How Rhubarb Conquered Germany, Then the World

In the past month, millions of people have found themselves stumbling through the contorted and catchy syllables of a song about, of all things, a woman named Barbara and some rhubarb-loving barbarians who drink beer while getting their beards barbered. In German.

Or more rightly: Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbier.

The hyper-compound words of the popular German tongue twister about Barbara, her “bombastic” rhubarb cake and her hirsute customers shot to inexplicable and extreme popularity this spring, a few months after a pair of comedic musical content creators from Berlin posted a rap version late last year. Their silly ditty has more than 47 million views on TikTok; for a brief moment on some online streaming charts, Barbara beat out Beyoncé. Beyoncé.

“There is a prejudice that, first, Germans don’t have any sense of humor, and second, they do not have fun, and third, their language sounds very aggressive,” said Bodo Wartke, the rap’s lyricist who, along with Marti Fischer, the composer, created the viral “Barbara’s Rhubarb Bar” tune. They spoke on a recent day in their Berlin studio as they giggled and tripped over their own stanzas — which exploit a feature of German grammar that crams nouns together into strings of syllables.

“And we proved them all wrong,” Mr. Wartke said.

But lost in translation, as global copycats stumble through the alliterative story of Barbara, the bar she opens and the pie that made her famous, is a quirk not only of language, but also of German gastronomical culture. Rhubarb is much more than a word in German that sounds a lot like “Barbara”; it is an object of springtime fixation, part of a nationwide fanaticism for eating a small group of particular produce exactly in season.

Guests at the Winkelmanns Asparagus Farm in May. In Germany, eating seasonally is part of the fun. Credit…Lena Mucha for The New York Times

Put another way: Song or no song, every spring across Germany, rhubarb goes completely viral.

The vegetable (yes, it is a vegetable) is part of a trio of produce that includes strawberries and a particular asparagus varietal that peaks in early spring. Warm weather sets off a frenzy for all things featuring them in a country that still adheres to consumption along the rhythms of the seasons.