UNDERGRADUATE
Any-Other-Burger
ANTHONY WATERMAN (Selwyn College, Cambridge)
IOST in that limbo of independent Principalities behind the Iron Curtain, decently digested within -ania and -avia, 4 lie a. score or so of legendary City States, as yet undiscovered by any hero of John Buchan or Anthony Hope. At least I suppose they must be the other side of the Iron Curtain : no returning tourists have ever shown admiring friends movie-shots of the quaint folk customs still practised within their venerable walls, nor have any picturesque accounts of coronations or royal weddings percolated through to the bourgeois Press. Yet despite their unfortunate location within the Slavonic hinterland, these are undoubtedly Teutonic cities : their Gothick names, guttural and gastronomic, proudly proclaim it. Could Baconburg (Bakohnburg), Eggburg (Haeg- burg), or Chickenburg (Schickenburg) be other than very Old very High German? For myself, I am entirely convinced. I like to imagine the ancient walls, the moss-covered high- pitched roofs, the history-soaked turrets fantastically 'twisted and contorted, the overhung evil-smelling streets thronged with peasant women with Direr facFs. Above all, I love to visualise the medixval Meisterkache, whose industrious re- searches have spread the name and the fame of their fairy- tale cities across the length and breadth of the North American continent.
All great inventions, it has been said, are the result of a process of cross-fertilisation in the mind of a genius. The principle of the jenny came together in Crompton's mind with that of roller-spinning, and the result was the famous "Mule." Watt's steam engine, and the generations-old use of iron rails gave birth through the genius of Stephenson to British Rail- ways. In a like manner, at a point remote in time, the prin- ciple of the toasted bun was combined in the teeming brain of some Hanseatic worthy with that of the rissole, and the Ham- burger was conceived. A noble consummation! Juicy, tender, fresh-ground Hamburger steak, moulded, seasoned, and fried into an ambrosial whole by a cunning process handed down by generations of loving craftsmen; delectable Baltic bread, home- baked from freshly milled Danzig wheat : a dish meet for a railroad king!' Wurlitzer's synthesis of the principles of thi electric phonograph and the lavatory door to produce th( nickelodeon has done no more for American culture that this! Twenty million teenagers owe a debt of perpetua gratitude to these rude burghers of old Hamburg! But what of the cities of the South-East ? Their links with . the Hanseatic League disrupted by perpetual civil war, then limits violated by roving bands of robber-barons, and their l rights is Free Cities of the Empire flouted by a succession of local despots, they still continued in their sturdy Lutheran fashion to pursue the arts and crafts of their forefathers. The baconburger of teenage delight (35c.) is a living monu- ment to the citizens of seventeenth-century Bakohnburg, whose rugged individualism flourished in face of the persecution: which followed the Battle of the White Mountain. The princely chickenburger (50c.) bears silent testimony to the courage and the inventive genius of old Schickenburg. Ever the humble cheeseburger (20c.) still calls to mind the crowded spires and tottering pinnacles of medixval Schieseburg, wherein were committed some of the most horrible atrocities against these peaceable and inoffensive citizen-cooks. Advertisements outside an Ontario transport café read like a scroll of honour: Chickenburger 50c.
Baconburger 35c.
Eggburger 30c.
Cheeseburger 20c.
Any-other-burger 30c.
Any-other-burger? We have, of course, heard of Zaladtburg Domiidtohburg, and Schpaamburg: we may even, with diligent application, be able to find them on pre-1914 maps of Europe but Any-other-burg? It strains our ethnographic imagination bejrond reasonable limits. I can only say this : Once, in the summer of 1949, as I was wandering aimlessly about Central Europe, I stumbled acrOss one of those delightful little villages in the depths of the great Southern Moravian forests. They still wear national costume there, and have novel heard of Stalin or Sir Winston Churchill, though they frighten their children with tales,of Wallenstein (or Waldstein, as they call him). One magic midsummer night, over a bottle of slivavice, an old, old peasant woman told me the legend of the lost city of Ehnieodderburg—Ehyany lora in the local dialect—which sank beneath the Danube one dark night as a punishment for the sins of its inhabitants. What truth there is in the tale I cannot say, but it is said that on the anniversary of the supposed event dollar-area tourists may hear the distant chiming of bells, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the carillon at Niagara Falls. This has been more noticeable when they have imbibed liberally of the local slivavice. I myself have heard the chimes.
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