A couple of years ago I visited the town of Aalen in southern Germany. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining and I visited the town center as people often do when they visit a new town. It had that look you often find in European towns that are not large enough to have been entirely modernized over the years and it was obvious this town was old.
And something else caught my attention; All around there were these signs advertising “Aalener Spionle” which in the local dialect translates to “The little spy from Aalen.” I was intrigued and went into one of these shops offering to sell me little spies, but soon learned that this was not to be the beginning of Gail’s Spy Network (which of course was very disappointing). It was, instead, the beginning of a very enjoyable chocolatey foray, which more than made up for the shattering of my dream of a spy network.
For it turns out that an Aalener Spionle is a type of chocolate dessert.
(The image shows a drawing of the Aalener Spionle dessert)
It stands on a base of marzipan macaroon biscuit with a filling of fluffy hazelnut and nougat cream, covered in a layer of dark chocolate, cast with the image of a man and the words “Aalener Spionle” around it. Absolutely delicious, but not the kind of thing you eat more than one of at a time.
But I was still curious about what a delicious chocolate dessert had to do with spies and I began to do some research.
It turns out that these little spies have been around since 1927, but that the story behind them is a lot older. It comes from the time in which Aalen belonged to the Free Cities and had garnered the wrath of the German Emperor by standing against him. So the Emperor gathered an army and marched towards Aalen. When he came to the nearest other town to Aalen — with which there is to this day a friendly rivalry and therefore of course also constant good natured bickering and insults flying — the Emperor stopped and made his camp.
Now, the people of Aalen knew they’d be hard pressed to go up against the Emperor and his army – particularly since the wall around the city hadn’t been seeing much upkeep lately and was therefore in rather poor condition.
To gain some advantage back, the citizens of Aalen decided to send a man to spy on the Emperor’s camp to try to learn what his strategy might be and how many men exactly the Empror brought with him. They chose the wisest man among them and sent him to spy.
He managed to sneak into the camp of the Emperor and after some looking around he realised that he had found the Emperor himself. However, as the Emperor looked at him, he realised that he hadn’t seen this man before and asked the man who he was. Without any hesitation the spy took off his hat, bowed to the Emperor, and declared that he was the spy from Aalen.
The Emperor was rather surprised, but also amused and decided that since the man had shown himself so honest, he would show him the camp himself and spare him the trouble of having to sneak around to do his job.
He even offered the spy to stay overnight and in the morning gave him a letter for the citizens of Aalen: The Emperor declared that he would forgive them and did not wish to fight after all, since he would dearly like to live in peace with such clever and brave people.
When the spy returned to Aalen they were all very impressed and glad to have escaped so easily.
So as a show of gratitude, they set a statue of him in the clock tower on the town hall where cogwheels make the head turn each hour, keeping the people on the market square under surveillance. He is a spy after all.
So if you ever visit Aalen, get one of these tiny spies and take a look at the clocktower. It’s well worth it.
https://www.aalen.de/der-aalener-spion.867.25.htm
https://www.shoppingladies.de/einkaufstouren-durch/heim-a-herd/856-aalener-spionle-schokoladendessert.html