Café Resi

The Residenz-Café in Weimar - called Resi for short - in September 2016

Detail shot

The top floor of the Resi

The Residenz-Café in Weimar - also called Café Resi or the Resi - is Weimar's oldest existing coffee house .

history

The court confectioner August Emil Theodor Ißleib opened the coffee house on November 7th, 1839. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had his first Weimar apartment from 1776 to 1777 in the neighboring building. Thanks to the breakthrough in the wall, his former living room is now part of the coffee house as the “Goethe room”.

August Ißleib also worked as court confectioner of the Grand Ducal House. There was also an agreement between the Residenz-Café and the court that the soldiers of the new Hauptwache were to be supplied with warm beer as soon as the cold had reached 10 ° C. After August Ißleib's death, his son Karl Wilhelm Gustav took over his father's business. The coffee house, which was furnished in the Viennese style at the time, was the meeting place for the Weimar artists.

After Ißleib's death the following operators existed:

1886: Master confectioner JM Bauer
1887–1893: Master confectioner Bertram Oberdörster
1894: Master confectioner Brinkmeier
1895–1902: Master confectioner Eduart Kämpf
1903–1905: Master confectioner Paul Kaiser
1906–1945: Master confectioner Alfred Schmidt

On January 8, 1906, master confectioner Alfred Schmidt took over the Residenz Café, which he ran for almost 40 years until 1945. During his time, the Residenz-Café was redesigned and embellished several times. First, the extension with the "winter garden" was created, which resulted in a terrace for the upper floor; The rooms on the upper floor were furnished true to the original in the Biedermeier style. The terrace in front of the entrance has been redesigned. The Residenz-Café experienced its heyday.

When Alfred Schmidt died in the summer of 1945, a manager was temporarily appointed for the Residenz café. On December 31, 1948, the café was reopened as "Haus Resi" by master confectioner Amse; In 1949 it was taken over by the HO as a "state-owned company" .

The HO kept the name "Resi" and had it renovated in the early 1960s and transformed into a "reading café" with "domestic and foreign newspapers, magazines and books". At the end of the 1960s it was completely rebuilt and the original furnishings were lost. In the 1960s to 1980s, the "Resi" was the hangout of many students at the Musikhochschule and the Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen , numerous carnival events from this period still shape memories today.

The dissolution of the HO in June 1991 also meant the end of the Café "Resi": It was closed in June 1991. In 1992 the house was renovated and redesigned, on October 5, 1992 it was reopened under its original name "Residenz-Café" and has since been run by an operating company from Würzburg .