Café Josty
The café josty was a Berliner pastry , the most famous branch of the Artist Café at Potsdamer Platz was. One branch was located in the Wilmersdorf district , another in Charlottenburg at Joachimsthaler Straße 44 at the Zoo station . In 2001 , a restaurant using the name Café Josty opened in the Sony Center , not far from the previous location of the main branch .
history
The Josty brothers emigrated from Sils in Switzerland to Berlin at the end of the 18th century , where they founded the Johann Josty & Co. sugar bakery in 1796 . From this company the Café Josty developed, which existed from at least 1812, first at Stechbahn 1 (at the former Berlin City Palace ) and finally from 1880 on Potsdamer Platz.
Artists such as Heinrich Heine , Joseph von Eichendorff and the Brothers Grimm , as well as Theodor Fontane and Adolph Menzel in the German Empire , frequented the earlier addresses in Café Josty .
Heinrich Heine wrote in letters from Berlin : “But right in front of us is the Stechbahn, a kind of boulevard. And Josty lives here! - You gods of Olympus, how would I spoil your ambrosia for you if I described the sweets that are piled up there. Oh, did you know the content of this meringue! Oh Aphrodite, if you had come out of such foam, you would be even sweeter! The place is narrow and dull and decorated like a pub, but the good will always prevail over the beautiful; The grandchildren of the brandies sit here huddled together like kippers, sipping cream and clicking with delight and licking their fingers. "
Around 1900 the Josty family sold the café to the widow of the founder of Café Bauer . The Josty was then modernized, but kept its ancestral name. In the 1920s and 1930s the company operated under the name of J. Josty & Co. GmbH, Café und Konditorei .
Another branch existed at Kaiserallee 201 (since 1950: Bundesallee ) at Trautenaustraße in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . One of the most famous novels from the time of the Weimar Republic , the children's book Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner , takes place in an important scene in this branch of Café Josty. Kästner wrote the book there in 1929 as he lived only a few meters away at Prager Strasse 17 at the time.
Café Josty on Potsdamer Platz
The main branch was located in Bellevuestrasse 21/22 and provided a direct view of the busy Potsdamer Platz into Leipziger Strasse from the café and the front garden .
In the 20th century, the Café Josty became an important meeting place for artists, especially Expressionism and New Objectivity . Above all, it attracted the dynamism of Potsdamer Platz and its modernity. Paul Boldt immortalized the view from the café in a sonnet on the terrace of Café Josty published in 1912 in the magazine Die Aktion .
Potsdamer Platz in eternal roar
Glaciers all echoing avalanches
The street tracts: Trams on iron rails,
automobiles and human waste.
The people run over the asphalt,
ants, nimble like lizards.
Foreheads and hands blinking with thoughts,
swimming like sunlight through dark forest.
Night rain envelops the square in a cave,
Where white bats flap their wings
And purple jellyfish lie - colored oils;
They multiply, cut up by the wagons. -
Splashed Berlin, glittering nest by day,
From the smoke of night like the pus of a plague.
The building with the Café Josty can be seen on numerous postcards from Potsdamer Platz. Up until 1930, the "Josty's Conditorei u. Café" logo was placed above the second floor. Above the third floor there were initially three lines with 15 illuminated letters each, and from 1927 onwards there was an illuminated traveling writing system for a few years . By 1930 at the latest, the traveling writing system had been dismantled and replaced by a large advertisement for Chlorodont toothpaste . The well-known lawyer Erich Frey had his office right above Café Josty until 1933 .
In March 1930, Café Josty moved from Potsdamer Platz to Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 1 (since 1947: Ebertstraße ) at the corner of Lennéstraße , opposite the garden side of the properties of the Reich Chancellor's Palace and the Foreign Office .
The old headquarters at Potsdamer Platz was continued by the Friediger confectionary from mid-1930 . As early as 1934/1935 there was another change of operator to Kaffee Potsdamer Platz under Alice Barton.
The buildings in which the artists' café at Potsdamer Platz and Friedrich-Ebert-Straße were located were - like almost all buildings in this area - destroyed in the Second World War.
In Wim Wender's film Der Himmel über Berlin , an old man searches for the place where Café Josty once stood in one scene, but cannot find it again - the destruction is so extensive.
The new Café Josty
The new Café Josty was built in 2001 in the Sony Center, about 200 meters from the previous location of the main branch. The historic breakfast room of the Grand Hotel Esplanade was rebuilt at the slightly changed location.
Today it is a restaurant and has nothing in common with its predecessor apart from the name. Mainly tourists frequent here and during the Berlinale also actors and B-celebrities .
Web links
- View of Café Josty (around 1920) ( Memento from June 30, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- Website for the old Café Josty at www.potsdamer-platz.org.
- Dolf Kaiser: Josty. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Website of today's restaurant Café Josty
Individual evidence
- ↑ Baedeker, Berlin and its Environs , 1912, p. 11.
- ^ Heinrich Heine in Letters from Berlin , First Letter , January 26, 1822
- ^ First publication: Die Aktion Vol. 2, Jg. 1912, No. 46
- ^ Coffee Potsdamer Platz, owner Alice Barton, entry in the Berlin address book 1935
- ↑ Café Josty opened at Potsdamer Platz. In: Berliner Zeitung , April 28, 2001
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 36 " N , 13 ° 22 ′ 25" E