Lebkuchen-Schmidt is Nuremberg's most famous gingerbread maker, and it was founded almost by accident.

In 1926, Franz Schmidt accepted a railway carriage full of Lebkuchen as payment from a customer. His brother Emil Otto Schmidt, faced with shifting the entire carriage quickly, bundled the gingerbread into ranges and advertised them nationally. The response was strong enough that Emil Otto opened his own bakery the following year, with ten workers sending around 150 parcels a day to the post office by trolley.

Nuremberg Lebkuchen itself has a far older story. The city's spice trade routes made it the natural home of the recipe, and bakers here are recorded as early as 1395. The finest variety, Elisenlebkuchen, contains no flour, only spices, honey, and at least a quarter nuts. In 1487, Emperor Friedrich III handed them to nearly four thousand children at a Nuremberg assembly.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours pass the gingerbread stores along the Pegnitz, connecting Lebkuchen-Schmidt to Nuremberg's spice trading past and six centuries of craft tradition.