Café Toscana

The Café Toscana is a traditional Dresden café in the historic villa suburb and has been part of Dresden- Blasewitz since 1921 . The location is Schillerplatz 7 directly on the bridge ramp to the Blue Wonder with a view of the Elbe and the Villa Marie located directly in front of it . The café is named after Crown Princess Luise of Austria-Tuscany , the wife of Friedrich August III. who had stayed there frequently.

Café Toscana seen from the Blue Wonder during the 2013 Elbe flood

One of the first photos of Café Toscana (1898): At the end of the row of houses on the left before the bridge

Café Toscana at the entrance to the Blue Wonder (1985). In between on the opposite edge of the Elbe slope: The Luisenhof in Loschwitz, also named after the Crown Princess

From the Luisenhof you can see the Café Toscana right next to the Blue Wonder; in front of it the Villa Marie

Café Toscana is also the building name under which the "tenement with café in closed development" is listed in the official Saxon list of monuments, and can also be found in the Blasewitz list of monuments .

history

Louis Köhler (1849–1909), restaurateur of the Schillergarten and ice-cream cellar owner on Schillerplatz, sold his restaurant in 1894. As a privateer, he was interested in the residential and commercial buildings on the northwest side of Schillerplatz, of which in 1897 he bought the corner house facing the Elbe (Schillerplatz 7 ) and also moved in there. A corresponding entry in the address book recorded him in 1899 as a private citizen living there; in the following year 1900, however, he is already being run as a café owner. Based on his experience in the apprenticeship and journeyman's years in Vienna before 1874, he had opened a coffee roastery with a coffee bar on the ground floor of his house, which was advertised as Café Toscana in the Dresden address books from 1901 . The official business advertisement in the parish files appeared in 1903.

Köhler's daughter Henny married the businessman Ernst Heinrich Zimmermann in 1902. With this, Louis Köhler founded a company in May 1905, presumably to manage the property and property. In August 1905 Köhler deleted his company entry as a café owner, whose new operator was the confectioner Hugo Zimmermann, probably a relative of the son-in-law Ernst Heinrich Zimmermann. Köhler died in 1909. In addition to the renovation of the café, Zimmermann's son-in-law set up a confectioner's bakery in the basement of the house, with which he established “the legendary reputation for cakes and desserts” in the following years. There were cakes ("Carmen", "Parsival", "Havana"), cakes ("Gateau Montellimar"), ice cream bombs, cold creams, wine jellies ("Gelee à la Danzig aux Ananas"), "Petits foures in all genres", Cheese pastries, “Danish rolls” as well as sweet, postage, Moselle and Rhine wines. In addition, in 1907 Zimmermann managed to obtain a license for “real Bohemian and Bavarian export beers” from the municipal board.

The Conditorei and Café Toscana in "Blasewitz an der Brücke" with a "heated terrace" was leased in 1910 to the Darmstadt confectioner Robert Förster and in 1911 to Franz Alois Lenz, who ran it as Café Toscana, Hugo Zimmermann Nachf . During the First World War, Lenz was in the Austrian army. In March 1916, Marie Zimmermann turned to the community council to have the beer-serving license held by the tenant Lenz transferred to herself. After she had waived her tenant rent for seven months, she continued to run the café as a family business.

description

The residential and commercial building Schillerplatz 7 is the corner building Schillerplatz / Fährgäßchen, which forms the north-western edge of the Dresden Schillerplatz at the end of the closed residential area, where the Schillerplatz through road leads directly to the bridge to the other bank of the Elbe. This north-western, continuously listed building on the edge of the square, Schillerplatz 1–7, is in the elevated position of the bridge ramp, while the buildings on the eastern Blasewitz bridge side, such as the Schillergarten, are in the lower position of the actual bank of the Elbe and are therefore exposed to flooding.

The tenement house from the late 19th century is an "extremely eye-catching building from late historicism [...], particularly based on the German or Northern European Renaissance (including corner tower , tail gable , architraved window frames, fittings and seating niche portal )". As in the neighboring houses, there is a business floor (here the café) on the ground floor, so that there is a continuous row of shops for the public along the sidewalk. The apartments are located on the two upper floors of the apartment house built with red exposed brick; The towering, tiled roof has also been converted into apartments.

To describe the café, the monument value description notes: “Remarkable are the preserved parts of the original café furnishings, including columns, artistically [...] highlighted, historically and artistically significant”. The building as a whole is "as part of the unmistakable Schillerplatz ensemble of urban planning importance and, in connection with the important suburb of Blasewitz, of urban development-historical value".

Today's operator

Café Toscana has been run by the Eisold bakery since 1993. This company, founded in Arnsdorf in 1953, supplies Toscana from its bakery at the company's headquarters in Radeberg, which borders on Dresden . Until spring 2020 Eisold operated three more coffee houses of his own, including the black market café in the Wilhelminian style building, Hauptstraße 36, which is also a listed building in the Inner Neustadt . However, in connection with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic , the latter has been abandoned. In the summer of 2020, in addition to the three remaining cafes, 15 additional sales outlets for baked goods were maintained in Dresden and the surrounding area. In 2019 the Eisold bakery had 174 employees.

reception

" Egg pancakes are only available as a substitute outside of Saxony, and nowhere in Saxony as good as in Tuscany."

- Martin Walser : The defense of childhood. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1991.

literature

Armin Stolper : Letters from Café Toscana: 40 addresses to the 800 year old Dresden, with which the author, as he claims, has been married for over half a century. GNN-Verlag, Schkeuditz 2006, ISBN 978-3-89819-213-2 .