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It wasn’t long before pretzels were introduced into the wedding ceremony: the couple wished upon and broke a pretzel like a wishbone, then ate it to signify their oneness. A 17th century woodcut, copied from a cathedral in Bern, Switzerland, depicts the “marriage knot” as being a pretzel! But even earlier, the pretzel’s fame had emerged in a burst of glory from beyond the monastery walls. During the 1500’s, the city of Vienna was under seige by Ottoman Turks. Thwarted in their efforts to break through the city’s walled fortifications, the Turks began tunneling below ground. Pretzel bakers, working through the night, heard the strange noises in the cellars, and notified the guard. The city was saved, and the grateful emperor awarded the pretzel bakers an honorary coat of arms!

Despite their royal status, pretzels were a convenient way to hand food to the poor, and became a typical alms for the hungry. Apparently the homeless did not line up for soup or a sandwich, but for their daily pretzel. And those who gave the pretzels away were considered particularly blessed. Indeed, pretzels became such a sacred sign that they were often packed into coffins of the dead, no doubt replacing the jewels that were buried with the rich.

A more modern story of altruism is connected with the pretzel’s rise in popularity in this country. The first American pretzel bakery started when a kindly baker gave a drifter a free meal in the 1850’s. In turn, the drifter gave the baker a recipe for European pretzels, and soon became employed as the baker’s apprentice. As they whipped up batches of a new style of pretzel, they won the h nor of baking and selling the first hard and crusty version of the Pennsylvania Dutch hard pretzel.

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