Austrian maker of famous Mozart-themed sweets goes bankrupt

Visitors to Salzburg are unlikely to be able to resist the merchandise associated with its favourite son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: T-shirts, golf balls and Playmobil figures featuring the composer fill the souvenir shops and airport duty-free shops. But, writes The Guardian, the Austrian city has just lost its exclusive right to its most beloved souvenir – Mozart chocolates, wrapped in foil and adorned with an image of the child prodigy in a wig.

Last month, the last Salzburg Mozartkugel, a confection filled with marzipan, pistachios and nougat and invented in the late 19th century, rolled off the assembly line in the suburb of Grödig.

The plant, which produced 57 million pieces of the signature Mozartkugel chocolate candy annually, closed at the end of the year after maker Salzburg Schokolade went bankrupt, partly due to soaring cocoa prices, leading to the loss of 65 jobs.

Although there are many counterfeits of these sweets, only the real “Echte Salzburger Mozartkugel” was mass-produced for export in this Austrian city. The Pro-Ge union, which represents the workers, called the Mozartkugel factory “the heart of the region,” where employees “are proud of the product that has traveled the world.”

Despite its local pedigree, the license to produce chocolates has for several years belonged to the American conglomerate Mondelez International, maker of such international brands as Oreo cookies and Toblerone chocolate bars.

Following the bankruptcy of Salzburg Schokolade, after three years of rescue attempts, Mondelez said it would look within its regional production network for a new site for Mozartkugeln production.

Unconfirmed local media reports suggest the most likely destination is the Czech Republic, with its lower production costs.

As Austria faces the possibility of soon having its first far-right chancellor since World War II, commentators have noted the worry raised by news that the Alpine republic may no longer have such a time-honoured cultural template.

“There is no doubt that the succulent sweets are inextricably linked to the Austrian identity,” writes Verena Meyer, a correspondent for the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung in Vienna. As an ambassador for world culture in Austria, she compared the confectionery to “The Sound of Music.”

The identity of Salzburg, Austria’s fourth-largest city, is inextricably woven into the story of Mozart, lending enormous cultural colour to a community of just over 150,000 people and attracting crowds of tourists each year.

The child prodigy composer himself had a turbulent relationship with his home city, where he served at the archbishop’s court, complaining in letters that he found it dull, provincial and stuffy. He eventually moved to the more cosmopolitan capital Vienna at the age of 20, where he enjoyed greater commercial success, The Guardian notes.

Burdened with debt after Mozart’s premature death at age 35, his widow Constanze eventually returned to Salzburg, and is widely credited with preserving – and monetizing – his legacy.