More Eiernockerl Absurdity: Welcome to Austria in 2023

A brief follow-up to this week's 'Great Eiernockerl Hoax'

Two days ago, I posted a long-ish essay about Hitler-ism in present-day Austria:

The Great Eiernockerl Hoax, or: Six Degrees of Adolf Hitler

Today, I’ll present you with what transpired on that very 20 April 2023 in Austria. Please be advised that you might be ‘triggered’ due to insane amounts of stupidity.

A German-language version of this piece may be found over at TKP.at.

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As we all know, taste is a highly personal, if not outright individualistic, thing. That said, I would never have imagined that ‘the Führer's Eiernockerl’ would come around yet again in such a ludicrously absurd way. People, it’s 2023.

Shortly after the above-mentioned article went online, Heute ‘reported’ (?) the following about a very strange case of Hitler nostalgia in the middle of Lower Austria (my emphases):

Eiernockerl: Hospital Served Hitler Food to Patients.

This hospital menu makes the blood of some patients boil! On Hitler’s birthday, a hospital in Lower Austria served his favourite dish.

Eiernockerl with green salad are considered Adolf Hitler's favourite dish—on the mass murderer’s birthday, patients have to eat Hitler’s favourite food. At the Amstetten state hospital on Thursday, in addition to a Bacon Dumpling Soup, they also served the Eiernockerl with green salad, which is frowned upon on 20 April.

Enraged Reader: ‘On the birthday of a mega-idiot’

Heute reader Rudolf* (name changed by the editors) was himself in the hospital in Amstetten on Thursday and could not believe his eyes when he saw the menu: ‘Is that a coincidence or not? Eiernockerl with salad, on the birthday of a mega-idiot’, Rudolf fumed.

When asked for comments, a spokeswoman for the responsible state health agency deeply regretted the case: ‘This is a rotating menu planned for eight weeks. So Eiernockerl occur every eight weeks. We are very sorry that this has happened today and we apologise for this mistake.’

Now, you could dismiss this as a pearl of absurdly bad taste for any number of reasons. And, yes, it is just plain stupid what is happening, but in the spirit of public interest, a ‘fact check’ follows.

Fool me Once, Shame on You…

There is no evidence that Eiernockerl were Hitler’s ‘favourite food’, as if that mattered somehow. Similarly, there is no evidence that he disliked Eiernockel, but such a degree of nuance is quite ‘antiquated’ nowadays.

From emotional insinuations (‘on the mass murderer’s birthday, patients have to eat Hitler’s favourite food’) to evidence-free allegations (‘Eiernockerl with green salad…is frowned upon on 20 April’), there are many things to read in the article; facts, on the other hand, are rather rare.

The reference to the ‘rotating menu planned for eight weeks’ seems plausible to me, since this is more likely to be true, not least for economic and planning reasons, since kitchen staff have to plan ahead.

Facts, on the other hand, are far and few in-between, as even an article in the [Vienna’s leading—and publicly subsidised—woke magazine] Der Falter points out. The more or less proximate origin to ‘the Führer’s Nockerl’ (Falter editor-in-chief Florian Klenk) is based on an article by Hanna Herbst that appeared in the German-language edition of Vice magazine in 2016. There it is explained in the following way (my emphasis):

Hitler admirers serve Eiernockerl with salad to celebrate

Is this rumour true? We dug through the internet and asked a few restaurants that serve Eiernockerl with salad today.

A little further down in the text you will also find this paragraph:

According to the website ‘Stoppt die Rechten’ (Stop the Right), the fact that Eiernockerl with salad were Hitler’s favourite food was spread by Wolfgang Fröhlich, a repeatedly convicted Holocaust denier and former FPÖ district councillor. In 1997 he turned himself in for a violation of the Prohibition Act. In it he wrote: ‘For many, many years I have eaten Adolf Hitler’s favourite dish, Eiernockerl with green salad, almost every week, because this highly political meal…is also one of my favourite dishes. If memory serves right, I even ate Eiernockerl with green salad on Hitler's birthday this year, on 20 April.’

We therefore note that Ms. Herbst obtained the information about Hitler’s alleged proclivity for Eiernockerl from the website ‘Stoppt die Rechten’ (Stop the Right). As reported, it is clear from this that the fairy tale that Eiernockerl were Hitler’s favourite dish hark back to a disclosure by Wolfgang Fröhlich.

Öllinger's ‘Stop the Right’ Spreads ‘Fake News’

If you follow the link to ‘Stop the Right’ you can find out ‘more’ about this code (again my emphasis):

But what is the 2015 signature dish for Hitler supporters? Eiernockerl with salad. You read this correctly! Anyone who is self-respecting and wants to score points in relevant circles announces that, on 20 April, he—sometimes, but only rarely, there is also a ‘she’ involved—has prepared, or will eat, Eiernockerl with salad.

Eiernockerl with salad is said to have been Hitler’s favourite meal. Among Hitler hagiographers there are divergent research opinions about the Führer’s favourite food, but the majority opinion that prevails that it was Eiernockerl with salad that excited him excessively.

Again, we note the absence of evidence for any of this. It may well be that Hitler occasionally ate Eiernockerl with salad, but evidence is lacking. And, apparently, it does not matter to the platform ‘Stop the Right’ (source), founded by former Green politician Karl Öllinger, whether there is evidence or not.

Moreover, the statement that ‘the majority opinion that prevails that it was Eiernockerl with salad that excited’ is significant: after all, ‘Stop the Right’ states that this is an ‘opinion’ we’re talking about.

By the way: the reference to ‘Hitler hagiographers’ is—esp. since I’m a professional historian—patently absurd. Sure thing, there are scholarly biographies (in my opinion, by far the ‘best’ of these is that by Joachim Fest, but one should also consider the work of Ian Kershaw), but they are silent about these culinary aspects.

By the way, as a final note, we note the (lack of) ‘journalistic standards’ on part of both Der Falter and Heute.

Speaking of Standard(s)

On 20 April 2023, Austrian premier woke-ified left-revolutionary daily Der Standard reported on a work by the Tyrolean painter Susanne Liner, ‘which reminds some people too much of Nazi iconography’. Too much, I see, but I suppose that, if it were a little less so, it would have to be OK, that is, if one would be following the same ‘logic’ applied to the Eiernockerl Hoax.

The ‘Führer's birthday’ was also duly celebrated by Austrian state broadcaster ORF, as this report alleging allusions to Nazism with respect to the Lower Austrian state anthem shows: its author is ‘considered to have National Socialist predilections’ (that weren’t sufficiently addressed after WW2).

Is there anything else to say?

Two days ago, I sarcastically suggested to ‘play’ the six degrees of Adolf Hitler:

1. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

2. Nazi Party, Germany, defeated in 1945

3. Austrian Prohibition Act (Verbotsgesetz) of 1947, amended in 1992 to include ‘Holocaust Denialism’ (Holocaust-Leugnung)

4. in 1997, Wolfgang Fröhlich (1952-2021) alleged Hitler liked to eat Eiernockerl

5. in 2005, Fröhlich is sentenced for the first time for infraction of the Prohibition Act; in total, he received 14 years in prison (do see this compilation for background)

6. Today, everyone who advertises, eats, or even posts pictures of said dish is tantamount to an outlaw

I, on the other hand, wonder more and more why Eiernockerl or girls in traditional costume are seemingly without hesitation hyped in terms of the six degrees of Hitler, as if this is a gag reflex.

Worse still, it seems more and more as if ‘Nazi’ is becoming both a ‘label’ and thus normalised more and more; in effect, it is already widely used to delegitimise all kinds of people, activities, or patterns of behaviour. Evidence or the like is, of course, not required, because more often than not, the allegation suffices.

The Weaponisation of Nazi Allegations

In other words, such insinuations are little more than cheap agitprop that can hit anyone and everyone—and they are therefore best understood as a form of (political) warfare.

Care for a few examples?

Hitler was known to be a non-smoker, and Nazi Germany was among the first countries to introduce a non-smoking campaign. Following the ‘logic’ of guilt-by-association, all ‘anti-fascists’ should therefore walk around with cigarettes in their mouths.

If you drive from Salzburg to Vienna in mid-March, be advised that Hitler did the same in 1938. The motorways were, by the way, also something the Nazis conceived (in this instance, though, the hostility towards cars ownership by especially the Greens is weirdly consistent; I know, a ‘consolation prize’, but still…).

Hitler also liked his German shepherd dogs very much: so anyone who loves his pet is also potentially a Nazi, isn't he? (By the way: how high is the CO2 footprint of a four-legged companion?)

This list could be extended at will (e.g. with references to Hitler’s partially meatless diet), but it is rather about another matter:

What unites all these absurdities is much more than ‘just’ a strange understanding of history, but the more or less conscious weaponisation of one side with the one (almost) unsurmountable ‘arguments’.

Still, pottery barn rules apply in this case, too: once broken, there’s no going back—and those who break that particular kind of pottery will own ‘it’, by which is meant wide-spread re-appraisal of National Socialism.

In closing, we note, in passing, the Austrian Greens’ demand for the abolition of every MP’s right to subpoena answers from the federal government. As you can see, many cracks are already apparent.

Next to these more serious issues, the trumped-up (pun intended) ‘outrage’ about such ‘culinary excesses’ by the woke-ified left looks like a surreal farce, but maybe that’s the point.