Revolt against the revolution

Harry Sulzer’s campaign for Tilsitskij was apparently too successful for the producers of the original. But who is really the original? With just a few posters, Harry Sulzer managed to turn his campaign for Tilsitskij into a hotly debated topic in the media. Sulzer was delighted to hear the term «efficient creativity.» After all, that’s also the name of his small but sophisticated agency. Not everyone shares his enthusiasm, however. At Olma, where the Tilsiter from Russia has a booth and is being promoted with the revolutionary posters, the APG had to cover them up on Wednesday of this week. To «avoid legal disputes,» the brand name «Tilsitskij Syr» now appears above the designs instead of «Tilsiter,» «and everything remains as it was,» as Sulzer explains. The cheese continues to be sold at select gourmet spots nonetheless.
But is all this excitement surrounding the Tilsiter label really justified? According to Wikipedia, Swiss cheesemakers from the Emmental region once migrated to the area north of the city of Tilsit in what was then East Prussia. They also «exported» the recipe for making cheese to the region bordering Lithuania.
The city of Tilsit has been called Sowjetsk since 1946, and cheese is still produced there today. It is called Sowjetski. However, the recipe for Tilsiter had already been brought back to Switzerland via other channels before 1893—by Otto Wartmann and Hans Wegmüller. They discovered this cheese in Tilsit, as mentioned above. Later, it was protected here as “Tilsiter Switzerland.” So, it’s all just cheese, isn’t it?
Andreas Panzeri