Company History

In 1923 Mrs. Lieselotte Denk and her husband Wilhelm founded the Café Engel next to the Kreuzbrunnen Colonnade in Marienbad. This included a cake shop, which soon became one of the best in the town. In the recipe used by the Reichenbach monks, the wafers were filled with butter, sugar, almonds and hazelnuts and baked twice.
 
This was where Marlene Wetzel-Hackspacher, who was the sister of Lieselotte Denk and went on to own the company, served her apprenticeship as a pastry chef. The Café Engel grew rapidly in the years between the two world wars and was soon supplying other cafes in the spa triangle with the popular Marienbad and Karlsbader Oblaten.
 
When the family had to leave their homeland after the war, Marlene Wetzel, who was now a war widow, used a pram to take the wafer iron for the Karlsbader Oblaten to Bavaria, where she and her family found a new home. She met her future husband Hans Hackspacher in Dillingen on the Danube.
 
Together, the two of them, the pastry chef and the businessman, tried to make a fresh start and started out on a very small scale with the production of Karlsbader Oblaten and dessert cream wafers and waffles. Very soon they took on their first employees. Eventually they needed more space and built the company’s building in Dillingen, where production is still continuing today. After many years of arguments with the EU Commission, we are the only manufacturer of Karlsbader Oblaten in Germany.