The type Quark is found in dialectal use in Bavaria and Switzerland, while in Austria, Topfen is predominant. Quark represents the standard variant in High German, which may be one reason why it is increasingly replacing the basic dialectal form Topfen.
Middle German varieties originally borrowed the word from the North Sorbian twarog, which is how it entered New High German. In Middle High German it is still attested as twarc (cf. Kluge under Quark; DWDS under Quark).