Kadir Nurman, the Turkish immigrant largely credited with inventing the popular doner kebab, has died here.
He was 80.
Nurman was born in Istanbul, Turkey before moving to Stuttgart, Germany at the age of 26. He then moved to west Berlin, where he worked as a mechanic for a printing press.
In 1972, he started selling grilled meat accompanied by salad in a flatbread, having noticed the increasingly fast pace of life for residents in the city, according to the BBC.
The concept of eating meat off a skewer was not a new one, but putting it into bread allowed busy Berliners to purchase a meal that they could eat on the go.
While there are other possible "doner inventors," Nurman's contribution was recognised by the Association of Turkish Doner Manufacturers in 2011.
According to the Berlin-based Association of Turkish Doner Manufacturers in Europe, there are now 16,000 doner outlets in Germany.
Nurman, who emigrated to Germany in 1960, did not patent his invention, and thus did not particularly profit from the doner's subsequent success, the report said.
But in a 2011 interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau, he expressed little bitterness.
He was happy that so many Turkish people were able to make a living from doners, he said, and that millions of people ate them.
