Leibniz Keks, flat, crisp biscuits made from flour, butter (12 percent), sugar, and eggs, represent the very definition of sweet biscuits for generations of Germans, having been produced since 1891. Back then, the pioneering Hanover merchant Hermann Bahlsen (1859–1919) imported modern tunnel ovens from Glasgow, designed packaging as distinctive as the biscuits’ advertising, and named them after the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a native of Hanover. From the start the convenient little boxes of biscuits were aimed at hungry travelers in an age of urban growth and an expanding network of railways.
