22/10/2026
RUNNING A BAKERY. It is like a marathon, but without a finishing line, no breaks and no medals. When you stop, you are gone, soon forgotten ... till your great grandchild might have an ✨️ idea.
I realised that baker genes (or at least the passion for it) might jump generations. While never a big thing in our family, granddad ENGELBERT spent a few years working as a 🥖 baker in New York in the 1930s before starting his own shoemaker business back in Cologne.
His father JOSEF, my great grandfather, was a master baker running his own bakery in Bonn in the 1890s next door to the van Beethoven family home (see photos of his place on Bonngasse No. 28, a handwritten letter of his to the Bonn city mayor and today's Beethoven museum).
I am proud that I could unearth some of that now through my life-long love for bread ... and starting my own 🥐 MANNZ in Lund four years ago.
But above all, I am grateful to have met so many fantastic people on the way! Apart from our great team of bakers & shop assistants and 🧡 you, our dear 🥐 MANNZ friends, I treasure all encounters and new friendships with bakery colleagues.
What a breakfast in Linz two weeks ago meeting up with Franz, 4th gen owner Brandl meister des handgebäcks, and our "own" master baker & bread sommelier Christopher Christophers Backstube | Rezepte | Brot backen who has helped us to start 🥐 MANNZ! Or how about chatting and having a laugh with you, Max, bread-only-baker Max Kugel, in the very city of Bonn this summer?
Thank you for your warmth & openness,
Big hug 🌞 / Robert
