![]() ![]() As early as 1893, the Becker family had run a saloon at that address, directly across the street from the City Work House. Shortly after his marriage to Jeanette, Hellmers left Alms & Doepke and opened his own catering business at 3245 Colerain Avenue. He invented a self-sanitizing trash can and an alarm system to indicate low fuel levels in automobiles. During World War II, he promoted a peace plan in which World War I veterans would meet in a neutral country to iron out international differences. He adopted a system of designated drivers at his restaurants to cut down on drunken driving and suggested all drivers train on simulated streets, much like a film set, before earning their licenses. (It seems not to have been published.) He started a sculling club that rowed every Sunday in the Ohio River and got a fan letter from von Hindenburg, now the German president. He claimed to be writing a cookbook with 8,000 recipes. He cooked a four-course meal and had it delivered by airplane to a customer in Springfield, Ohio. He was a regular guest on radio, describing the preparation of his signature dishes. Cincinnati media reported every one of his whims and anecdotes.įrom Cincinnati Post 26 March 1927, image extracted from microfilm by Greg Handįor the next 20 years, August Hellmers popped up regularly in Cincinnati media. August Hellmers was a man of boundless creativity and prodigious charm. Hellmers, after a stint at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, followed Jeanette to Ohio and landed the head chef position at the Alms & Doepke department store. As a cook on an ocean liner, he met a clerk named Jeanette Stein on her way to Cincinnati. Germany plunged into chaos and civil war following its defeat and Hellmers left the ruined empire, finding work wherever the winds of fate tossed him. With defeat all but certain, “Kaiser Bill” abdicated in 1918 and Hellmers was out of a job. Hellmers uncorked a fine bottle of red wine and the Prince asked Hellmers to join him in a glass. One day, Prince Henry of Prussia, the Kaiser’s brother, showed up in Hellmer’s kitchen and asked for something to drink. On another occasion, Paul von Hindenburg, then Chief of the Great General Staff, chided Hellmers for serving pike in the Pomeranian style-baked with truffles and bacon and smothered in sour cream-while the troops choked down bland field rations. I was called into the dining room and the guest from Bavaria thanked me personally.” ![]() The pancakes pleased not only the king but the Kaiser. So I prepared potato pancakes-lots of them. I found out that he was very fond of potato pancakes, which his own mother used to cook for him. “I mingled with the king’s oldest servants and I plied them with questions about his favorite dishes when he was a boy. One evening, Wilhelm’s guest was Ludwig III, King of Bavaria. In later years, Helmers proudly displayed medals he received from the Kaiser himself, the sultan of Turkey and the czar of Bulgaria. ![]() As head chef and chief steward for the imperial headquarters, Hellmers spent much of the war near the front as Wilhelm wanted to oversee his troops closely. At first drafted into the navy, Hellmers’s culinary skills got him transferred to the personal retinue of Kaiser Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany. He was widowed and raising a daughter while working at a hotel in Berlin when war broke out. Chef August Johann Hellmers was quite a character, and he became a beloved celebrity in these parts, despite his allegiance to the deposed emperor.īorn in Blumenthal, a small town in northern Germany, Hellmers trained as a cook. Just 10 years later, however, Cincinnati embraced and celebrated a German veteran who not only enlisted in the German army, but served on der Kaiser’s personal staff. The Cincinnati Post asked readers for creative ways to punish Kaiser Wilhelm. City Council banned street names considered “auf Deutsch” and the police arrested hundreds of foreign-born residents on suspicion of seditious intent. When the United States charged into the First World War, anti-German sentiment ran high, even in a city as Teutonic as Cincinnati. At the height of World War I, Cincinnatians demonized Kaiser Wilhelm, collecting imaginative punishments in anticipation of his surrender.įrom Cincinnati Post 1 July 1918, image extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand ![]()
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