An apple is an apple, is an apple? Apple exhibition and variety identification with pomologist Hans Joachim Bannier from Bielefeld.

There are at least 160 different apple varieties on display at , including tried and tested as well as newly bred, well-known and almost lost dessert, cider and commercial apples from all regions of Germany. Admission is free.

You have the opportunity to have your own fruit identified by a variety expert from the Pomologen-Verein. Please bring 3-5 maggot-free apples or pears, preferably picked on the sunny side, from your tree. A determination costs €2.50 per variety.

Who still knows the old varieties? The Schöne aus Nordhausen, the Große Kasseler Renette  or the Muskatellerbirne have disappeared almost unnoticed from the gardens, roadsides and meadows of our local landscape in recent decades. And with them has disappeared the cultural heritage of many old varieties that our ancestors used, carefully tended and propagated for centuries. With them, valuable characteristics (e.g. resistance to disease and pests, adaptation to climate and location) have also been irretrievably lost. Some of the old varieties are only known to us from descriptions and stories told by our parents or grandparents.
Progressive specialization in a few standard varieties, combined with the development away from long-lived standard trees towards short-lived bush and spindle trees, the gradual disappearance of home-grown fruit as a result of the supply of "standardized" supermarket fruit and targeted political measures such as deforestation premiums, have led to an unprecedented degree of genetic erosion in fruit growing.
Preserving old fruit varieties is not just about preserving a cultural asset and saving genetic resources, but also about a variety of sensory experiences beyond industrial mass production. Anyone who has ever experienced the scent of a full-juiced Gravensteiner, the spicy aroma of a freshly picked Prince apple or the fruity, aromatic taste of a Berlepsch will find the ever-same range of Elstar, Jonagold, Delicious and Gala apples monotonous and tasteless. If you are looking for good apples for baking cakes, you will find them at Riesenboiken or Jakob Lebel, the old economic varieties whose fruits are just as hard to find in the stores as the Weiße Klarapfel and the Bismarckapfel, the apples for the best apple sauce. Good apple juice can be obtained from cider varieties such as the Rheinischer Bohnapfel, the Grauen Herbstrenette or regional varieties such as the Westfälische Tiefblüte. Some varieties, such as the tasty Finkenwerder, just lack the standardized, marketable "outfit" that wholesalers and consumers generally expect today. The small, shining fruits of the red star rosette - also used by some as Christmas decorations - can teach us that a variety of eye and palate pleasers (still!) exists outside of EU standards on minimum sizes.
You can rediscover these varieties and talk shop with Hans Joachim Bannier from Bielefeld about apple varieties and cultivation.

Further information from: hans bannier <alte-apfelsorten[at]web[dot]de>