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In reply to the discussion: East Coast word usage versus West Coast... [View all]DFW
(59,755 posts)Maybe they were a favorite of Otto von Bismarck, the German statesman who was from an area next to Berlin. All over Germany, any pastry shop will offer jelly-filled donuts, and if you want one, you ask for "Berliner."
Many foods in Germany bear the names of locations that made them famous. Various sausages are named for cities, such as Nürnberger for Nuremberg sausages, or Frankfurter for Frankfurt sausages.
It is a quirk of German grammar that if you say you are a person from a certain city, you leave out the article. If you are from Frankfurt, you would say, "ich bin Frankfurter." If you say, "ich bin ein Frankfurter," you are saying, "I am a hot dog." A famous address in 1963 would have been more accurate if the speaker had said "Ich bin Berliner" for obvious reasons.