There is now a new section ‘Source Texts’ in the menu.
It is a collection of old texts relating to the history of cocktail culture, particularly in Germany. In general, these are usually quite short excerpts from books that touch on the subject of cocktails.
Historians make it their task to increase our knowledge of the past and our understanding of the context. In order to identify dependencies between events and recognise developments, the authentic testimonies of the respective period must be considered – whereby ‘authentic’ does not necessarily mean ‘true’. The value of a testimony as a source and the conclusions that can be drawn from it can only be determined once the content is known. To avoid everyone having to read everything, there is a long tradition of thematically structured source collections or source books in historical studies.
Our ‘Source Texts’ section is intended as a living collection of sources that leads mixographers directly to a constantly growing compilation of text excerpts that may be of interest to them.
Each text edition is preceded by a short introduction, which makes it possible to situate the author and their texts in the respective period with their own specific issues.
Where possible, each text is reproduced in German and English in two columns. In the case of texts that were published in two languages from the outset or are translations of contemporary originals, this makes it possible to compare the texts directly. Where no English or German version is available, we provide our own translation.
The texts are also provided with (pseudo) hashtags that enable targeted search queries for pages and posts in which the corresponding terms appear. To date, the following hashtags have been added: #bar · #barkeeper · #buck · #cobbler · #cocktail · #cooler · #crusta · #cup · #daisy · #fizz · #flip · #grog · #julep · #negus · #nogg · #punch · #sangaree · #scaffa · #skin · #sling · #smash · #sour · #squash · #swizzle · #toddy
So far, the focus of the edited texts has been on so-called ‘Amerikaliteratur’ of the 19th century: countless books and newspaper articles in the Old Country reported on the conditions and peculiarities in the United States. Of course, this also included the question of what and how Americans drank …