 parts of Salzstoß, which becomes approximately one fifth of the finished product by weight, is the formally designated place in the recipe for the tough connective tissue of an aged working cow, processed into something usable. The formalisation of this ingredient into Austrian food law is the institutional trace of a specific animal at a specific historical moment.
What the Recipe Tells You About the Cattle, in Numbers
The milk yield data from the technical evaluation places the historical animal in sharper focus. [25] In the early 1800s, before systematic breed improvement, the average dairy cow in Europe produced fewer than 5 litres of milk per day. By the late 1800s, the unselected Styrian farm animal was producing approximately 5 to 7 litres per day. Modern dairy-optimised Fleckvieh produce 16 to 25 litres per day. A cow producing 5 litres per day was a modest, hard-working animal kept for every purpose available to her. She was not replaced when her milk yield dropped. She was kept until she could no longer pull a plough or carry a load.
The consequence appears directly in the recipe. The Salzstoß fraction, the processed connective tissue at one fifth of the finished product, is the measurable footprint of an animal with high forequarter collagen, accumulated over a working life of a decade or more. The recipe encodes the animal as surely as any breed record.
The Nutritional Value: What the Numbers Show
The technical evaluation includes a comparative nutritional analysis of the Burenwurst against the Frankfurter/Vienna sausage and the Krainer, per 100 g of finished product. [25] The differences are substantial and carry practical meaning for the population that consumed the sausage.
The Burenwurst delivers 330 to 360 kilocalories per 100 g, compared with 250 to 290 for the Frankfurter. [25] The fat content of the Burenwurst is 28 to 32 g per 100 g, against 20 to 26 g for the Frankfurter. The back fat fraction at 24.37% of the formulation is not incidental. Alpine farming in winter is physically brutal, sustained, cold-climate work, and the body needs dense, slow-burning fuel. The Burenwurst delivered it.
The most nutritionally distinctive difference, however, is the collagen content. The technical evaluation estimates the collagen protein fraction of the Burenwurst at 3.0 to 4.5 g per 100 g of finished product. The equivalent figure for the Frankfurter is 0.5 to 1.0 g per 100 g. [25] This difference flows directly from the Salzstoß fraction and from the secondary-grade beef cuts used, both of which carry substantially more connective tissue than the finely trimmed pork used in a Frankfurter.
Collagen is the primary dietary source of glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline, the amino acids that the body uses to maintain its own cartilage, tendons, ligaments, and bone matrix. The technical evaluation estimates the glycine content of the Burenwurst at 900 to 1,400 mg per 100 g, compared with 150 to 350 mg for the Frankfurter. Hydroxyproline is estimated at 300 to 500 mg per 100 g in the Burenwurst, against 50 to 120 mg in the Frankfurter. [25] These are estimated ranges derived from ingredient composition, not direct laboratory analysis of finished product, and are described as such in the technical evaluation.
The practical meaning of those numbers for an alpine farm population needs no scientific framing to understand. People who load and unload hay, carry milk churns on steep paths, work with draught animals in cold weather from dawn to dark, and do this across decades place very high demands on their joints, tendons, and connective tissue. The Burenwurst supplied collagen-derived amino acids in a form and quantity that no refined sausage type could approach. This was not nutrition by design. It was nutrition by necessity and by the honest use of every part of an animal that had given everything it had.
Historical Commentary: What Contemporaries Did Say
We searched extensively for documented comments from Austrian farmers, butchers, or food writers of the nineteenth or early twentieth century that explicitly connected the nutritional character of the Burenwurst to the nature of the Alpine working cow or to the physical demands of alpine farm life. No such direct primary source commentary was located. However, searching Peter Payer’s primary scholarly document on the Viennese Würstelstand uncovered two findings from the 19th century that are directly relevant, even though neither speaks about the Burenwurst by name.
Friedrich Schlögl and the Sustaining Sausage
The feuilletonist Friedrich Schlögl, whose observations on Viennese street life were recorded in the 19th century and are cited in Payer’s primary scholarship on the Würstelstand, [5] described the typical customers of the sausage stand in precise terms. They were, he wrote, “die schweren Fuhrleute, die Holzhauer, Eishacker etc.” Heavy cart drivers. Woodcutters. Ice cutters. Men who worked with their bodies in cold conditions and needed real food. Schlögl recorded that these men came to the stand specifically because they had been left with “nichts Nahrhaftem,” meaning nothing nutritious, and that the sausages were what filled that void.
The word Schlögl uses is worth pausing on. “Nahrhaft” in 19th century German carries the sense of nourishing, sustaining, giving the body what it needs to continue. It is not simply filling. It is the food that makes work possible. Schlögl was writing about the Frankfurter and its coarser contemporaries, not about the Burenwurst, which did not yet exist. However, his observation establishes something important. The Würstelstand was understood, in the 19th century, by a named and published writer, to be the institution where the hardest-working people of Vienna went for something genuinely nourishing. When the Burenwurst arrived at those same stands around 1900, it arrived into that tradition. It was coarser, fatter, and more collagen-rich than anything that had come before it. If the Frankfurter was sustaining enough that cart drivers and woodcutters sought it out for nourishment, the Burenwurst delivered substantially more of the same.
The Frankfurter Contrast: What Contemporaries Valued
The second finding is a contrast rather than a direct comment. When Johann Georg Lahner introduced his Vienna Frankfurter in 1805, contemporaries praised it in terms that survive in the historical record. Payer’s scholarship records that what convinced Viennese consumers was the sausage’s “Flaumigkeit” and its “leichte Verdaubarkeit.” [5] Flaumigkeit translates as lightness or fluffiness. Leichte Verdaubarkeit means easy digestibility. These were health-adjacent descriptions, used approvingly in 19th century commentary, to distinguish the refined Vienna Frankfurter from coarser products.
The significance of this for understanding the Burenwurst is precise. The Frankfurter was celebrated for being light and easy to digest. The Burenwurst that arrived a century later was the deliberate opposite. It was coarse where the Frankfurter was fine. It was fat-rich where the Frankfurter was restrained. It was dense and slow-burning where the Frankfurter was light. The contrast was not accidental. It reflected two different animals, two different traditions, and two different populations. The Frankfurter suited the urban middle class that admired its refinement. The Burenwurst suited the working population whose physical demands required something that Schlögl’s word captures exactly: nahrhaft.
Neither Schlögl nor the Frankfurter commentators wrote about collagen, glycine, or joint maintenance. Those are modern terms for what they were observing. What they recorded was the functional reality: that the coarse, fat-rich sausages of the Würstelstand were the food that made sustained physical work possible for the people who needed it most. The nutritional science we can now apply to the Burenwurst explains why that was true. The historical record shows that it was understood to be true, in practice if not in biochemical language, by the people who lived it.
Culinary historians who have studied Viennese working-class food culture in the nineteenth century confirm the broader context. [24] The poor people of Vienna ate practically anything in terms of animal parts, and Viennese working-class housewives proved highly creative when it came to finding edible protein in parts that any nobleman would have discarded as waste. Some of Austria’s most distinct food specialities owe their existence to this economic necessity. The Burenwurst, with its Salzstoß component formally incorporated into the recipe, is precisely this tradition applied to the connective tissue of aged Alpine cattle. The farmers who made it did not write about why it sustained them so effectively. They simply knew that it did.
Conclusion
This article began with a sausage on a table in Graz. It ends with a convergence of threads that, taken together, make the Burenwurst one of the most richly documented objects in the history of Austrian food culture.
The first thread is political. The Burenwurst was born in 1899 as a public act of solidarity with the Boers of South Africa, sold at Viennese sausage stands as an edible protest against British imperialism. It was coarse and fat and direct by design. It was the antithesis of the refined Frankfurter. It was, in the imagination of the Viennese public, what the Boers themselves were: farmers, fighters, free men. The Neues Wiener Journal said so plainly in May 1900. Karl Lueger said it at a rally. Archduke Leopold Salvator said it in Graz to three thousand people. Baron von Goldeck said it from the front lines in letters printed in the Neue Freie Presse and read across the empire.
The second thread is industrial. Behind the sentiment lay structure. Alfred Nobel’s dynamite network ran from Pressburg and Vienna to Modderfontein. The Austrian engineer Franz Hoenig built the factory that gave the Boers the industrial capacity to sustain a three-year war. The investors who funded it had access to the imperial court. The same financial and social world that produced the Nobel-Dynamite Trust also produced the public figures who spoke at pro-Boer rallies. Austria did not fight in South Africa. It did not need to. It built the right factories in the right places, and when Hoenig came home in 1899, he spoke to the right people.
The third thread is animal. The Burenwurst recipe encodes the Styrian Alpine working cow of the nineteenth century as precisely as any breed record. The Fleckvieh of 1850 or 1900 was a triple-purpose animal kept for draft, dairy, and meat, slaughtered at eight to twelve years of age, presenting forequarter material with high mature collagen cross-link density that required dedicated pre-processing before it could become a sausage ingredient. The Salzstoß, formalised in Austrian food law and absent from the German equivalent, is the institutional trace of that specific animal. At 19.49% of the finished product, it is not filler. It is the measurable footprint of a working life.
The fourth thread is nutritional. The feuilletonist Friedrich Schlögl observed in the 19th century that heavy cart drivers, woodcutters, and ice cutters came to the Würstelstand because they needed something “nahrhaft.” Nourishing. The Burenwurst, when it arrived around 1900, was the most nourishing product that stand had ever offered. At 330 to 360 kilocalories per 100 g, with 28 to 32 g of fat and an estimated 3.0 to 4.5 g of collagen, it delivered dense energy and collagen-derived amino acids in a form and quantity that no refined sausage could approach. The alpine farmers who ate it did not use the language of glycine and hydroxyproline. They simply knew that it sustained them.
The fifth thread is cultural. The Burenwurst outlasted the war, outlasted the empire, and outlasted the century. It is in Austrian literature, in Viennese dialect, in the songs of Wolfgang Ambros and the novels of H. C. Artmann. It is on the UNESCO list of Viennese cultural heritage. Every Würstelstand that sells one today sells, without knowing it, a piece of all five of these threads at once.
We began this investigation in Graz, where Christa brought a pack of sausages to a table. The investigation has taken us to Johannesburg, to the Transvaal State Archives, to the Staatsarchiv Wien, to the Carniola monasteries of the Middle Ages, to the laboratories where collagen cross-links are measured, and to the alpine pastures where a triple-purpose cow spent a decade walking and pulling and giving everything she had before she became, among other things, a sausage. That sausage is still available at every Würstelstand in Vienna. Order one. Eat it hot, with sweet mustard and a piece of bread. You are eating history.
References
[1] Van Tonder, E. (2025). Franz Hoenig: The Austrian Who Armed the Boers, Modderfontein, and the Industrial Power Behind the Anglo-Boer War. EarthwormExpress. https://earthwormexpress.com/about-eben/k-b/the-austria-articles-die-osterreich-artikel/franz-hoenig-and-alfred-nobel-austrian-links-to-the-modderfontein-dynamite-factory-and-the-boer-cause/
[2] Van Tonder, E. (2025). Austria’s Support for the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). EarthwormExpress. https://earthwormexpress.com/about-eben/k-b/the-austria-articles-die-osterreich-artikel/austrias-support-for-the-boers-in-the-anglo-boer-war-1899-1902/
[3] Van Tonder, E. (2024). Austria’s Cultural and Public Support for the Boers During the Anglo-Boer War: A Nationalist Reflection. EarthwormExpress. https://earthwormexpress.com/about-eben/k-b/the-austria-articles-die-osterreich-artikel/from-frankfurter-to-burenwurst-and-russian-a-comprehensive-culinary-and-historical-study/austrias-cultural-and-public-support-for-the-boers-during-the-anglo-boer-war-a-nationalist-reflection/
[4] Österreichisches Lebensmittelbuch (Austrian Food Code), Kodex Kapitel B 14 Fleisch und Fleischerzeugnisse, Unterkapitel B 14 B.4.2.1 Brühwürste/Brätwürste, Sorte 3b. Austrian Federal Ministry of Health.
[5] Payer, P. (2008). Der Geschmack der Stadt: Der Wiener Würstelstand. Nahversorger und Imageproduzent. In: Limbeck-Lilienau, E., Muttenthaler, R., Zuna-Kratky, G. (eds.). Geschmacksache. Was Essen zum Genuss macht. Vienna. pp. 74-81. Primary source also available at: https://stadt-forschung.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Der-Geschmack-der-Stadt.pdf This document contains: (a) the Schlögl citation on Würstelstand customers as heavy cart drivers, woodcutters, and ice cutters seeking “nichts Nahrhaftem”; and (b) contemporaneous commentary praising the Frankfurter for its “Flaumigkeit” (lightness) and “leichte Verdaubarkeit” (easy digestibility).
[6] Van Tonder, E. (2024). From Frankfurter to Burenwurst and Russian: A Comprehensive Culinary and Historical Study. EarthwormExpress. https://earthwormexpress.com/about-eben/k-b/the-austria-articles-die-osterreich-artikel/from-frankfurter-to-burenwurst-and-russian-a-comprehensive-culinary-and-historical-study/
[7] Ravnikar, J. Slovenian Culinary Traditions. [As cited in Van Tonder, 2024 (ref. 6)].
[8] Krondl, M. Monastic Culinary Traditions in Central Europe. [As cited in Van Tonder, 2024 (ref. 6)].
[9] Neues Wiener Journal, 5 May 1900. Vienna Newspaper Archive, Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek). Also cited in Van Tonder, E. (2025), ref. 2.
[10] Von Goldeck, A. Letters published in the Neue Freie Presse, 15 August 1900 and 16 April 1901. Vienna Newspaper Archive, Austrian National Library. As cited in Van Tonder, E. (2025), ref. 2.
[11] NobelPrize.org. Alfred Nobel in Krummel: History of the European Dynamite Network. https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/alfred-nobel-in-krummel/
[12] Staatsarchiv Wien, Handelsministerium (1887-1891), file 59/B/377. As cited in Van Tonder, E. (2025), ref. 1.
[13] Nobel Company (1898). Annual Production and Technical Review. Nobel Archives. As cited in Van Tonder, E. (2025), ref. 1.
[14] Ashmead-Bartlett, E. (1899). War Dispatches from South Africa. As cited in Van Tonder, E. (2025), ref. 1.
[15] British War Office (1901). Field Intelligence Reports and Assessments, Pretoria Section. As cited in Van Tonder, E. (2025), ref. 1.
[16] Boshoff, H. J. (n.d.). Private Correspondence. Boshoff Papers, National Archives, Pretoria. As cited in Van Tonder, E. (2025), ref. 1.
[17] Maschinenbaukammer Wien (1903). Technische Referate und Vortrage: Jahresheft. Vienna. As cited in Van Tonder, E. (2025), ref. 1.
[18] Bundesministerium fur Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Klima- und Umweltschutz, Regionen und Wasserwirtschaft (BMLUK). Burenwurst. https://www.bmluk.gv.at/themen/lebensmittel/trad-lebensmittel/Fleisch/Fleischprodukte/burenwurst.html
[19] Pohl, H-D. (2007). Die osterreichische Kuchensprache. Ein Lexikon der typisch osterreichischen kulinarischen Besonderheiten. Studia interdisciplinaria Aenipontana 11. Praesens-Verlag, Vienna. ISBN 3-7069-0452-7.
[20] Artmann, H. C. (1983). Im Schatten der Burenwurst. With drawings by Ironimus. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna. ISBN 3-7017-1360-X.
[21] Hölzl, E. (ed.). Im Banne der Burenwurst. Der Wurstelstand als Wille und Vorstellung. Brandstatter Verlag, Vienna. ISBN 3854981058.
[22] Cartwright, A. P. (1964). The Dynamite Company. Purnell & Sons.
[23] RB Architects (2010). Heritage Impact Assessment: Modderfontein Village. Johannesburg.
[24] TourMyCountry.com. Lost Recipes of the Wiener Küche: Austrian Cuisine. Working-class Viennese food culture in the nineteenth century and the creative use of discarded animal parts. http://www.tourmycountry.com/austria/lost-recipes.htm
[25] Van Tonder, E. and Van Tonder-Berger, C. (2026). Technical Evaluation: The Animal Behind the Burenwurst. EarthwormExpress and Earthworm Writing and Research Studio. https://earthwormexpress.com/about-eben/k-b/the-austria-articles-die-osterreich-artikel/the-burenwurst-a-technical-evaluation/ Primary underlying sources include: Casey, J. C. et al. (1986). Collagen content of meat carcasses of known history. Meat Science, 12(4), 189-203; Shorthose and Harris (1990) as cited in PMC 6488330, Journal of Animal Science (2019); Torrescano et al. (2003). Meat Science, 64(1), 85-91; Österreichisches Lebensmittelbuch Sorte 3b; Britannica dairy cattle breeds; Fleckvieh Austria (Genetic Austria); Statistik Austria; EarthwormExpress operational records, Agege Abattoir, Lagos.
All rights reserved. EarthwormExpress and Earthworm Writing and Research Studio.
Eben van Tonder and Christa van Tonder-Berger, 2026.