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| 0 | Holes, holes everywhere Burgdorf and the cheese trade The expression “like a Swiss cheese” means “full of holes”. Emmental cheese with its holes is the ultimate Swiss cheese. As early as the 18th century, the Emmental valley and its trading centres of Langnau and Burgdorf exported cheese all over the world. The trade reached its peak between 1830 and 1870. More and more shops sold the cheese, and its export contributed to Burgdorf’s prosperity. However, mass production led to a decline in quality and other countries introduced taxes to protect their own cheese. By 1900, the golden years of the Emmentaler trade were over. But the cheese remained, as did its famous name. The objects in this room are on loan from the Roth Foundation in Burgdorf. |
| 1 | Cheese fever The golden age of the Emmental As early as 1830, new laws were introduced to enable Bernese farmers to switch from grain to milk production. Free trade agreements promoted exports, and from 1857 a train linked Burgdorf to the rest of the world. This sparked a veritable explosion in the cheese industry. If in 1835, there were 27 cheese dairies, by 1857 there were more than 300. Emmentaler became one of the most important Swiss exports. For a long time it was simply called “Swiss cheese” in Germany, as it still is in the USA. |
| 2 | Going with the flow The farmers worked, sweated and watched as people cooled off in the Emme. But what exactly was drifting past those swimmers? In the pre-modern era, the roads were barely usable. Potholes caused damage to carts and the rain turned them into muddy pits. Goods were usually transported by river and the Emme was a major waterway. Wheels of cheese were thus transported by raft to the Aare and then down the Rhine to Holland. At the end of their journey, the raftsmen sold the raft logs as building timber. The Emme is not deep enough for boats, although draught animals could pull relatively flat barges. In 1880, the city authorities banned rafts. The railway system was built and rafts became a thing of the past. |
| 3 | Northern view of Burgdorf. Copy of a watercolour by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, 1763. Original : Burgergemeinde Burgdorf |
| Unprotected The cheese industry in crisis From the 19th century onwards, cheese-makers who had emigrated to various parts of Europe produced a cheese which they called “Emmental”. By the time legal protection of trademarks became possible in 1890, it was too late – “Emmental” could no longer be registered as a trademark. It was only in 2002 that a protected designation of origin, “Emmentaler PDO”, was created, although it is still not officially recognised by the EU. In the 20th century, the Swiss Cheese Union had a monopoly on the export of all major Swiss cheeses. In 1997, new laws liberalised the cheese market and two years later the Swiss Cheese Union was dissolved. Since then, the range of cheeses offered by Swiss cheese dairies has grown but Emmentaler, Gruyère and Sbrinz have fallen on hard times. In just two decades, the number of cheese dairies producing Emmentaler in Switzerland fell from 539 to 128. But the crisis also created new opportunities… |
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| No Emmental from Emmental At the beginning of the 20th century, the Emmental company “Les fils Mauerhofer & Cie” sold “Gruyère cheese” to its English and Spanish-speaking customers. It was marketed under the name of “Swiss cheese”. ‘Emmental-Gruyère-Suisse’ cheese was what we would call Emmental today. It is just simpler to sell it under the best-known name. And why should that be a problem? After all, a dairy farmer in Emmental may well get milk from a Simmental cow! Today, the company “Fromage Mauerhofer” matures its cheeses in the sandstone cellars of the former “G. Roth & Co”. It sells many types of cheese – but no Emmental. |
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| 5 | “Fromage Mauerhofer” advertisement, 2018 |
| 6 | Cheese labels, first half of the 20th century. |
| 8 | Cheese loves hip-hop Cheese ages better if it is exposed to hip-hop. Or at least, that’s what the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) claimed in 2019. The rationale behind their claim is as follows: As part of its “HKB gets down to earth” programme, the HKB organised artistic field trips to various regions in the canton of Bern. In Burgdorf, the school collaborated with Beat Wampfler, a cheese trader working at the K3-Käsekeller. He had an original idea: he exposed nine maturing cheeses to music in the K3 cheese cave. One cheese ‘listened’ to classical music, another to techno and so on. Three cheeses were exposed to synthetic sounds and one was left in silence. Six months later, the cheeses were tasted and analysed in a high-tech food laboratory. And lo and behold: the one that ‘listened’ to hip-hop was the best! The international press picked up on the story. Some thought it was an amusing art experiment, others thought it was a genuine scientific study, and still others were simply cheesed off at such a waste of time! |
| 9 | No cheese without salt Salt is an essential ingredient in cheese making. Salt baths encourage the cheese to form a rind, and regular salt rubs help to prevent the cheese from spoiling during the aging process. Before the Rhine salt works opened in 1840, Switzerland had to import most of its salt. The salt trade was strictly controlled. The government granted a monopoly to the “Salzfaktors” who were the only ones permitted to sell the imported salt. The salt trade was an influential business. Johann Rudolf Aeschlimann, who lived in Burgdorf from 1758 to 1847, was a powerful Salzfaktor as well as a cheese merchant. He supplied more than 140 German towns and cities, while his company Aeschlimann & Cie exported its Emmental cheese to France and Austria-Hungary, even going as far afield as Russia. |
| 10 | Portrait of Johann Rudolf Aeschlimann (1758-1847). Lithographie de Franz Grimm. Collection : Rittersaalverein |
| 11 | The cheese baron of Burgdorf Major industrial dairies, trains and steamers, roads in all directions… more than one cheese merchant in Emmental benefited from technological progress. The exporter Heinrich Fehr (1815-1890) moved from Zurich to work for the Salzfaktor Aeschlimann. He went on to set up his own cheese trading company and toured all over Germany by stagecoach and train, promoting and selling his cheese. The business flourished and H. Fehr expanded it. He had traders working for him as far away as the Balkans and St. Petersburg. Steamers transported H. Fehr’s cheese all over the world. |
| 12 | Horse-drawn carts carrying cheese at the bridge over the Emme between Hasle and Rüegsau, circa 1900. |
| 13 | Horse-drawn carts carrying cheese, photographed by Guido Roth, 1912. |
| 14 | Heinrich Fehr (1815 – 1890), a founder of the cheese export company Fehr & Grieb in 1848, photo Bechstein, 1883. |
| 15 | Emmental around the world Many Emmental cheesemakers emigrated to Germany, Norway, Romania and Russia in the 19th century, taking their cheese-making expertise with them. This was a difficult time for Swiss cheese exporters, since the Emmental cheese produced abroad was just as good as the cheese made in Switzerland. Around 1900, Fritz Stücker opened a cheese factory in Kars – then Armenia, now present-day north-eastern Turkey. Stücker most likely employed local cheesemakers and it is probable that his cheese dairy resembled the one in the photo. If the size of the cauldron is any indication, business is booming! |
| 16 | Swiss cheesemaker with his employees in the Caucasus, circa 1900. |
| 17 | Cheese and flax – a winning combination For centuries, farmers in the Emmental grew flax and hemp for their own use. Flax was used for making more delicate fabrics and hemp for rougher textiles, as well as to have something to put in a pipe on Sundays… Beginning around 1700, businesses began to export linen to France, Holland and England. Cheese merchants took advantage of this ready-made trade network. In 1885, for example, the Fehr & Cie cheese company opened a branch in Charenton near Paris. The flax merchants did not stand idly by – they added Gruyère and Emmental to their list of products and so also played a role in developing the international cheese trade. |
| 18 | A letter announcing the official opening of the Fehr & Cie branch in Charenton-le-Pont, France, 1885. |
| 19 | Cheese has a price Only a handful of Burgdorf residents succeeded in making their fortune from cheese. Merchants needed substantial financial reserves since they stored the wheels of cheese at their own expense. Transport by land and sea was also expensive and risky. By 1800, the most successful Emmental cheese trading companies were Joost, Mauerhofer, Lehmann and Probst. They were based in Langnau and Trubschachen. The first cheese trading company to be based in Burgdorf was founded in 1848 by Heinrich Fehr. These few traders sold their cheese to wealthy customers. This included royalty, from the royal palace in Madrid to the court of the Tsar in St. Petersburg. |
| 20 | The Fehr & Cie sales book of 1858 to 1860. |
| 21 | High desk of a cheese export company. Bookkeeping was done in large books. People used to write standing up, which is much healthier than sitting down like we do today. |
| 22 | Three cheese buckets for transporting Emmentaler loaves, Schreinerei Hofstetter GmbH, Zollbrück, 2019. Labelling stencils, 20th century. |
| 23 | Soundbox for cheese storage, Käsehaus K3, Burgdorf, 2019. |
| 24 | Certificate of a trademark registered in the USA for Käseexport AG, Goldbach, 1922. |
| 25 | Photographs of various stages of the worldwide cheese trade with Emmentaler. |
| 26 | Business correspondence from the Paris branch to the headquarters of Roth-Fehr & Cie in Burgdorf, 1916. |