Old Bay — the zesty, saliferous, burnt orange spice synonymous with seasoning shellfish — was invented by Gustav Brunn, a German Jewish refugee who landed in Baltimore after spending two weeks in Buchenwald concentration camp.
There are few spice blends as ubiquitous as Old Bay. Packaged in the classic yellow, blue, and red tin can, Old Bay has grown from a Baltimore favorite to a pantry staple across the United States.
Before Old Bay was invented in the 1940s, steamed crab, the dish most associated with the blend, was absent from regional cookbooks, including Mrs. B.C. Howard’s Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen and Mrs. Charles Gibson’s Maryland and Virginia Cookbook.
How did Brunn, a man who miraculously escaped Nazi-occuiped Germany, revolutionize the way Americans eat crab?
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.