On the 130th anniversary of Groddeck's birth, a small psychoanalytical lunch was served at the Schlosshotel Bühlerhöhe on 13 October 1996. The interest in this event was so great that the chef de cuisine, Pellkofer, had to limit the number of guests to 130. For the many Baden-Baden taxi-drivers driving up to the Bühlerhöhe it was a festive occasion; for the guests it was a dietary banquet.

The sequence of dishes followed the eating habits in Groddeck's sanatorium Marienhöhe: The courses were served on small plates - the doll's house dishes used to serve the patients in Marienhöhe could not be found - the portions were tiny, and the whole meal lasted several hours. Here Groddeck's recipe, namely, that titbits would awaken the patients' delight in food and could be combined with dietary measures, was to be imitated and endured. Before each course, Otto Jägersberg, to whom the guests were indebted for the banquet, read out some of Groddeck's views on slimming diets, purging diets, diets in general, chewing and digesting, swallowing or sleeping.

   
The starter was ES(S) ICH NICHT (I'd not eat It) and indicative of the agenda: opposition was awakened, the insult by Freud exposed and could now finally be demolished.
DER DOKTOR KOMMT (Here comes the doctor), inspired by the 1926 sequence of caricatures and with a soupcon of a threat: Groddeck's skull cut out of a tomato, the huge ears made of slices of cucumber, with sauce vinaigrette - down with it!
The SAUMAGEN SATANARIUM (Satanic haggis), once a speciality in Marienhöhe, albeit without any statesmanlike solemnity, came stuffed with fresh fir needle tips, among other things.
The soup, SCHICKSAL-DAS-BIN-ICH-SELBST with ANNASYLIE (Fate, that's me, with Annalysarseley), was the first high-point in the banquet: the chef de cuisine had only allowed the letters E and S from the ABC-noodles to be used.
SONNE IM MOND (Sun in the moon) recalled, Stromboli-style, Fellini's tribute to the ES in his film E la nave va.
JUNGES GEMÜSE ALS SYMBOL (Vegetables as symbol) and EPIGRAMM VOM LAMM GRÜNE WIESE (Green meadow lamb) were reminiscences of Groddeck's book The World of Man and of excursions made by the patients and their doctor, during which improvised plays and pastorals were performed on the meadows around Baden-Baden and commented on in epigrams.
STAMPFKARTOFFELN WILDES HEER (Wild army mashed potatoes) sounded more opulent than what actually appeared on the little plate. The wild army of analysts, to which Freud had assigned Groddeck, would have had nothing to really get their teeth into here, but they would have been able to fall helplessly in love in the intermediate realm between potato and mash.
The UNBEHAGEN-AN-DER-KULTUR-GULASCH (Uneasy culture stew) was tender and surprisingly digestible.
DAS ACHTE DING (The eighth thing) was served in liquid form, with no indication as whether it should be spooned up or drunk.
The SCHÜLERERINNERUNGEN EINES PFÖRTNERS (Memoirs of a boarder at Schulpforte) brought out the first signs of love from Groddeck's boarding-school days in Schulpforte,
the ARCHE BLAUE KÖNIGIN (Blue Queen Arch) was the smallest cake that ever a plate had carried. Its constituent fruit - Bühl plums, needless to say - had also been a perfect occasion for Groddeck to speak about erotic aspects of cakes, in his journal DIE ARCHE.
The GEFRORENES ES AN MINZE (Frozen Es with mint), nothing less than crushed ice with a sprig of mint,
and the PETITS FOURS (small cakes), which Groddeck's collaborator and later executor of his will, Margaretha Honegger, liked to serve her guests in Zurich, formed the prelude to a last delight:
ESPESSO ZENO COSINI with a cigar a la Italo Svevo and the view from the terrace, from the Bühlerhöhe to the Vosges mountains where the sun was on the point of setting.

© Otto Jägersberg		© Alfonso Hüppi