One of the ‘classic’ American ‘jewish invention’ myths – along with the false claims that jews ‘invented’ the Reuben Sandwich (1) and the Bagel (2) along with false claims like the statue of Liberty was modelled on a jewess – (3) is that a jew invented the famous seafood – specifically crab – seasoning ‘Old Bay’.
This most complete version of this story is provided by Leah Siesfeld writing for ‘My Jewish Learning’:
‘The story begins in 1906 in the town of Bastheim, Germany, when Gustav Brunn was 13 years old. He quit school because it was too expensive and began working as a tannery apprentice. In 1923, the value of the German mark plummeted and in turn, the fur business collapsed and the tannery closed. Brunn bought the store and began selling cases and spices to sausage makers, the beginning of his career in the spice industry.
Brunn’s spice business was a success. That was, until 1933 when Hitler came to power. According to the Baltimore Jewish Times, as anti-Semitism grew, Brunn lost customers and his bookkeeper resigned out of fear that the Nazis would punish him for working for a Jew. To protect his family and his livelihood, Brunn moved his shop to Frankfurt where there was a larger Jewish population.
In 1937, Brunn and his family applied for visas to the United States. The plan was to leave by the end of 1938, but that changed on the night of November 10, 1938, Kristallnacht, the mass pogrom that destroyed synagogues, Jewish business, and schools, and the first time the Nazi regime arrested Jews on a massive scale.
The next day, radio announcements called for all Jews to surrender their firearms to the nearest police station. Brunn, an avid hunter with eight rifles, complied. Upon arriving at the police station, he was told that he couldn’t leave. Within hours, Brunn was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Remarkably, after two weeks, Brunn was released, bearing a shaved head and suffering from pneumonia. Brunn’s early release was arranged by a Frankfurt lawyer for 10,000 marks, a hefty price at the time, who bribed the Gestapo. Within a week, Brunn, his wife, and their two children sailed for America, bound for Baltimore, with his hand-crank spice grinder in tow.
Brunn struggled to find work in Baltimore and finally landed a job at McCormick & Company, the world’s biggest spice maker. According to The Baltimore Sun, Brunn’s son Ralph recalls that after only a few days, McCormick learned that Brunn was Jewish, and fired him, directing him “to go and see the Jewish charities.”
Brunn did not give up on his career in the spice industry. He opened his own store, the Baltimore Spice Company, on the second floor of 26 Market Place, across from the bustling fish market. Soon, seafood vendors were stopping in his store, searching for spices for steaming crabs. Brunn took note of what they ordered — a mix of pepper, salt, and mustard — and began experimenting with his own blends.’ (4)
The problem with this narrative is that it is entirely anecdotal with Gustav Brunn applying for a visa to immigrate to the United States in 1937 but only sailing for their new home in early 1939 with Brunn ‘struggling to find work’ in his new home: the city of Baltimore then he finds work sometime between mid/late 1939 and 1940 with the spice maker McCormick & Company.
Now most accounts of how Brunn found this job merely mentioned he got or found the job with McCormick, but the problem is that leaves out who got him the job.
‘Preservation Maryland’ explains that:
‘With a background as a spice merchant, Brunn found work making seasonings at a sausage factory on Lombard Street in Baltimore, but that was short lived for presumably prejudice reasons. He turned to a group of Jewish men and philanthropists, which included Aaron, Meyer, and Julius Straus, who were helping refugees find jobs. One of them introduced Gustav to Charles McCormick, who was at the time very interested in breaking into the wholesale sausage spice business, an industry that Gustav knew well. McCormick hired him on the spot, but again, Gustav was let go quickly, this time attributed to his lack of facility with English.’ (5)
This is important because of what most authors claim happened next.
Siesfeld claims that:
‘Brunn struggled to find work in Baltimore and finally landed a job at McCormick & Company, the world’s biggest spice maker. According to The Baltimore Sun, Brunn’s son Ralph recalls that after only a few days, McCormick learned that Brunn was Jewish, and fired him, directing him “to go and see the Jewish charities.”’ (6)
Allison Robicelli similarly speculates that:
‘He quickly found a job at the McCormick Spice Company but was fired three days later when the company learned he was Jewish.’ (7)
While Patrick Fort, Ruth Tam, Shweta Watwe and Ann Marie Awad assert that:
‘After arriving in Baltimore, Brunn decided to put his spice making skills to use and got a job at McCormick Spice Factory. But, he was fired within a week. The Brunn family maintains it was because he was Jewish. When asked about Brunn, McCormick says they have no records of his employment. Weiner says “there’s no way to really establish why, but he was fired by McCormick.”’ (8)
Now we can quickly see the incongruity here in that if Brunn was found the job at McCormick by a bunch of jewish businessmen and philanthropists; it therefore is ridiculous to believe that McCormick somehow didn’t know that Brunn was jewish and fired him as soon as they found out.
Siesfeld, Fort, Tam, Watwe and Awad all mention that the source of this claim is Brunn’s descendants specifically his son Ralph Brunn, while ‘Preservation Maryland’ more plausibly speculates that the reason he was fired was because he didn’t speak English sufficiently well. (9)
The problem with even this is because when McCormick took on Brunn they would surely have asked him questions and if his English had been that bad that they had to fire him days after employing him; they would have picked this up then.
This then means that Brunn wasn’t fired ‘for being jewish’ nor ‘because he couldn’t speak English’, but Fort et al’s assertion that ‘there’s no way to really establish why, but he was fired by McCormick’ is at least honest on this score. (10)
I think the reason that Brunn was fired is actually arguably something a bit more obvious: he stole from McCormick. This in turn would make sense of what happens next in that days after he is fired from McCormick sometime in 1940; Brunn starts his company and calls it the ‘Baltimore Spice Company’ – again it usually isn’t stated but he was helped to do so by Meyer Straus who had helped get him the job at McCormick’s in the first place – (11) then quickly launches his new ‘spice blend’ aimed for blue crab that became what we now know as ‘Old Bay Seasoning’.
This is a little too coincidental in that Brunn gets a job at McCormick is fired within days for no reason – although his family later allege ‘anti-Semitism’ – and then days later sets up his own spice company and launches his ‘new spice/seasoning mix’ which is then a massive hit with the locals, but yet Brunn openly admits even in the official story line that he stole the recipe from the fishermen of Baltimore (12) and we know that he was paranoid to the day he died of someone ‘stealing his recipe’ suggesting again that he may well of himself stolen it. (13)
Further evidence for this conclusion comes in what Brunn was actually employed to do at McCormick which was to create a new spice mix for them. (14) Put another way: Brunn was working in the product research department of McCormick for a few days before being fired and then days later launches his own company and then ‘Old Bay Seasoning’.
This all suggests that the events are connected and that the reason that Brunn was fired by McCormick was because he was caught stealing a spice/seasoning recipe or something like which then became ‘Old Bay Seasoning’ and Brunn created the story that ‘he stole the spice/seasoning mix from the fishermen of Baltimore’ to cover up the truth of what he’d done.
Put another way: ‘Old Bay Seasoning’ was likely not a ‘jewish invention’ at all but rather a case of a jew stealing a local American invention from Baltimore then passing it off as his own.
References
(1) Please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-reuben
(2) Please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-bagel
(3) Please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/is-the-statue-of-liberty-a-jewish
(4) https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/the-jewish-roots-of-old-bay-seasoning/
(5) https://preservationmaryland.org/history-of-old-bay-spice-blend/
(6) https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/the-jewish-roots-of-old-bay-seasoning/
(7) https://www.rd.com/article/what-is-old-bay-seasoning/
(8) https://wamu.org/story/22/05/26/a-case-of-mistaken-identity-is-old-bay-really-marylands-favorite-crab-seasoning/
(9) https://preservationmaryland.org/history-of-old-bay-spice-blend/
(10) https://wamu.org/story/22/05/26/a-case-of-mistaken-identity-is-old-bay-really-marylands-favorite-crab-seasoning/
(11) https://preservationmaryland.org/history-of-old-bay-spice-blend/
(12) https://www.rd.com/article/what-is-old-bay-seasoning/; https://www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/the-jewish-roots-of-old-bay-seasoning/
(13) https://wamu.org/story/22/05/26/a-case-of-mistaken-identity-is-old-bay-really-marylands-favorite-crab-seasoning/
(14) https://preservationmaryland.org/history-of-old-bay-spice-blend/