Visitors to Salzburg can hardly escape merchandise linked to its favourite son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with T-shirts, golf balls and Playmobil figures in the composer’s image cluttering the gift stores and airport duty-free shops.
But the Austrian city has just lost its exclusive claim to the most beloved souvenir of all – bite-size foil-wrapped Mozart chocolates bearing the musical prodigy’s bewigged likeness.
Last month, the final Salzburg Mozartkugel (Mozart Ball), a confection filled with marzipan, pistachio and nougat, invented in the late 19th century, rolled off the assembly line in the suburb of Grödig.
The plant that produced 57m of the signature Mozartkugel chocolates annually closed at year’s end after the manufacturer Salzburg Schokolade went bankrupt, due in part to soaring cocoa prices, taking 65 jobs with it.
Although the treats have many knockoffs, only the authentic “Echte Salzburger Mozartkugel” was mass-produced for export in the Austrian city. The Pro-Ge trade union representing the workers called the Mozartkugel factory the “heart of the region”, where staff were “proud of a product that went round the world”.
Despite their local pedigree, the chocolates’ licence has been held for several years by the US conglomerate Mondelez International, maker of international brands such as Oreo cookies and Toblerone chocolate bars.
Following Salzburg Schokolade’s insolvency after three years of rescue attempts, Mondelez said it would search within its regional manufacturing network for a new site to make Mozartkugeln.
Unconfirmed local media reports said the most likely destination was the Czech Republic, with its lower production costs.
As Austria grapples with the likelihood it will soon have its first far-right chancellor since the second world war, commentators noted the disquiet triggered by the news that such a time-tested cultural touchstone might no longer be made in the Alpine republic.
“There is no question that the luscious sweet is indivisibly linked to Austrian identity,” Verena Mayer, Vienna correspondent for Germany’s daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote. She compared the confections to “The Sound of Music” as a global cultural ambassador for Austria.
The identity of Salzburg, Austria’s fourth largest city, is inextricably entwined with Mozart, bringing outsize cultural cachet to the community of just over 150,000 and a steady windfall from hordes of tourists each year.
The wunderkind himself had an ambivalent relationship with his home town, where he served in the archbishop’s court, complaining in letters that he found dull, provincial and stifling. He eventually moved in his 20s to the more cosmopolitan capital Vienna, where he found greater commercial success.
Saddled with debts after Mozart’s premature death at 35, his widow, Constanze, eventually moved back to Salzburg and is widely credited with preserving – and monetising – his legacy.
