Styrians eat an average of ten kilos of chocolate a year. But two of them – Gerhard Petzl from Kalsdorf and Jaimy Reisinger from Gleisdorf – turn the sweet delicacy into real works of art.
Life without chocolate is possible, but pointless. For Gerhard Petzl from Kalsdorf, chocolate has become the elixir of life. Many gold medals and prizes pave his way, which made astonished people melt away from Sydney to New York. Entire rooms made of chocolate “Every task is a challenge,” says the once youngest master confectioner in the country at the age of 21. He wanted to make more out of himself and the raw material chocolate, and so the Styrian creates unique sculptures. In Hong Kong he created a royal banquet and in Germany a Biedermeier-style room including a fireplace and couch. The chocolatier of the year sees himself as a “classic craftsman, similar to a roofer”. He is an architect of his dreams. In his basement laboratory, the 48-year-old studies down to the smallest molecule. And the tinkerer, who also works as a product developer for a well-known company, has recently been melting his delicately bitter art on naked bodies. “It’s about the spontaneity in the implementation on the model,” says the chocolate sculptor. “But for me as an artist there is no room for eroticism.” The fact that this art is not intended for eternity could also make you sad. In the heat of battle, the Kalsdorfer’s works melted away. “My heart is bleeding, but that’s the way things are.” Young talent in the starting blocks Jaimy Reisinger from Gleisdorf is drawn to the place where the chocolate artist Gerhard Petzl is today. The award-winning pastry chef wants to go to the World Chocolat Masters – the culmination of all professional chocolatiers. The 22-year-old trained as a confectioner on her second course of education and got the best tools for climbing to the chocolate Olympus at the elite school “Le Cordon Bleu” in London. The talent, chosen by Falstaff magazine, is currently developing her intuition in the Graz gourmet restaurant Artis. “Any pastry chef would behead me, because I hardly work from recipes,” says the Styrian, who is currently being hotly courted by the chocolate world. “In the coming year, I want to go out into the world to learn even more,” she says, emphasizing success. Gerhard Petzl also has a big dream. “I want to be in the record book. This world record attempt is then about something gigantic made from ten tons of chocolate,” he says, giving a small foretaste of future highlights.
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