Ulbricht Natural Bavarian Erzgebirge Nutcracker

It is worth noting, at the outset, that this figure is not merely a Bavarian in costume but a specific kind of Bavarian — the one a visitor to Munich in the late nineteenth century would have recognized without hesitation. The evidence is in what he is holding. In his right hand, a stained beer stein marked with the white-and-blue crest of the Hofbrauhaus, the royal brewery established in 1589 and still operating on the Platzl to this day. In his left, a turned-wood horseradish, its root stained the correct orange-amber of a Bavarian table condiment and its green-painted top suggesting the freshly pulled vegetable a working man would have carried home from market. One does not invent such details. One observes them and records them.

Christian Ulbricht's workshop has rendered the rest with equal precision. The alpine hat is stained dark reddish-brown and carries a small white feather plume, properly tucked rather than glued on. A vertical row of gold-painted buttons descends the front of the stained jacket. The beard and hair are genuine — dark, full, and bound under the chin in the Ulbricht manner. The lederhosen are short, the legs pale linden, and the shoes carry painted buckles of the correct era. The piece stands 15.5 inches — a substantial figure by any reasonable catalog measure.

The Castle keeps him in the dining hall, near the long oak table where Mother Ginger serves on feast days. He is, I am told, a useful reminder that tradition is often a matter of who carried what home from market, and when.

— Herr Stahlbaum