A meat science history told through one ion, one founder, and one century of binding research

By Eben van Tonder and Christa van Tonder-Berger, 6 May 2026

Editorial note. This article distinguishes carefully between three classes of statement. Documentary statements are anchored in primary or peer reviewed sources, including the 1949 patent, federal regulations, company anniversary documentation, peer reviewed meat science literature and verified historical records. Contextual statements describe the surrounding industrial, legal and scientific environment of the period without claiming direct involvement of Kurt van Hees. Interpretive statements offer analytical commentary on the pattern of work and the relationship between the firm’s outputs and the broader scientific tradition. Interpretive passages are flagged in marked notes within the text. The article does not claim direct personal study, curriculum, supplier relationships or literature engagement on the part of Kurt van Hees beyond what is documented in the cited sources.

1. The Rhine Main heartland and a Dutch surname

In the spring of 1947, Wiesbaden Biebrich on the right bank of the Rhine was a town of rubble and improvisation. The Reich had collapsed two years earlier. The chemical industry that had once dominated the Rhine Main basin was being slowly stitched back together. Food was scarce, and the meat trade in particular was working with raw materials that varied from week to week, in plants that had often lost equipment, staff and reliable utilities. On 29 March 1947, in this setting, a 47 year old commercial graduate registered a new firm in Wiesbaden Biebrich and called it Van Hees GmbH [1, 2]. The man’s name was Kurt van Hees. He had been born in 1900 and would pass away in 1979 [3, 4].

His surname, although carried into Germany, was Dutch in form and origin. Van Hees is a Dutch toponymic surname meaning literally from Hees. The element hees comes from Low German and Middle Dutch and refers to beechwood or brushwood, that is, an area of low scrubby woodland on sandy or marginal soil [5, 6]. Several settlements in the Low Countries took their name from precisely that landscape. They include Heeze, formerly spelled Hees, near Eindhoven in North Brabant, and Hees, a former village now incorporated as a neighbourhood of Nijmegen in Gelderland [7]. The surname remains heaviest in the Netherlands, with strong concentrations in North Brabant, South Holland and Gelderland, and a secondary cluster in Belgium [8].

The geography of Wiesbaden also matters as context for what came next. Wiesbaden lies in the German state of Hesse. Hesse holds the city of Giessen and its university, where Justus von Liebig had taught for 28 years from 1824 to 1852, and where the modern science of phosphates as essential plant nutrients had been put on a systematic footing [9, 10]. The wider Rhine Main basin also contained, in the same broad period, two German firms with documented long term phosphate specialisation. Chemische Fabrik Budenheim, founded in 1908 in Rhineland Palatinate, was already a long established phosphate specialist by the time of the Second World War [11]. BK Giulini in the same regional industrial environment had a corporate history of long development in phosphate and functional food ingredient chemistry [12]. These two firms are referenced here as documentary evidence that the Rhine Main basin was a region of active phosphate industry.

Note on interpretation. The placement of the firm’s founding in the Rhine Main basin is documentary. The presence of Liebig’s former chair at Giessen, of Chemische Fabrik Budenheim, and of BK Giulini in the same region is also documentary. The reading that this geography constitutes a meaningful industrial and scientific environment for a phosphate based meat ingredient firm is interpretive. It is offered as a contextual observation, not as a claim of direct connection between any of these institutions and Kurt van Hees personally.

2. The world of food phosphates in the 1940s

Phosphates are a family of compounds derived from phosphoric acid. They occur naturally in bone, teeth, plants and milk. They had been used in food production for more than a century before Van Hees GmbH was founded [13]. The earliest food applications were in fertiliser and in baked goods. Liebig’s 1840 book, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, identified nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium as essential to plant growth, and argued explicitly that phosphates and other minerals were the limiting factor in agricultural yield rather than humus [10, 14]. From 1845 onwards, Liebig developed mineral manures based on phosphate salts. His pupil J. H. Gilbert at Rothamsted, working with John Bennet Lawes, then turned this insight into the first commercially successful superphosphate fertilisers [15]. By the late 19th century, the Western chemical industry had a secure understanding of phosphates as agricultural inputs.

Food applications followed in a recognisable sequence. Calcium phosphates entered baking powders as fast acting leavening acids, used in a ratio of about 1.5 to 1 by weight against sodium bicarbonate [13]. They also functioned as firming agents in jams and fruit fillings, where they provide the calcium ions that interact with pectin to keep fruit pieces from collapsing during processing. Phosphoric acid entered the soft drinks industry as the source of the characteristic tart flavour and as a pH modifier [16]. Sodium phosphates entered processed cheese in the early 20th century as emulsifying salts, where they sequester calcium from casein and convert it into a soluble sodium caseinate that gives processed cheese its smooth, stable structure [16]. By the 1930s, the German trade and scientific literature was already discussing the use of phosphates in sausage and meat products specifically. This is the documentary stream into which the 1949 Van Hees patent later plugged itself [17, 18].

The mechanical understanding of why phosphates do useful work in foods was already well advanced by the 1940s. Phosphates regulate pH, because they buffer in the range relevant to most processed foods. They sequester divalent metal cations such as iron, copper, calcium and magnesium, and they thereby slow the metal catalysed oxidation of fats. They bind water through their multiple charges, and they raise ionic strength in a way that opens up protein structures and increases water uptake. They inhibit microbial growth indirectly through pH and metal control [13, 16]. Each of these effects has a clear application in fruit, vegetable, dairy and bakery products. Each of them, by extension, has a corresponding application in meat.

3. The fruit and vegetable phase of the firm

The Wiesbaden Stadtteil profile, the Kulturroute Rhein Main entry on Van Hees GmbH and the German Wikipedia article on the firm all record that the company in its first phase produced preservatives for fruit and vegetables [19, 1, 4].

The firm’s own German Über uns page confirms that, in the late 1940s, Kurt van Hees recognised the importance of food phosphates in meat processing, and laid the basis for the company’s development with innovative technologies and patented products [2]. The same page is silent on the precise route by which he came to that recognition. The American site of the firm states the recognition itself in summary form:

“Our founder and namesake, Kurt van Hees, recognized the importance of food grade phosphates in meat processing.” [20]

Note on interpretation. The fruit and vegetable phase of the firm is documentary. The general role of phosphates in fruit and vegetable preservation, as set out in section 2, is also documentary. The reading that the fruit and vegetable phase served as an exposure pathway through which Kurt van Hees became familiar with phosphate chemistry is interpretive. It is plausible because phosphate compounds (calcium phosphate as a firming agent in jams, phosphoric acid as an acidulant, sodium phosphates as buffers and metal sequestrants) were standard tools of the European preservatives trade in the 1930s and 1940s. However, no surviving formulation document or laboratory notebook from the firm’s first phase is in the open record. The article therefore presents the fruit and vegetable phase as a plausible exposure pathway, and not as a documented training programme.

The pattern that follows from the firm’s founding and its 1949 patent is consistent with a deliberate move from one substrate to another within the same chemistry. The firm’s output indicates a transition. Its first phase produced fruit and vegetable preservatives. Its second phase produced phosphate based meat additives. The two phases share a common chemical toolkit. The two phases use the same families of compounds for related but distinct technological purposes. On a reading of the firm’s output, the move to meat is best understood as the application of a familiar food chemistry to a substrate where the science still had room to be commercialised. The fruit and vegetable trade in postwar Germany was already industrialised. The sausage and processed meat sector, by contrast, was working with variable raw material, scarce fat and unstable plant conditions, and it lacked specialist branded ingredient suppliers of the kind that the dairy and bakery sectors already used.

4. The 1949 patent and the fat problem

On 30 September 1949, Van Hees GmbH filed a patent application at the German patent office. It was eventually published as DE972089C on 21 May 1959, under the title Verfahren zur Erhöhung des Fettgehaltes in Wurstwaren, that is, a method for increasing the fat content of sausage products [17]. This document is the strongest single piece of evidence for what Van Hees GmbH actually pioneered in its early years. The patent claims a method by which small additions of phosphate salts allow much higher fat incorporation in sausage without fat separation. The specified phosphates are orthophosphate, pyrophosphate, metaphosphate and polyphosphate salts. The specified working range is approximately 0.3 to 0.5 percent of the total mass. The patent sets a strict upper bound at 0.5 percent of added phosphate in the finished sausage [17].

To understand why this was important, the underlying problem must be stated. An emulsion sausage, of the frankfurter, wiener, mortadella or Brühwurst family, is at its core an oil in water emulsion in which fat droplets are dispersed and stabilised inside a continuous protein and water matrix. The matrix itself is built from extracted myofibrillar proteins, principally myosin and actomyosin, which coat the fat droplets and gel on heating to lock them in place [21]. The fat content of such products is technologically limited. If the formulator pushes the fat too high, the protein matrix cannot coat all the droplets. Subsequently, the sausage shows fat separation, that is, fat caps under the casing, fat pockets within the structure, and visible fat sweat or cookout on the surface. The cooked product becomes greasy in the mouth. It loses sliceability and therefore commercial value [21].

Postwar German sausage formulations sat in the high range of what was technically possible. Traditional Brühwurst and Frankfurter formulations carried fat levels in the order of 25 to 35 percent. Pushing reliably above that threshold without fat separation was the practical bottleneck. The Van Hees patent addressed precisely this. By adding a fraction of a percent of phosphate, the patent showed that significantly higher fat fractions could be incorporated without separation. The mechanism, although not framed in the modern molecular language of the day, is now well understood. Phosphates raise pH away from the isoelectric point of the meat proteins, they raise ionic strength, they dissociate actomyosin into actin and myosin, and they thereby open up the myofibrillar lattice and increase its capacity to hold water and to coat fat droplets [22, 23, 24]. The result is a more stable emulsion and a sausage that tolerates higher fat without breaking.

The patent did not stand on its own. Its citation block reaches back into a clearly identifiable German scientific stream. The patent cites Reinhard Kübler’s 1935 Leipzig dissertation on disodium phosphate in sausage and meat processing. It cites Ph. Teliszewsky’s 1947 Giessen dissertation on meat binding, with particular attention to the blood plasma protein product Plasmal. It cites articles in Deutsche Lebensmittel-Rundschau, Chemisches Centralblatt, Vorratspflege und Lebensmittelforschung, Allgemeine Fleischer-Zeitung and Zeitschrift für Lebensmittel-Untersuchung und -Forschung between 1936 and 1949 [17, 18]. Therefore, the patent itself indicates engagement with this body of literature. The citation block is the documentary evidence that Van Hees GmbH, as a corporate applicant, drew on this literature in formulating its claim. On an analytical reading, the contribution of the firm in the 1949 patent lay in industrialising and systematising a field that German veterinary food hygiene and trade science had already begun to map. The firm converted that body of work into a manufacturable, branded, processor ready system.

4.1 The fat ceiling, the economics of the postwar moment

The patent’s practical importance is best understood by setting out two parallel ceilings. The first is the technological ceiling on fat in emulsion sausage. Traditional Brühwurst formulations carry fat at approximately 25 percent, lean meat at approximately 50 percent, and water at approximately 25 percent [62]. The same broad envelope applies to frankfurter, wiener, mortadella and bologna formulations, which sit in the 25 to 35 percent fat range as a matter of stable practice [63]. Pushing reliably above 35 to 40 percent fat without protein gel disruption, fat separation and emulsion collapse was, and still is, the practical bottleneck [63]. Therefore, when the 1949 Van Hees patent specified that 0.3 to 0.5 percent of phosphate addition allowed substantially higher fat fractions to be incorporated without separation, it was addressing a technological wall that postwar German emulsion sausage was pressing against. The second ceiling was economic, and it was made of three things at once. Lean meat was scarce and expensive. Fat was scarce and expensive. Both of them remained rationed.

The economic context of 1949 explains why the fat increase claim was important. West German food rationing did not end until 1950, and the immediate postwar years had seen rations drop as low as 1,000 to 1,250 kilocalories per day in some occupied zones, with hundreds of thousands of Germans dying in the hunger winter of 1946 to 1947 [64, 65]. Per capita, food production in 1947 stood at 51 percent of the 1938 level [65]. Fat in particular was the scarcest macronutrient, because fat carries more than twice the caloric density of lean meat or carbohydrate, and because rendered lard, suet and bacon fat had been the preferred vehicles for caloric stabilisation in the German diet for centuries. After the 1948 currency reform and the elimination of price controls, prices rose rapidly, and the freed market began to reward processors who could deliver more palatable, higher fat sausage to a hungry consumer base [66]. Therefore, on a reading of the postwar German economic record, the drive to increase fat in emulsion sausage in 1949 was in the first instance economic and caloric, and only secondarily organoleptic. It was not a health drive in the modern sense. The modern association of saturated animal fat with cardiovascular risk did not enter mainstream German food policy until the 1970s. In 1949, more fat in a sausage meant more food per Reichsmark, more satiety per portion, more flavour per slice, and a more sliceable, less crumbly product. The Van Hees patent’s claim to allow significantly higher fat content without emulsion failure spoke directly to this constellation of incentives.

Note on interpretation. The fat ceiling is documentary, in that the 25 to 35 percent fat envelope of traditional Brühwurst, frankfurter and wiener formulations is well established in the technical literature [62, 63]. The economic context of postwar German rationing, the 1948 currency reform, and the per capita food production figures are also documentary [64, 65, 66]. The reading that these two ceilings together drove the commercial demand for the Van Hees patent is interpretive. It is supported by the explicit framing of the patent itself, which is titled “Verfahren zur Erhöhung des Fettgehaltes in Wurstwaren”, that is, a method for increasing the fat content of sausage products [17]. The article simply observes that the patent’s technical claim aligns with the commercial environment of postwar Germany at the time of filing.

5. The academic foundations behind the patents

The 1949 Van Hees patent was not the first patent to claim a phosphate based meat composition. It was preceded, in the immediate German postwar window of 1948 to 1949, by two filings from Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, and in the wider Anglo-American patent stream, by patents going back to 1890 [60]. To understand why so many independent applicants reached the same general technological territory in the same brief period, the academic foundations must be set out. The patents are best read as parallel commercial responses to a body of scientific work that had matured between the late 19th century and the late 1940s. This section sets out that scientific work in the order in which it accumulated.

5.1 Muscle and ATP, the Lohmann and Engelhardt line

In 1934, Karl Lohmann in Heidelberg postulated that adenosine triphosphate (ATP) was responsible for supplying the energy of muscle contraction [25]. In 1939, Wladimir A. Engelhardt and Militza N. Lyubimova in Moscow published a paper in Nature titled Myosine and adenosinetriphosphatase [26]. They demonstrated that myosin, until then regarded as a structural protein of muscle, was itself an enzyme. It catalysed the hydrolysis of ATP to ADP and inorganic phosphate. From 1939 to 1944, Albert Szent-Györgyi and Ilona Banga at the University of Szeged in Hungary repeated the Engelhardt and Lyubimova work and extended it. They showed that myosin could be extracted from minced muscle in two distinct preparations. The shorter extraction yielded a low viscosity preparation they called myosin A. The longer extraction yielded a more viscous preparation they called myosin B. In 1942, Bruno Straub in the same laboratory found that myosin B contained a second protein, which he named actin. The complex of the two proteins was named actomyosin. Szent-Györgyi then showed in 1942 that ATP was the source of energy for muscle contraction itself, and that the addition of ATP to actomyosin threads in vitro caused them to contract [27, 28].

The implication for meat science was immediate, although it took the meat science community more than a decade to fully realise it. If actomyosin was the central contractile protein of muscle, and if its behaviour was governed by ATP and inorganic phosphate, then the addition of phosphate salts to postmortem muscle would influence the same protein system. Specifically, polyphosphate salts could dissociate actomyosin into actin and myosin, and could thereby open up the myofibrillar lattice. In 1934, Lohmann had identified the energy molecule. By 1942, Szent-Györgyi and Straub had identified the contractile protein system that responded to it. Therefore, by the mid-1940s the protein chemistry of muscle was understood at a depth that was simply not available to earlier generations of meat technologists.

5.2 Postmortem muscle and water binding, the Bate-Smith and Bendall line

The bridge from this physiological work to meat science proper was built in Cambridge by E. C. Bate-Smith and J. R. Bendall. Bate-Smith’s 1948 review chapter in volume 1 of Advances in Food Research set out the state of muscle biochemistry as it bore on meat technology, and lamented that the rapid growth of fundamental knowledge in this field had not yet been matched by application in the meat industry [29]. Bate-Smith and Bendall published in 1947 and 1949 their work on the postmortem changes in muscle, including the breakdown of ATP and creatine phosphate during rigor mortis, and the consequences for the binding and water holding properties of meat [30]. Bendall’s 1951 paper in the Journal of Physiology set out in detail the relationship between ATP breakdown, creatine phosphate breakdown and the development of rigor mortis [31].

The Bate-Smith and Bendall work made the connection that the patent stream needed. Postmortem muscle is not simply a substrate to be salted and smoked. It is a protein system whose binding properties depend on the state of its actomyosin and on the ionic environment around it. The exhaustion of ATP after slaughter changes the protein chemistry irreversibly. Phosphate salts added during processing can partly restore that ionic environment. They can thereby restore the binding power of meat in a way that ordinary salt alone cannot.

5.3 The German trade and academic literature, 1935 to 1949

In parallel to the Anglo-American protein chemistry stream, the German veterinary food hygiene literature had been working on the same problem from a different angle. Reinhard Kübler’s 1935 Leipzig dissertation on disodium phosphate in sausage manufacture was the first systematic German hygienic and technological assessment of a phosphate salt in meat [18]. Ph. Teliszewsky’s 1947 Giessen dissertation on meat binding, with attention to the blood plasma protein product Plasmal, situated the phosphate work alongside the older blood plasma binders [17]. The 1949 Van Hees patent and the two 1948 Benckiser patents both cite this German literature. Therefore, by the immediate postwar moment, three separate streams had converged. The first was Anglo-American protein chemistry from Lohmann, Engelhardt, Lyubimova, Szent-Györgyi, Straub, Bate-Smith and Bendall. The second was German veterinary food hygiene from Kübler and Teliszewsky. The third was German trade journalism in publications such as Deutsche Lebensmittel-Rundschau, Allgemeine Fleischer-Zeitung and Zeitschrift für Lebensmittel-Untersuchung und -Forschung [17].

5.4 The wider phosphate cycle, from Krebs to the meat plant

The actomyosin and ATP work sat inside a wider biochemistry of phosphate that was being elucidated in the same broad period. In 1937, Hans Adolf Krebs, working at Sheffield with William Arthur Johnson, identified the citric acid cycle, also known as the tricarboxylic acid cycle and today universally referred to as the Krebs cycle [67, 68]. Krebs received the Nobel Prize for this work in 1953. The cycle takes acetyl coenzyme A, derived from carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism, and oxidises it through eight enzymatic steps that liberate carbon dioxide and reduced coenzymes. Those reduced coenzymes then drive the synthesis of ATP through oxidative phosphorylation in the respiratory chain. The cycle is therefore the central engine of cellular energy in all aerobic organisms, and ATP is its currency [67, 69]. Albert Szent-Györgyi, in the 1930s, had already identified several of the key intermediates of the cycle, including fumarate, succinate and malate, and had received the Nobel Prize in 1937 for his work on vitamin C and on this set of metabolic reactions [69]. Therefore, by the late 1940s, the broader picture of phosphate in living tissue had been assembled. Phosphate enters food at the level of phytate in cereal, of casein phosphopeptides in dairy, of bone in fish and meat. It is liberated and reorganised in digestion. It enters the cellular pool as inorganic phosphate. Inorganic phosphate combines with ADP to form ATP through oxidative phosphorylation driven by the Krebs cycle. ATP, in turn, fuels muscle contraction through its hydrolysis at the actomyosin enzyme. The system is a closed cycle.

The application of this cycle to meat science was made by the Cambridge school of Bate-Smith and Bendall and by the Kulmbach school of Hamm and Grau. Bate-Smith and Bendall traced the postmortem fate of ATP and creatine phosphate in muscle, and they connected the breakdown of these phosphate compounds to the development of rigor mortis [29, 30, 31]. Hamm, in his programme at Kulmbach from 1953 onwards, traced the consequences of this postmortem phosphate exhaustion for the water binding capacity of meat [42, 43, 44, 45, 46]. The two schools together established the central insight that postmortem meat is a partly disorganised version of the same phosphate driven contractile system that operated in living muscle, and that the addition of polyphosphate salts during processing partly restores the ionic environment that the muscle had lost. The Krebs cycle is not directly added back to the meat, because dead tissue cannot regenerate ATP. However, the polyphosphate ion that the Van Hees patent specified at 0.3 to 0.5 percent provides, in chemical form, the divalent and polyvalent anionic charges that the postmortem muscle requires for protein extraction and binding. The cycle has, in effect, been short circuited at the level of the formulator’s bowl cutter.

5.5 The dissociation of actomyosin, the precise mechanism

The mechanism by which polyphosphates do this work was elucidated step by step over the second half of the 20th century. The starting point was the in vitro discovery, by Szent-Györgyi and Banga at Szeged in 1942, that ATP added to actomyosin threads caused them to contract, and that this involved the dissociation of actin and myosin and their subsequent reassociation [27, 28]. Szent-Györgyi himself summarised this insight in a single sentence:

“The simple statement that contraction in muscle is essentially a reaction of actomyosin, ATP, and ions was my laboratory’s main contribution to the problem of muscular contraction.” [28]

In the postwar period, the protein chemists Kenneth Bailey at Cambridge, H. H. Weber and his colleagues in Berlin, and the Buchthal group in Copenhagen extended this work and showed that ATP could dissociate actomyosin at low ionic strength and reassociate it at high ionic strength [70, 71]. The work of Polis and Meyerhof in 1947 added detail on the soluble ATPases of muscle [70]. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the meat science community had connected this physiological mechanism to the technological behaviour of phosphates in meat. Yasui and his colleagues in Japan published in 1964 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry their work on the effect of inorganic polyphosphates on the solubility and extractability of myosin B [49]. Hamm at Kulmbach published his synthesis of the field in his 1971 chapter Interactions between phosphates and meat proteins in the AVI volume Symposium: Phosphates in Food Processing [22]. Offer and Knight at Bristol then set out the structural basis at the level of the myofibrillar lattice in their 1988 chapter in Developments in Meat Science 4 [23].

The mechanism, in modern form, runs as follows. Postmortem muscle, after the exhaustion of ATP and the onset of rigor mortis, contains its myosin and actin in a tightly bound actomyosin complex. The myofibrillar lattice is closed and the proteins are difficult to extract with salt alone. The addition of pyrophosphate or tripolyphosphate during the cutter or chopper stage acts in two ways at once. First, the polyphosphate ion mimics the polyanionic structure of the ATP molecule that the actomyosin enzyme would normally split during contraction, and thereby it dissociates the actomyosin complex into its actin and myosin components [22, 23, 24]. Second, the polyphosphate ion raises pH away from the isoelectric point of the meat proteins, raises ionic strength, and chelates calcium and magnesium ions, all of which open up the myofibrillar lattice further. The myosin, once dissociated, becomes extractable into the salt solution of the meat batter. The extracted myosin coats the fat droplets, gels on heating, and locks in the emulsion. The cycle that operated in living muscle, namely Krebs cycle, oxidative phosphorylation, ATP, actomyosin contraction, and ATP hydrolysis, has been replaced in dead muscle by a single chemical proxy. The proxy is the polyphosphate ion at 0.3 to 0.5 percent of the total mass. This is the mechanism that the 1949 Van Hees patent had grasped commercially before it had been fully described in the meat science literature.

Note on interpretation. The mechanism described here is documentary in its modern form, supported by Hamm 1971, Offer and Knight 1988, and the Springer chapter on phosphate mediated water uptake [22, 23, 24]. The historical claim that the 1949 Van Hees patent had grasped this mechanism commercially before the meat science literature had described it is interpretive. The patent itself does not use the language of actomyosin dissociation. It describes the technological effect, namely the increase of fat content in sausage products without separation, and it specifies the working concentrations and the families of phosphates that produce that effect. The article therefore presents the patent as a successful empirical claim that anticipated the mechanism, not as a patent that explained it. The full mechanistic account belongs to Hamm at Kulmbach and to Offer and Knight at Bristol, working in the decades after the patent.

The reconstruction in this section follows the citation chains of the patents themselves. The Van Hees patent’s citation block (Kübler 1935, Teliszewsky 1947, German trade journals 1936 to 1949) is documentary. The Benckiser patents’ citation blocks include American patents and the same broader German trade literature [60]. The reading that all the postwar phosphate meat patents were responding to a common underlying body of academic work, in particular to the Lohmann to Szent-Györgyi protein chemistry stream and to the Bate-Smith and Bendall postmortem muscle work, is interpretive. It rests on the convergence of dates and on the common technological focus on actomyosin, water binding and emulsion stability, rather than on direct citations of the academic muscle biochemists in the patent texts themselves. The patents cite German trade and veterinary food hygiene literature explicitly. They do not cite Engelhardt, Lyubimova, Szent-Györgyi, Straub or Bate-Smith by name. However, the German trade literature itself drew on the Anglo-American protein chemistry stream. The convergence is therefore one of shared scientific environment, not of direct patent citation.

6. The Benckiser web and the geography of priority

Two priority filings sit directly ahead of Van Hees in the technical territory of phosphate based meat binding. Both are assigned to Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH of Ludwigshafen am Rhein. The first was filed by Wilhelm Bickel of Mannheim, with a French priority of 7 January 1948. It eventually issued as United States patent 3,029,150 [32]. The second was filed by Karl Buchholz of Mainz, with a German priority of 1 October 1948. It eventually issued as United States patent 3,032,421 [33]. The Bickel patent claims a method of curing meat using mixtures of polymeric phosphates, in particular pyrophosphate and tripolyphosphate salts, in combination with curing agents. Its stated objects are to retain moisture in sausage and meat products and to keep them stable over prolonged periods of time [32]. The Buchholz patent claims a method of activating the natural binding power of meat in sausage manufacture by adding 0.1 to 0.5 percent by weight, preferably about 0.3 percent, of a salt of orthophosphoric, metaphosphoric, pyrophosphoric or polyphosphoric acid, with examples for cooking sausage and liver sausage [33]. Both Benckiser patents were therefore filed in the same broad technological territory that the Van Hees patent claimed twenty-one and eleven months later respectively.

6.1 The firm and the family

Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH was the older and larger phosphate house. It had been founded in 1823 by Johann Benckiser, originally in Pforzheim. The firm moved to Ludwigshafen am Rhein in 1858 [34]. Benckiser entered the production of phosphate salts in the early 20th century. By 1929 it had launched the JOHA brand of emulsifying salts for processed cheese manufacture, which made it a major German supplier of food grade phosphates [34, 35]. On 27 May 1932, Benckiser acquired the Calgon production licence from Hall Laboratories of Pittsburgh, the original American developer of the hexametaphosphate water softening system. The German Calgon patent was granted to Benckiser in 1939 [34, 35]. Benckiser was awarded chemical of the year at the 1936 London World Exhibition [34]. Albert Reimann, a lawyer and judge, took over the leadership of the firm in the mid-1930s. The firm filed United States patent 2,241,868 (Reimann) in 1941, the first Benckiser meat composition patent in the cited record [60]. After the war, Benckiser resumed production of acid sodium pyrophosphate, Calgon and Calgonit in October 1948 [34, 35]. The 1948 Bickel and Buchholz priority filings were therefore made in the immediate aftermath of the firm’s postwar restart, and out of a corporate phosphate tradition that already stretched back two decades.

6.2 The geography of the patents

The geography of the four people and four places involved is unusually compact. Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH was based in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, on the left bank of the Rhine in Rhineland Palatinate. Wilhelm Bickel, the inventor of the first Benckiser patent, lived in Mannheim, directly across the Rhine from Ludwigshafen, with the two cities separated by approximately two kilometres of river [36]. Karl Buchholz, the inventor of the second Benckiser patent, lived in Mainz, on the left bank of the Rhine approximately fifty-seven kilometres downstream from Ludwigshafen [36]. Wiesbaden Biebrich, where Kurt van Hees registered his firm in March 1947, lies on the right bank of the Rhine almost directly opposite Mainz, with the two cities separated by approximately ten kilometres of river [37]. Therefore, Mainz and Wiesbaden Biebrich are essentially twin cities across the Rhine. Buchholz and Van Hees were working in cities that face each other across the river, at a distance that a sausage maker on either bank could cross in an hour by train, foot and ferry.

The four cities of Ludwigshafen, Mannheim, Mainz and Wiesbaden Biebrich form a single Rhine cluster. They sit within a sixty-kilometre stretch of river. They share, in the postwar period, the same regional German trade press, the same federal patent office practice, the same butcher’s guild structures, and the same handful of national meat science journals. Furthermore, the same broader Rhine Main basin contained the firm Albert at Wiesbaden Biebrich, whose phosphate division was later contributed by Hoechst into the joint venture Benckiser-Knapsack GmbH in 1967 [34]. Wiesbaden Biebrich was therefore not a peripheral location at the time of the Van Hees founding. It was already a centre of German postwar phosphate industry, with at least one major operation later absorbed into the Benckiser line.

Note on interpretation. The geography described here is documentary, including the distances, the city locations, and the corporate identities. The reading that this geography provided practical opportunities for awareness of competitor patent filings is interpretive. It is supported by the structural features of the German postwar meat trade, in particular the shared trade press and trade association infrastructure described in the next subsection. It is not supported by direct correspondence, by named meeting attendance lists or by any other personal documentation in the open record. The article therefore presents the geographic compactness of the cluster as a documentary fact, and the practical exposure pathway as a plausible reading.

6.3 The trade press, the trade fairs and the patent gazette

Three structural features of the German postwar meat trade made it nearly impossible for any specialist meat ingredient firm in the Rhine Main basin to remain ignorant of competing patent activity. The first was the trade press. Allgemeine Fleischer-Zeitung, which had circulated since the 19th century and which today continues as afz under the Deutscher Fachverlag, was the official organ of the Deutscher Fleischer-Verband. It carried weekly news of patent grants, ingredient launches, technical articles and trade fair announcements [38]. The Van Hees patent itself cites Allgemeine Fleischer-Zeitung articles between 1936 and 1949 [17]. Therefore, the journal was a documented part of the Van Hees firm’s reading on phosphate questions. The same journal also carried news of Benckiser product launches and patent activity, because Benckiser was already a major branded supplier of food grade phosphates through its JOHA emulsifying salt line [34, 35]. The second was the German federal patent gazette, the Patentblatt, which published patent applications and grants on a weekly basis. The third was the German Fleischwirtschaft trade fair circuit, of which IFFA in Frankfurt am Main, established in 1949 by the Deutscher Fleischer-Verband as a butchers’ trade exhibition, became the dominant institution. Frankfurt am Main lies less than fifty kilometres from both Wiesbaden Biebrich and Mainz [37]. Therefore, processors and ingredient suppliers from across the Rhine Main basin met regularly in the same physical exhibition halls.

On the documentary record, the firm Van Hees was reading Allgemeine Fleischer-Zeitung by 1949, because its 1949 patent cites the journal [17]. Benckiser was a long established advertiser and corporate presence in the same trade press, because of its JOHA cheese emulsifying salt line that had been on the German market since 1929 [34, 35]. The 1948 Bickel and Buchholz Benckiser patents would have entered the German federal patent gazette as published applications during 1948, well before the Van Hees filing of 30 September 1949. Therefore, the practical possibility of awareness was high. The article does not claim that Kurt van Hees personally read the Bickel or Buchholz applications before he filed his own. The article observes that, on the structure of the German postwar meat trade and the public availability of the patent gazette, no specialist phosphate meat ingredient firm in Wiesbaden Biebrich could plausibly have been unaware of the Benckiser patent activity in Ludwigshafen, Mannheim and Mainz.

6.4 What the Van Hees patent added

The 1949 Van Hees patent was an entrant in a German postwar field that had already been opened up by Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH eleven to twenty-one months earlier. What the Van Hees patent did add was a specific technological focus, namely the increase of the fat content of sausage products by phosphate addition, with the working range of approximately 0.3 to 0.5 percent and the upper bound of 0.5 percent in the finished mass [17]. The Bickel Benckiser patent of January 1948 had focused on moisture retention and storage stability, with no equivalent fat increase claim [32]. The Buchholz Benckiser patent of October 1948 had focused on activating the natural binding power of meat, again at the same 0.1 to 0.5 percent working range, but without the specific fat increase emphasis [33]. The Van Hees patent’s contribution was therefore narrower and more specific than either Benckiser filing. It was directed at the practical fat ceiling that postwar German emulsion sausage formulations were running into. Postwar fat scarcity meant processors were pushing more fat into sausage emulsions than the natural emulsification capacity of the meat proteins would support. A phosphate formulation that specifically enabled higher fat incorporation had immediate commercial value in that context.

The German patent law of the period, operating under the Patentgesetz of 1936 and its postwar continuation, protected claims rather than products. A patent defined a specific method or application. Two patent holders could use related chemistry and achieve overlapping results without infringing each other’s rights, provided their claims were directed at different applications, different methods, or different specified combinations. Patents granted in this period ran for eighteen years from the date of filing. The Bickel Benckiser patent of January 1948 and the Buchholz Benckiser patent of October 1948 would each have expired around 1966 to 1967. The Van Hees patent of 1949 ran to approximately 1967 on the same basis. The commercial window of exclusivity for all three filings was therefore roughly fifteen to eighteen years, and each party had to build and defend its market position within that window.

The Van Hees patent strategy is best read as a deliberate design-around of the Benckiser positions. A skilled patent attorney advising Kurt van Hees in 1949 would have read the two Benckiser filings carefully before drafting the Van Hees claims. Neither Benckiser patent had claimed fat increase as a primary application. That territory was open. By directing the Van Hees claims specifically at fat increase, at a defined working range, the filing secured its own protected position without crossing the boundaries of what Benckiser had already claimed. Van Hees was restricted from manufacturing products that used the Benckiser methods as claimed. However, because his claimed application was directed at a different technological problem, fat incorporation rather than moisture retention or binding activation, he was outside the scope of the Benckiser claims even though the underlying phosphate chemistry was related.

German patent law also recognised a doctrine of equivalents, under which a court could find infringement where the accused product used means obviously equivalent to those in the claim and achieved the same result in the same way. However the threshold for equivalents infringement was high, and a claim directed at a different specific application and a different technological problem would generally not be caught by it. The Van Hees fat increase claim and the Benckiser moisture retention and binding power claims addressed different formulation problems, even though all three produced phosphate-based meat additives that overlapped in their practical effects at the processing bench. A processor using a Van Hees product would observe improved water holding alongside the fat increase. A processor using a Benckiser product would observe some improvement in fat emulsification alongside the moisture retention. The practical overlap in end results did not constitute patent infringement, because infringement is assessed against the claims, not against the results achieved in use.

The commercial consequence was that Van Hees secured its own protected territory without challenging Benckiser on the broad phosphate positions, and without being excluded from the market by those positions. Kurt van Hees did not independently discover what Benckiser had already patented. He identified what the Benckiser filings had left unclaimed, directed his patent at that gap, and constructed a branded ingredient business within the protected space that followed. Read in this light, the Van Hees firm’s subsequent commercial history makes more sense. Van Hees did not have a foundational phosphate patent, because the foundational positions had already been taken. What Van Hees had was a tightly specified application patent on fat increase, supported from the start by branded ingredient lines, customer training, on-site application support, and a marketing language, the term Gütezusatz, quality additive, that the firm coined, which addressed processors directly rather than chemists [4]. The brand strategy of PLASTAL, PÖK, SCHINKO, BOMBAL, ZARTIN and SMAK that grew up after 1949 was the commercial answer to a patent landscape in which the broad phosphate territory had already been claimed. Van Hees won the long game in the German meat ingredient market, but it won as a specialist branded competitor rather than as a foundational patent holder.

7. The German scientific environment around the patent

The two dissertations cited in the 1949 patent are anchored in two of the most important German institutions in the broader scientific environment of meat phosphate chemistry. The first is the Lebensmittelhygienisches Institut at the University of Leipzig, where Reinhard Kübler in 1935 submitted Die hygienische Beurteilung der Verwendung und Wirkung von Dinatriumphosphat bei der Verarbeitung von Fleisch zu Wurst- und Fleischwaren [18]. This was the first systematic German hygienic and technological assessment of disodium phosphate in sausage manufacture. Leipzig in the 1930s was a major German centre for veterinary food hygiene. Kübler’s dissertation marks the formal beginning of the German academic literature on phosphates in meat.

The second is Giessen. Ph. Teliszewsky’s 1947 Giessen dissertation on meat binding, with attention to Plasmal, examined the blood plasma protein binders alongside the emerging phosphate work [17]. Plasmal itself was a commercial blood plasma protein preparation. Plasma proteins emulsify fat and bind water through their amphiphilic molecular structure, and they were used in German sausage formulations of the period as binders for lower grade raw materials [39, 40]. Teliszewsky’s dissertation set Plasmal in the same theoretical frame as the emerging phosphate work. The fact that the Van Hees patent cites both Kübler and Teliszewsky together is therefore consistent with the broader German trajectory of the field.

Giessen carries an additional weight in the wider scientific environment. The University of Giessen had been the academic home of Justus von Liebig from 1824 to 1852. Liebig had established the modern laboratory teaching method there. He had identified phosphorus, alongside nitrogen and potassium, as one of the essential plant nutrients in his 1840 book. He had developed the first systematic mineral fertilisers, using phosphate salts among others, between 1845 and the early 1850s [9, 10, 14]. He had then moved to Munich in 1852 [41]. In 1946, one year before Van Hees GmbH was founded, the University of Giessen was officially renamed Justus Liebig Universität Giessen in his honour [9]. Therefore, in 1947, when Teliszewsky completed his dissertation in Giessen, he was working in a university that had just formally recommitted itself to the memory of the man whose work had established phosphates as central to European agricultural science.

Note on interpretation. The link between Liebig, the Giessen university, Kübler at Leipzig, Teliszewsky at Giessen, and the 1949 Van Hees patent is best described as a scientific and intellectual lineage, not a documented personal or institutional chain. The historical facts that anchor this lineage are documentary. Liebig taught at Giessen from 1824 to 1852. He identified phosphorus as essential to plant growth in 1840. The University of Giessen was renamed for him in 1946. Kübler’s 1935 dissertation on disodium phosphate in meat exists at the Lebensmittelhygienisches Institut in Leipzig. Teliszewsky’s 1947 dissertation on meat binding exists at Giessen. The 1949 Van Hees patent cites both dissertations. However, no documented personal mentorship, no institutional supervision chain, and no direct correspondence between Kurt van Hees and the Liebig school are in the open record. The lineage is therefore presented in this article as an intellectual context, that is, as the broader German scientific tradition within which the 1949 patent was filed. It is not presented as a documented direct inheritance through Kurt van Hees personally.

8. Kulmbach and the German water binding school

The mechanistic explanation of why the Van Hees patent worked came from a parallel German institution. The Bundesanstalt für Fleischforschung in Kulmbach, today part of the Max Rubner-Institut, became under Rudolf Grau and Reiner Hamm the central European laboratory for the chemistry of meat hydration. In 1953 they published, with A. Baumann, Eine einfache Methode zur Bestimmung der Wasserbindung in Muskel in Naturwissenschaften, a paper that established the filter paper press method as a simple, repeatable laboratory test for water binding in muscle [42]. In 1957 Grau and Hamm published Über das Wasserbindungsvermögen des Säugetiermuskels in Zeitschrift für Lebensmittel-Untersuchung und -Forschung, which set out the systematic dependence of water binding on pH [43].

Hamm continued this programme for decades. His 1960 review in Advances in Food Research on the biochemistry of meat hydration, and his 1972 monograph Kolloidchemie des Fleisches, became the standard German references on water binding in meat protein systems [44, 45]. Together with Karl Otto Honikel, who later took over much of the same line of work at Kulmbach, Hamm produced a continuous stream of publications on phosphate function, ionic strength, ATP effects and the role of myosin and actomyosin in water and fat binding [46]. Therefore, the mechanistic apparatus that today explains why a fraction of a percent of pyrophosphate or polyphosphate stabilises a sausage emulsion was developed in a German federal meat research institute that lay only a few hundred kilometres from Walluf.

The proximity of Walluf to Kulmbach is geographic context, not evidence of direct collaboration. The Van Hees firm was building branded phosphate systems for the meat industry at the same time, and in the same country, as the federal meat research institute was working out why those systems behaved as they did. The two efforts proceeded in parallel within the broader German meat science environment. The Kurt van Hees Forschungs-Förderung, a research funding programme that the firm has operated for more than a decade, supports academic meat science work to the present day [2, 47]. This documented funding programme is more recent than the Hamm and Grau period. It is therefore not evidence of direct collaboration during the 1949 patent era.

9. The wider world of phosphate research

The German phosphate work was part of a broader international stream. In the United States, C. E. Swift and R. Ellis published in 1956 in Food Technology their paper on the action of phosphates in sausage products and the factors affecting water retention in phosphate treated ground meat [48]. Subsequently, in Japan, T. Yasui, M. Sakanishi and Y. Hashimoto worked through the late 1950s and into the 1960s on the effect of inorganic polyphosphates on the solubility and extractability of myosin B. Their 1961 and 1964 papers in Journal of Food Science and Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry linked the phosphate effect explicitly to the dissociation of actomyosin and the extractability of the myofibrillar protein system [49].

In the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the work continued through researchers such as B. W. Hellendoorn at the Dutch Institute for Meat Research, who in 1962 published in Food Technology on the influence of sodium chloride and phosphates on the water retention of comminuted meat at various pH values [50]. By the 1980s, G. Offer and P. Knight at the British Meat Research Institute in Bristol had produced their landmark chapter The structural basis of water-holding in meat in Developments in Meat Science 4, in which the swelling of the myofibril lattice in response to salt and phosphate was set out at the X ray and electron microscopy level [51]. By the 1980s, therefore, the international meat science community had reached a settled understanding of the phosphate effect, with the German tradition of Hamm and Kulmbach as one of its three principal pillars, alongside the American school led by Swift, Ellis, Wierbicki and Deatherage, and the British school led by Offer and Knight.

Each of these schools approached phosphates as a fundamental tool of meat protein functionality. Each of them confirmed the same essential picture. A small fraction of phosphate, at the level of 0.3 to 0.5 percent that the Van Hees patent had specified in 1949, opens up the myofibrillar lattice, increases water uptake, increases protein extractability, and stabilises the fat in water emulsion that is the heart of an emulsified sausage. On an analytical reading, the 1949 patent therefore stands as an early commercial expression of a principle that the international meat science community would spend the next four decades fully elucidating.

10. Nitrite curing, Nachmüllner, and the Austro Hungarian frame

The phosphate revolution sat alongside, but distinct from, the older revolution of nitrite curing. To set out the chemical environment in which Van Hees GmbH operated, the nitrite story must also be set out. The pivotal figure is Ladislav Nachmüllner, a Prague master butcher who, at the age of 19 in 1915, invented a curing salt called Praganda [52]. Praganda combined sodium nitrite with sodium chloride, sodium nitrate and sugar, in a fused crystalline form that delivered controlled, fast curing without the separation of the salts that would have produced unsafe local concentrations [52].

The Austro Hungarian context is essential. By the early 20th century, the empire ran one of the most advanced food science cultures in Europe. The Codex Alimentarius Austriacus, the Austrian food code, was developed between 1897 and 1917, and Vienna and Prague together became, alongside Washington and London, the major centres of formal food safety thinking in the period [53]. The direct addition of sodium nitrite to food was permitted in the empire when Nachmüllner registered his patent for Praganda. Therefore, while German butchers in the same period were still working under restrictions on nitrite, Czech and Austrian butchers had a legal frame within which the new chemistry could be commercialised. Nachmüllner exploited this frame. His business by 1915 was already successful and was generating copy cat products across the empire and beyond [52].

Germany followed by a different path. The wartime saltpeter shortage that began in August 1914 forced the German authorities to consider alternatives, and on the basis of earlier scientific work by Polenske in 1891 and Kisskalt and Lehmann in 1899, sodium nitrite was authorised for use in curing for a short period during the First World War [54]. The arrangement was unstable. The decisive German step came afterwards, with the Reich Verordnung über Nitritpökelsalz of 21 March 1930, which restricted nitrite to premixed curing salt at controlled concentration [55]. The 1930 ordinance was then placed on full statutory footing by the Gesetz über die Verwendung salpetrigsaurer Salze im Lebensmittelverkehr of 19 June 1934 [56]. The mature German solution, summarised in later meat science histories, was therefore to permit nitrite only in premixed curing salt, typically at 0.5 to 0.6 percent nitrite in salt, precisely so that direct toxic misuse became harder [57].

By 1947, when Van Hees GmbH was founded, German nitrite practice was therefore already a settled regulatory and chemical question. The Praganda style nitrite curing salt regime, of Czech origin, had been domesticated into a German legal framework. The technological frontier of postwar German meat processing therefore lay, on the available evidence of the 1949 patent itself, in the next layer of chemistry, namely the phosphate based binding and water holding system that would let the nitrite cured product carry more water, more fat and more variable raw material without losing structure.

11. The legal place of phosphates in Germany

Phosphates in German food law occupied a different legal track from nitrite. Their status was product specific and evolving rather than absolute. The 1949 Van Hees patent itself fixed the working technological range at 0.3 to 0.5 percent added phosphate, with 0.5 percent as the upper bound in the finished sausage mass [17]. Subsequent product law continued to be category specific. German patent DE1098341B, dealing with a ham injection process, states explicitly that the claimed process could not be used domestically under the Fleischverordnung of 19 December 1959 [58]. By 1973, federal rules in Germany had laid down explicit purity criteria for diphosphates and related polymeric phosphates, embedding them formally in the German food code [58].

The legal place of phosphates in Germany during the lifetime of Kurt van Hees was therefore not a simple yes or no. It was a slowly evolving framework that defined which phosphates were allowed, in which products, at what purity, and at what concentration. This framework gave specialist suppliers a structural advantage. A processor who tried to add raw phosphate salts directly faced compliance complexity, raw material variability and technological unpredictability. A processor who bought a Van Hees branded Gütezusatz received a formulation that was specification controlled, application tested and within the regulatory range. This is a plausible reading of the commercial niche that Van Hees GmbH built around itself.

12. Beyond phosphates, but still about binding

The history of Van Hees GmbH after the 1949 patent shows that the firm did not leave the binding problem. It expanded the range of binding systems on offer. The brand portfolio that grew up under Kurt van Hees’s leadership, including PLASTAL, PÖK, SCHINKO, BOMBAL, ZARTIN and SMAK, addressed in different ways the same underlying technological question, namely how to hold water, fat, lean meat protein and connective tissue together in stable, sliceable, repeatable products [1, 2, 59]. The phosphate platform of the 1949 patent remained the foundation. The other systems were built on top of it.

12.1 Blood plasma proteins

The first additional binding platform was already present in the 1947 Teliszewsky dissertation that the Van Hees patent cited. Plasmal itself was a commercial blood plasma protein product. Blood plasma proteins, both bovine and porcine, contain albumins and globulins that emulsify fat and bind water through their amphiphilic structure [39, 40]. They function similarly to sodium caseinate and to sodium tripolyphosphate in their effect on water holding capacity and cooking loss in pork sausage emulsions, and modern peer reviewed studies have confirmed their interchangeability with caseinate and polyphosphate at appropriate inclusion levels. Therefore, blood plasma protein binders had a presence in German meat science from the 1930s onwards, and they continued to function in commercial systems alongside the new phosphate platform.

12.2 Milk proteins and the PRALLO line

The systematic German development of milk protein based meat binders followed in the 1950s and 1960s. Sodium caseinate is the sodium salt of casein, the dominant milk protein. It is produced by treating acid precipitated casein with sodium hydroxide, sodium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate to convert the insoluble casein into a soluble form. Caseinate exhibits roughly 90 percent protein, and its open, amphiphilic structure makes it particularly effective at coating fat globules and preventing their coalescence during heat processing. Whey protein concentrates entered meat applications in parallel, and the controlled heat denaturation of beta lactoglobulin in their manufacture exposes additional water binding sites. Typical inclusion levels in emulsified sausage are between 1 and 2 percent of caseinate per kilogram of meat.

In the early 1960s, Kurt van Hees and Wilhelm Kasper, working together with a partner, developed emulsifiers based on disaggregated milk proteins. These were sold under the brand name PRALLO [4]. PRALLO sat in the same intellectual tradition as the phosphate platform. It addressed the same problem, namely the stabilisation of fat in water emulsions in the face of variable raw material. It used a different chemistry. The pattern was the same. An existing chemistry, milk protein in this case, was translated into a branded, specification controlled, processor ready product.

12.3 Hydrocolloids

Hydrocolloids entered meat science from a completely different direction. Carrageenan is a sulfated linear polysaccharide of D galactose and 3,6 anhydro D galactose, extracted from red seaweeds of the Rhodophyceae family. It had been commercialised in the early 19th century as a powder product and had entered the dairy industry as a stabiliser in ice cream and chocolate milk by the 1950s. Its serious adoption into meat science came later. The major peer reviewed work on carrageenan in low fat frankfurters and emulsified meat products dates principally from the 1980s and 1990s onwards, in response to the international consumer pressure for fat reduction.

The mechanism by which carrageenan works in meat is well documented. Kappa carrageenan, with its high gel strength and 3,6 anhydrogalactose content, forms strong gels in the presence of potassium ions. These gels mimic the textural role of fat and improve water binding in low fat formulations. Furthermore, kappa carrageenan and locust bean gum show synergy in low fat sodium reduced sausage, where they together improve water binding and texture. Sodium alginate and other polysaccharide hydrocolloids entered the same applications later. Each of them, in different ways, supplements the phosphate platform rather than replacing it.

12.4 Collagen and connective tissue proteins

Collagen, the principal protein of connective tissue, also became part of the formulator’s binding toolkit. Collagen and its hydrolysate gelatin contribute to gel formation and water entrapment in comminuted meat products, and they form a third water binding compartment alongside the myofibrillar gel and any added hydrocolloid gel. The systematic German work on the colloidal chemistry of collagen and its interaction with myofibrillar systems in meat developed within the same Kulmbach tradition that had produced the water binding theory. It runs through the work of Hamm and his successors [44, 45].

12.5 BULLIN, SMAK and the persistence of the pattern

Two further Van Hees products complete the picture. BULLIN was a cutter aid specifically intended for scalded sausage products made from meat that had not been processed warm from slaughter [4]. The technological problem was that lean meat which had cooled before being chopped had lost much of the ATP and ionic environment that supports protein extraction. BULLIN restored that environment chemically. SMAK was the firm’s monosodium glutamate based flavour enhancer line. SMAK placed Van Hees among the German pioneers of commercial flavour enhancer systems for meat, and the brand remains in the firm’s current product range [4]. In the 1970s the firm extended its emulsifier range further, with products based on mono and diglycerides of food grade fatty acids [4]. Each of these moves followed the same pattern. The pattern was that an existing chemistry, already known in food science, was translated into a branded, specification controlled, processor ready product.

12.6 The Austrian Salzstoß tradition and the phosphate question

Across the border in Austria, the same broad family of emulsion sausages had developed a parallel technological tradition in which a hide and skin emulsion, called Salzstoß, supplied a substantial fraction of the binding protein in the cooked emulsion. Salzstoß is produced by the prolonged comminution of pre swollen pork rind, beef hide or comparable connective tissue raw material in saturated salt brine, with very high mechanical work input in the bowl cutter, until the collagen of the hide has been opened up into a smooth, sticky, gelatinising paste. The paste is then incorporated, typically at five to fifteen percent, into Brühwurst formulations such as Wiener, Frankfurter, Berner and Käsekrainer. The function of the Salzstoß is to extend the binding capacity of the lean meat fraction with a cheap, abundant connective tissue protein, while at the same time stabilising the fat in water emulsion through the gelatinising properties of denatured collagen on heating.

The phosphate question follows directly from the science of section 5. Connective tissue protein is principally collagen. Collagen is not a myofibrillar protein, and therefore the actomyosin dissociation mechanism that polyphosphates exploit at 0.3 to 0.5 percent does not apply to collagen in the same way. However, polyphosphates do raise pH, raise ionic strength, and chelate divalent metal cations across the entire batter. Subsequently, the polyphosphate environment improves the swelling and water binding behaviour of collagen as well as of myofibrillar protein. Furthermore, the lean meat that surrounds the Salzstoß particles in the final batter is itself extracted more efficiently in the presence of polyphosphate, and therefore the matrix into which the Salzstoß disperses becomes more stable. The combination is synergistic. A formulator who adds 0.3 to 0.5 percent of polyphosphate to a Brühwurst that already contains Salzstoß will see a more strongly bound, more sliceable, more cook stable product than the Salzstoß alone could deliver. Therefore, on a reading of the modern meat science literature, polyphosphates and Salzstoß are not competing systems but complementary ones. The phosphate addition makes a higher inclusion of Salzstoß technologically possible, because it stabilises the surrounding myofibrillar matrix that the Salzstoß is dispersed into.

Note on interpretation. The Salzstoß tradition in Austrian Brühwurst is documentary in its broad form, anchored in the practical literature of Austrian and South German master butchers. The synergy described here between polyphosphate addition and Salzstoß inclusion follows from the established mechanism of phosphate action in section 5, and from the parallel literature on collagen and connective tissue protein in emulsion sausage [55, 56]. The article does not claim that the 1949 Van Hees patent specifically addressed Salzstoß. It addressed the increase of fat content in sausage products without separation. The reading that Van Hees style polyphosphate systems make higher inclusion of Salzstoß technologically possible is interpretive, but it follows from the mechanism by which polyphosphates open up the myofibrillar matrix of the lean meat that surrounds the Salzstoß particles in the final batter.

13. The continuing legacy

Kurt van Hees passed away in 1979 [3, 4]. The firm continued along the lines that he had set. The 1952 acquisition of the Vereinigten Gewürzmühlen had already created a second mainstay in spices and spice mixtures, and that branch grew steadily after his death [1]. In the 1990s the firm opened a plant in Forbach in France. Subsequently it acquired van Uelft in Dortmund, a manufacturer of flavours, seasonings and colourants, and the Gewürzmühle Wichartz in Wuppertal. By 2017 the company was operating from ten locations across Europe, South Africa, the United States and Russia [1]. The Walluf street where the company sits is now formally named Kurt van Hees Strasse, and the regional cultural authority KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain describes the firm as one of the largest industrial businesses in the Rheingau, with more than 520 employees [19].

The Kurt van Hees Forschungs-Förderung continues to fund meat science research through universities and federal research institutes [2, 47]. The firm itself remains family controlled. The current management board includes members of the van Hees family alongside professional executives [1]. The pattern of work, namely the translation of food science into branded, specification controlled, processor ready binding systems, has not changed. It has only widened in scope, from phosphate based fat fixers in 1949 to halal certified ingredient lines, plant based emulsion systems and clean label functional blends in the present day [2].

On the documentary record, the following summary can be stated withy confidence. Kurt van Hees was born in 1900 and died in 1979. He founded Van Hees GmbH in Wiesbaden Biebrich on 29 March 1947. He held the German commercial degree Diplomkaufmann [1]. The firm in its first phase produced fruit and vegetable preservatives. Its 1949 patent, DE972089C, established a phosphate based method for increasing the fat content of sausage products at 0.3 to 0.5 percent of the total mass, against a traditional fat envelope of 25 to 35 percent in Brühwurst, frankfurter and wiener formulations [62, 63]. The patent was filed in the immediate context of postwar German food rationing and the 1948 currency reform [64, 65, 66]. The patent’s citation block draws on the German trade and academic literature on phosphate use in meat between 1936 and 1949, including the 1935 Leipzig dissertation of Reinhard Kübler and the 1947 Giessen dissertation of Ph. Teliszewsky. Two earlier priority filings by Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH of Ludwigshafen, namely the Bickel French priority of 7 January 1948 and the Buchholz German priority of 1 October 1948, predate the Van Hees filing. The wider scientific environment included the muscle biochemistry of Lohmann, Engelhardt, Lyubimova, Szent-Györgyi, Banga, Straub, Bate-Smith and Bendall, the citric acid cycle of Krebs and Johnson at Sheffield in 1937, and the parallel German trade and veterinary food hygiene literature. The Van Hees firm subsequently widened the binding platform to include milk protein systems (PRALLO, with Wilhelm Kasper, in the early 1960s), monosodium glutamate based flavour enhancers (SMAK), and a cutter aid for non warm slaughtered meat (BULLIN). The firm has operated the Kurt van Hees Forschungs-Förderung research funding programme for more than a decade. These statements are documentary. The wider intellectual environment, namely the Liebig tradition at Giessen, the Kulmbach water binding school under Hamm and Grau, the Anglo-American protein chemistry stream from Lohmann, Engelhardt, Lyubimova, Szent-Györgyi, Straub, Bate-Smith and Bendall, the Krebs cycle of cellular phosphate energy metabolism, the Praganda nitrite curing tradition from Prague, the Austrian Salzstoß tradition of connective tissue emulsions, the Benckiser corporate phosphate tradition in Ludwigshafen, and the regional phosphate industry of Budenheim and BK Giulini, is the scientific and industrial context within which the firm operated. It is presented in this article as context, not as direct lineage or supplier relationship.

References

[1]  Fleischerei.de, “Van Hees feiert 70-jähriges Jubiläum”, 2017. Records the foundation of VAN HEES GmbH on 29 March 1947 in Wiesbaden Biebrich, identifies Kurt van Hees as a Diplomkaufmann, and lists the brand families PLASTAL, PÖK, SMAK, BOMBAL, SCHINKO and ZARTIN.

[2]  VAN HEES GmbH, German Über uns page. Records that Kurt van Hees recognised the importance of food phosphates in meat processing in the late 1940s, and laid the basis for the firm’s development with innovative technologies and patented products. Also describes the Kurt van Hees Forschungs-Förderung research funding programme.

[3]  KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain, venue page on VAN HEES GmbH in Walluf. States that the company was founded in 1947 by Kurt van Hees (1900 to 1979) and initially produced preservatives for fruit and vegetables, before becoming a major ingredient supplier to the meat industry.

[4]  German Wikipedia, Van Hees article. Records the life dates of Kurt van Hees (1900 to 1979), the 1952 acquisition of the Vereinigten Gewürzmühlen, the early 1960s development of the PRALLO milk protein emulsifier with Wilhelm Kasper, the SMAK monosodium glutamate brand, the BULLIN cutter aid for non warm slaughtered meat, the 1970s mono and diglyceride emulsifiers, and his coining of the marketing term Gütezusatz.

[5]  Wikipedia, Van Hees (surname). Identifies van Hees as a Dutch toponymic surname meaning “from Hees”, with possible source places at Heeze near Eindhoven, Hees in Nijmegen, Hees near Soest, and Heesch and Heeswijk near Oss.

[6]  Geneanet, surname HEES. Lists the surname as North German, Dutch and Flemish (Van Hees), and traces it to Low German and Middle Dutch hees, meaning beechwood or brushwood. Source attribution: Dictionary of American Family Names, second edition, Patrick Hanks and Oxford University Press, 2022.

[7]  Wikipedia, Heeze, Heeze-Leende and Nijmegen articles. Confirm Heeze in North Brabant near Eindhoven, with Kasteel Heeze and former seigneury status, and Hees as a former village now incorporated into Nijmegen in Gelderland.

[8]  Forebears.io, surname statistics for van Hees. Records the Netherlands as the country with the highest number of bearers, concentrated in North Brabant, South Holland and Gelderland, with a secondary cluster in Belgium.

[9]  Wikipedia, Justus von Liebig article. Records his appointment at Giessen in 1824, his tenure of 28 years, his identification of nitrogen and minerals as essential plant nutrients, his role as the founder of organic chemistry teaching, and the renaming of the University of Giessen to Justus Liebig Universität in 1946.

[10]  ChemistryViews, biographical article on Justus von Liebig. Confirms his 1840 publication Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, his identification of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium as essential to plant growth, and his popularisation of the law of the minimum.

[11]  Chemische Fabrik Budenheim, official company history. Founded in 1908 in Budenheim, Rhineland Palatinate, long specialised in phosphate chemistry. Cited here as documentary evidence of an established regional phosphate producer in the Rhine Main basin during the relevant period. Not cited as a confirmed supplier to Van Hees.

[12]  BK Giulini, bicentenary corporate history (Chemanager Online). Describes a long standing development in phosphate and functional food ingredient chemistry. Cited here as documentary evidence of an established regional phosphate producer. Not cited as a confirmed supplier to Van Hees.

[13]  Airedale Group, technical article on phosphates in the food and drink industry. Describes the use of calcium phosphate as a fast acting acid in baking powder at a 1.5 to 1 ratio against sodium bicarbonate, as a firming agent in jams and fillings, and as a sequestrant and pH buffer.

[14]  Mayo Clinic Proceedings, biographical article on Justus von Liebig. Records his appointment at Giessen in 1824 by Louis I at the urging of Alexander von Humboldt, his theoretical proposal that fertiliser supplies ammonia and salts including potassium silicate, calcium phosphate and magnesium phosphate, and his 1845 development of artificial fertilisers from mineral salts.

[15]  Encyclopaedia Britannica, biographical article on Justus von Liebig. Records the work of his pupil J. H. Gilbert with John Bennet Lawes at Rothamsted Experimental Station, Hertfordshire, leading to the discovery of superphosphates.

[16]  Prepared Foods, technical article “The new food phosphates”, 13 September 2016. Describes the use of phosphates in soft drinks as flavour and pH modifier, in dairy beverages, and in processed cheese as emulsifying salts that exchange sodium for calcium in casein and produce sodium caseinate.

[17]  German patent DE972089C, Verfahren zur Erhöhung des Fettgehaltes in Wurstwaren, filed by Van Hees GmbH on 30 September 1949 and published 21 May 1959. Specifies the addition of approximately 0.3 to 0.5 percent of orthophosphate, pyrophosphate, metaphosphate or polyphosphate salts, with an upper limit of 0.5 percent in the finished mass. Cited literature includes Kübler’s 1935 Leipzig dissertation and Teliszewsky’s 1947 Giessen dissertation on Plasmal.

[18]  Cindy Krüger, history of the Lebensmittelhygienisches Institut, University of Leipzig. Includes Reinhard Kübler’s 1935 dissertation, Die hygienische Beurteilung der Verwendung und Wirkung von Dinatriumphosphat bei der Verarbeitung von Fleisch zu Wurst- und Fleischwaren.

[19]  KulturRegion FrankfurtRheinMain. Records that VAN HEES initially produced preservatives for fruit and vegetables, that the firm now operates with more than 520 employees, and that the Walluf street is formally named Kurt van Hees Strasse.

[20]  VAN HEES GmbH, US About Us page. Preserves the firm’s own retrospective statement that Kurt van Hees recognised the importance of food grade phosphates in meat processing.

[21]  FAO, Production of emulsion type sausages, technical document. Describes the role of myofibrillar proteins in stabilising oil in water emulsions in frankfurter and similar products, and the role of binders such as caseinate, soy protein isolate, blood plasma and skimmed milk powder.

[22]  Hamm, R. Interactions between phosphates and meat proteins. In Symposium: Phosphates in Food Processing, ed. J. M. DeMan and P. Melnychyn, AVI Publishing Co., Westport, Conn., 1971.

[23]  Offer, G. and Knight, P. The structural basis of water-holding in meat. In Developments in Meat Science 4, ed. R. Lawrie, Elsevier Applied Science, London, 1988, pp. 63 to 245.

[24]  Springer chapter, Phosphate-Mediated Water Uptake, Swelling, and Functionality of the Myofibril Architecture. Sets out the rank order of phosphate effectiveness on water uptake as pyrophosphate and tripolyphosphate above hexametaphosphate above orthophosphate, and links the effect to extraction of actomyosin and swelling of the myofibril lattice.

[25]  Lohmann, K. (1934) and subsequent work. Postulated that adenosine triphosphate (ATP) was the source of energy for muscle contraction. Cited in standard reviews of muscle biochemistry, including Squire and ScienceDirect entries on the history of myosin ATPase research.

[26]  Engelhardt, W. A. and Lyubimova (Ljubimowa), M. N. Myosine and adenosinetriphosphatase. Nature 144 (1939), pp. 668 to 669. The foundational paper identifying myosin as an ATPase enzyme.

[27]  Banga, I. and Szent-Györgyi, A. Preparation and properties of myosin A and B. In Studies from the Institute of Medical Chemistry University of Szeged, vol. I, 1941, pp. 5 to 15. The discovery of two distinct myosin preparations.

[28]  Straub, F. B. (1942). The discovery of actin. Documented in the Studies from the Institute of Medical Chemistry University of Szeged, and reviewed in Mommaerts, W. F., Who discovered actin?, BioEssays 14 (1992), pp. 57 to 59. Szent-Györgyi’s 1942 demonstration of in vitro contraction of actomyosin threads on addition of ATP.

[29]  Bate-Smith, E. C. The physiology and chemistry of rigor mortis, with special reference to the aging of beef. Advances in Food Research, 1 (1948), pp. 1 to 38.

[30]  Bate-Smith, E. C. and Bendall, J. R. Factors determining the time course of rigor mortis. Journal of Physiology, 110 (1949), pp. 47 to 65. See also their 1947 paper in the same journal.

[31]  Bendall, J. R. The shortening of rabbit muscles during rigor mortis: its relation to the breakdown of adenosine triphosphate and creatine phosphate and to muscular contraction. Journal of Physiology, 114 (1951), pp. 71 to 88.

[32]  United States patent 3,029,150, Wilhelm Bickel, Mannheim, Germany, assignor to Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany. United States filing 23 May 1955, claiming French priority of 7 January 1948. Title: Method of curing meat and composition therefor. Claims a method of treating meat with a curing agent and a mixture of at least two different polymeric phosphates, at least one of which is a salt of pyrophosphoric acid, in order to retain moisture and to keep sausage and meat products stable over prolonged periods of time.

[33]  United States patent 3,032,421, Karl Buchholz, Mainz, Germany, assignor to Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany. United States filing 18 May 1955, claiming German priority of 1 October 1948. Title: Binding agents for meat. Claims a method of activating the natural binding power of meat in sausage manufacture by adding 0.1 to 0.5 percent by weight, preferably about 0.3 percent, of a salt of orthophosphoric, metaphosphoric, pyrophosphoric or polyphosphoric acid.

[34]  German Wikipedia, Joh. A. Benckiser (Unternehmen). Records the firm’s 1858 move to Ludwigshafen, the 1929 launch of the JOHA emulsifying salt brand for processed cheese, the 1932 acquisition of the Calgon licence, the 1939 grant of German patent 575,060 on hexametaphosphate water softening, the 1936 chemical of the year award at the London World Exhibition, and the October 1948 resumption of acid sodium pyrophosphate, Calgon and Calgonit production after the war. Also records the 1967 spin off of the firm’s phosphate business into the joint venture Benckiser-Knapsack GmbH with Hoechst.

[35]  Erker, P. The Chemical Factory Joh. A. Benckiser in the Nazi Era. Examines the development of the Benckiser firm under Albert Reimann Senior and Albert Reimann Junior between 1933 and 1945, including the production of tartaric and citric acid and the processing of phosphoric acid salts into detergents and the Calgon brand.

[36]  Distance calculator data (luftlinie.org and rome2rio.com). Records the air line distance between Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Mannheim as approximately 2 km, between Ludwigshafen and Mainz as approximately 57 km, and between Ludwigshafen and Wiesbaden as approximately 68 km.

[37]  Distance calculator data and Wikipedia, Mainz article. Records that Mainz lies approximately 10 km from Wiesbaden, that the two cities sit on opposite banks of the Rhine, and that the AKK boroughs of Amöneburg, Kastel and Kostheim were transferred from Mainz to Wiesbaden in 1945. Frankfurt am Main lies approximately 33 km from Mainz.

[38]  Allgemeine Fleischer-Zeitung (afz), official organ of the Deutscher Fleischer-Verband. Published as a weekly trade journal, today by Deutscher Fachverlag in Frankfurt am Main. Cited in the Van Hees 1949 patent for articles between 1936 and 1949.

[39]  Earthworm Express, Emulsifiers in Sausages article (Ranken, 1997, cited). Describes the use of blood plasma, skimmed milk powder, caseinates, whey protein isolates, soy isolates and concentrates and wheat gluten as binders in emulsion type sausage formulations.

[40]  Hurtado, S., Saguer, E., Toldrà, M., Parés, D. and Carretero, C. Porcine plasma as polyphosphate and caseinate replacer in frankfurters. Meat Science, 90 (2012), pp. 624 to 628.

[41]  Encyclopaedia Britannica, Liebig biography. Records his move to the University of Munich in 1852 after 28 years at Giessen, his ennoblement by the Duke of Hesse Darmstadt as Baron in 1845, and his death in Munich in 1873.

[42]  Grau, R., Hamm, R. and Baumann, A. Eine einfache Methode zur Bestimmung der Wasserbindung in Muskel. Naturwissenschaften, 40 (1953), p. 29. Establishes the filter paper press method for water binding in muscle.

[43]  Grau, R. and Hamm, R. Über das Wasserbindungsvermögen des Säugetiermuskels. II. Mitteilung. Z. Lebensm. Unters. Forsch., 105 (1957), p. 446.

[44]  Hamm, R. Biochemistry of meat hydration. Advances in Food Research, 10 (1960), p. 355.

[45]  Hamm, R. Kolloidchemie des Fleisches. Paul Parey Verlag, Berlin and Hamburg, 1972.

[46]  Honikel, K. O. and Hamm, R. Measurement of water holding capacity and juiciness. In Quality Attributes and their Measurement in Meat, Poultry and Fish Products, ed. A. M. Pearson and T. R. Dutson, Advances in Meat Research vol. 9, Springer, Boston, 1994.

[47]  MSP Magazine, anniversary article “A family business with tradition: Van Hees GmbH celebrates 70th anniversary”. Describes the technology centre at Walluf, customer training, recipe optimisation work and the Kurt van Hees Forschungs-Förderung research funding programme that has run for more than ten years.

[48]  Swift, C. E. and Ellis, R. The action of phosphates in sausage products. I. Factors affecting the water-retention of phosphate-treated ground meat. Food Technology, 10 (1956), pp. 546 to 552.

[49]  Yasui, T., Sakanishi, M. and Hashimoto, Y. Effect of inorganic polyphosphates on the solubility and extractability of myosin B. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 12 (1964), pp. 392 to 398.

[50]  Hellendoorn, B. W. Water-binding capacity of meat as affected by phosphates. I. Influence of sodium chloride and phosphates on the water retention of comminuted meat at various pH values. Food Technology, 16 (9) (1962), pp. 119 to 124.

[51]  Offer, G. and Trinick, J. On the mechanism of water holding in meat: the swelling and shrinking of myofibrils. Meat Science, 8 (1983), pp. 245 to 281. See also Offer, G. and Knight, P., reference 23.

[52]  Earthworm Express, articles on Ladislav Nachmüllner and the invention of Praganda. Drawing on Nachmüllnerová, Eva, Ladislav Nachmüllner vulgo Praganda, 2000, translated by Monica Volcko. Records that Nachmüllner invented Praganda in 1915 at the age of 19, and that the product combined sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate, salt and sugar in a fused crystalline form.

[53]  Earthworm Express, The Life and Times of Ladislav Nachmüllner: The Codex Alimentarius Austriacus. Records that the Codex Alimentarius Austriacus was developed between 1897 and 1917, and that the direct addition of sodium nitrite to food was already legal in the Austro Hungarian Empire when Nachmüllner registered his patent for Praganda.

[54]  Polenske, E. (1891) and Kisskalt, K. and Lehmann, K. B. (1899). Early German scientific papers identifying nitrite as the active species in meat curing, cited in subsequent meat curing histories.

[55]  Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt 1930, Verordnung über Nitritpökelsalz of 21 March 1930.

[56]  Gesetz über die Verwendung salpetrigsaurer Salze im Lebensmittelverkehr of 19 June 1934, summarised in the German Wikipedia article on Pökeln.

[57]  Honikel, K. O. The use and control of nitrate and nitrite for the processing of meat products. Meat Science, 78 (2008), pp. 68 to 76.

[58]  German patent DE1098341B and the 1973 federal regulations on phosphate purity criteria. Together they show that the legal use of phosphates in German meat products was conditional and category specific rather than unrestricted, with explicit reference to the Fleischverordnung of 19 December 1959.

[59]  VAN HEES GmbH, current product information for ZARTIN, PolterGOLD and other branded lines. The brine additive ZARTIN is described as one of the firm’s leading products and has been optimised into the ZARTIN Gourmet CA line.

[60]  United States patent 2,596,067, George E. Brissey, assignor to Swift and Company, Chicago. Issued 6 May 1952. Title: Preparing cooked cured meats. Cites as prior art United States patents 439,144 (Greenstreet, 28 October 1890), 1,124,851 (Burkle, 12 January 1915), 2,117,478 (Hall, 17 May 1938), 2,145,417 (Hall, 31 January 1939) and 2,241,868 (Reimann, Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH, 13 May 1941). The Bickel and Buchholz Benckiser patents (US 3,029,150 and US 3,032,421) cite Reimann 1941, Rinehart 1948 (US 2,442,663), Hall 1950 (US 2,513,094), Brissey 1952 (US 2,596,067) and Huber et al. 1958 (US 2,852,392).

[61]  Bailey, K. Chemical basis of muscle contraction. Nature 160 (1947), pp. 550 to 551. Reviews the state of myosin and actomyosin research at the close of the war, including the work of Polis and Meyerhof on soluble muscle ATPases and the dissociation of actomyosin by ATP.

[62]  Sausage Wiki, Brühwurst entry. Records that traditional Brühwurst contains approximately 50 percent meat, 25 percent fat and 25 percent water, with 1.5 to 2 percent of table salt or nitrite curing salt added to dissolve protein and partially swell the matrix.

[63]  Practical sausage technology references on emulsion sausage formulation envelopes for bologna, frankfurter, hot dog, knockwurst, weisswurst and liverwurst type emulsions, citing 25 to 35 percent fat as the working envelope, lean meat at 45 to 65 percent for myofibrillar protein, and the loss of emulsion stability above approximately 35 to 40 percent fat without process or formulation optimisation.

[64]  Wikipedia, Food in occupied Germany. Records that ration scales in occupied Germany after the war fell to 4,200 to 5,200 kilojoules (1,000 to 1,250 kilocalories) per day, that hundreds of thousands of Germans died during the hunger winter of 1946 to 1947, and that food rationing in West Germany ended in 1950.

[65]  Henderson, D. R. The German Economic Miracle. Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Liberty Fund. Records that food production per capita in West Germany in 1947 was 51 percent of the 1938 level, that the official food ration set by the occupying powers varied between 1,040 and 1,550 kilocalories per day, and that industrial output in 1947 was one third of the 1938 level.

[66]  Henderson, D. R., op. cit., and Deutschlandmuseum, The end of food rationing in Germany. Together describe the 1948 currency reform in West Germany, the elimination of price controls under Ludwig Erhard, and the end of West German food rationing in 1950, with the resulting rapid recovery of food markets.

[67]  Britannica, biographical entry on Sir Hans Adolf Krebs. Records his 1937 demonstration of the citric acid cycle (the Krebs cycle), the cycle’s role in oxidative phosphorylation and ATP synthesis, and the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1953.

[68]  Krebs, H. A. and Johnson, W. A. The role of citric acid in intermediate metabolism in animal tissues. Enzymologia, 4 (1937), pp. 148 to 156. The original publication of the citric acid cycle, after rejection by Nature in June 1937.

[69]  Wikipedia, Citric acid cycle and Hans Krebs (biochemist). Confirm the 1937 discovery of the cycle by Krebs and Johnson at Sheffield, the parallel work of Carl Martius and Franz Knoop, and the 1937 Nobel Prize awarded to Albert Szent-Györgyi for discoveries concerning fumaric acid and other intermediates of the cycle.

[70]  Polis, B. D. and Meyerhof, O. (1947). Work on the soluble ATPases of muscle, cited in Bailey, K., Chemical basis of muscle contraction, Nature 160 (1947), pp. 550 to 551, and in subsequent reviews of myosin ATPase research.

[71]  Buchthal, F., Deutsch, A., Knappeis, C. G. and Munch-Petersen, A. On the effect of adenosine triphosphate on myosin threads. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica, 13 (1947), pp. 167 to 180. Confirms the in vitro effect of ATP on isolated myosin threads in the Copenhagen group, parallel to the Szeged work.