Café Bauer (Frankfurt am Main)

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Café Bauer in Haus Bavaria
Left: main facade with Bavaria figure and right the houses Alemania 1892 and, indicated, Wolfseck 1884, Schillerplatz / Zeil. The café was on the first two floors.

Left: main facade with Bavaria figure and right the houses Alemania 1892 and, indicated, Wolfseck 1884, Schillerplatz / Zeil. The café was on the first two floors.

Data
place Frankfurt am Main , Hesse
architect Simon Ravenstein
Construction year 1885/86
height approx. 30 m
Floor space approx. 1000 m²
Coordinates 50 ° 6 '47.8 "  N , 8 ° 40' 42.8"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 6 '47.8 "  N , 8 ° 40' 42.8"  E
particularities
Paintings by Hans Thoma and Wilhelm Steinhausen

The Frankfurt Café Bauer was operated as a spacious café with a billiard room at the Hauptwache from 1885 to 1930 and, due to its central location and excellent facilities, soon became the leading café in Frankfurt. The building was destroyed in the air raids on Frankfurt am Main in the Second World War , except for the outer walls on the ground floor and was later replaced by a new building with a different use.

Building history

Bavaria main facade with Café Bauer, Schillerstr. 6-8, above the arches, to the right and left of the window, the Steinhausen city portraits ( detail: 6th window from left )

In 1884, Simon Ravenstein designed the Bavaria residential and commercial building for the Krause siblings in Mainz. The building at the main traffic junction Schillerplatz (today Hauptwache ) 8-10 / corner Schillerstraße 6-8, not far from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange , was built on the land of several previous buildings, including a former brewery whose name was adopted for the new building. Ravenstein designed the building complex in the style of historicism with greenish sandstone and Swedish granite columns. 16 artisans and visual artists contributed to the design.

Above the main facade the four Taunus castles ( Kronberg , Königstein , Falkenstein and Eppstein ) were painted on a golden background. A zinc-made Bavaria with a team of four by the sculptor Gustav Herold , creator of the Atlas group at Frankfurt Central Station , adorned the dome on the main facade; Years later, it was surpassed in height and monumentality by the lantern above the neighboring house with the torch-bearing Alemania. The building was supplied with electricity for 170 lightbulbs by its own generator before there was a power station in Frankfurt.

Equipment and operation of the café

Wilhelm Steinhausen: City portraits Bavaria facade
Hans Thoma: Gambrinuszug , mural (1884) in Café Bauer

The Berlin cafetier Mathias Bauer opened a coffee house on the ground floor and first floor of the central building . Café Bauer changed hands twice in 1899 and was operated until 1930. The Innenausmalung the two-storey café with its 100 picture characters ( Bacchus - and Gambrinuszug ) on Tapetbögen made Hans Thoma , the unclothed allegories (zodiac signs and winds) excited the ceiling painting offense covered up and only with the famous Thomas by one of his pupils, Anton construction Singer , were restored - without the original shine could be regained. The café offered space for 120 people in the reading room, magazines in twelve languages ​​were on display, and on the first floor there was an equally large room with five billiard tables and a separate card room. Wilhelm Steinhausen made drafts for the painting of both the gusset in the arches of the mezzanine and the surfaces on both sides next to the three groups of four windows of the III. Floor. A total of 38 portraits of Frankfurt celebrities were seen there, starting clockwise with the Roman Emperor Hadrian and ending with the painter Philipp Veit .

literature

  • Waldemar Kramer (Ed.): Frankfurt Chronicle. Frankfurt am Main 1977.
  • Frankfurt historical figures. Wall painting on Bavaria Schillerplatz & Schillerstr. next to the paintings in the new restoration room. Printed and published by Merstatt, Schrod and Co. (Ed.), Frankfurt am Main 1884.
  • Thomas Zeller: The architects and their building activities in Frankfurt am Main from 1870–1950. Monument Office of the City of Frankfurt am Main (Ed.), Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 294f, ISBN 3-921606-51-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klötzer: Memory of Frankfurt. P. 30/31: Panorama around 1903/1904 with the houses (from left to right: Bavaria, Alemania, Wolfseck as well as Hauptwache, Zeil and Katharinenkirche)
  2. ↑ Fig. In: Kramer: Frankfurt Chronik. Pp. 95, 127, 217, 259, 277, 361. Complete in von Merstatt u. a .: Frankfurt historical figures.