(FORTUNE Magazine) – He's young, he's personable -- and he's the worst thing that's happened to pigs in Germany since sauerkraut. Meet Jurgen Bohn, 32, economics minister for Thuringen, one of the most economically desperate of all the states that were part of East Germany. Only a few months after he took office last November, Bohn was outraged to learn that butchers all over Germany were doing a brisk business in a spicy pork sausage known as Thuringer Wurst. Bohn, formerly a scientific assistant at Dresden's Technical University, saw an opportunity for Thuringen to cash in on this widespread use of its name, and filed for copyright protection. A commission ruled against him, saying Thuringer had become a generic description like, say, hamburger. But sadly for Thuringen's pigs, the publicity from the case whetted a national appetite for the real thing; Bohn claims sales of sausages from his region have increased fourfold. Bohn has not lost sight of traditional ways to raise money and create jobs. He has signed a deal with the Bank of Tokyo to represent Thuringen to potential investors in Japan. In June he will visit Delaware to discuss opening a U.S. office. But there remains a place for sausages in Bohn's future. Come fall, he will go to Paris and make a personal bid to gain entry to the Guinness Book of World Records with, it is suspected, some sort of meat product. It looks like more bad news for pigs.