Arab Café Düsseldorf

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Arab Café, Graf-Adolf-Strasse 44, around 1900

The Arabian Café in Düsseldorf was an elongated, oriental -style building with several domes and a minaret . The building was erected in 1895 by the architect Peters on the disused railway line of the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . The restaurant building with its extravagant architecture in the “ Moorish style ” using colored glazed stones stood on an elongated, but only 8 m deep plot. It gave Graf-Adolf-Strasse an oriental accent around 1900 and made the influence of the colonial era clear.

The first self-service restaurant in Düsseldorf was located on the ground floor of the complex built by the construction company Boswau & Knauer, and the Arab-style café operated by Moritz & Görlich was on the first floor . Guests could feel like an Arab sheikh with a cup of mocha in the ornate rooms, which were furnished with camel chairs and ornamented Moorish stools, and were even served by Bedouin slaves.

Christian Winter also opened the first Düsseldorf cinema in the building, the “Düsseldorfer Wunderhalle” , in which films of up to 15 minutes were shown. The cinema also gave the impetus to later on more movie theaters to settle in this district.

The Arab Café was closed in 1911. The building was changed and finally demolished in 1928 to make room for the “Europahaus”, in which the UFA later set up a large premiere cinema called “Europa-Palast”. However, this was largely destroyed in the Second World War . After the war, a cinema called “Europa-Palast” was operated here again, which was renovated in 1949 according to plans by Ernst Huhn . When a large swath was cut through the city center with Berliner Allee , it was torn down and a hoarding department store was built there (now Edeka ).

Other examples of orientalizing architecture in this era are the Café Orient in Wiesbaden or the “Yenidze” cigarette factory in Dresden .

Web links

Commons : Arab Café  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The Arab Café in Düsseldorf (with photography) , Richard Klapheck : Neue Baukunst in den Rheinlanden , Schwann, 1928, p. 4

Individual evidence

1. ^ Architects and Engineers Association in Düsseldorf (ed.): Düsseldorf and its buildings. L. Schwann, Düsseldorf 1904, p. 324
2. ↑ Europa-Palast , website in the allekinos.com portal , accessed on May 1, 2019

Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 9 ″  N , 6 ° 46 ′ 57 ″  E