Poison Hut (Prague)

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Poison hut and Adalbert column behind the Apollinariskirche

The poison hut in Prague - Jedová chýše in Czech - was an inn on the Windberg in the Upper New Town.

meaning

In Prague, the women's subjects were spatially separated at that time, obstetrics in the Kaiser Franz Joseph Pavilion and gynecology in a building on the Windberg near St. Apollinaris (Prague) . Where the Weinberggasse merged into Appolinarisgasse and the complex of institute buildings ended, the area seemed to have taken on a village-like character. The stone Adalbert of Prague from 1677 stood on a pedestal in front of the last house. The house was the tavern , the "poison hut" sung about by Karl Julius Keim . Only a bowling alley and the pub garden separated them from St. Apollinaris (Prague).

This area was the preferred neighborhood for medical professionals studying obstetrics at the nearby building. Opened in 1789, it offered students an inexpensive lunch. Not only students came to the poison hut, but also the assistants from the clinics and the doctors from the insane asylum nearby. In the evening, the off-duty female staff from the medical institutes, the listeners of the midwifery courses and finally the maids of the professors of the medical and philosophical faculties who lived in the institutes joined them. A specialty of these popular “Jodoform-Kränzchen” was the 6th tour of the Quadrille , which extended into the depths of the host garden. Once, in the 1870s, the pastor of St. Appolinaris was very upset about the life and goings-on in the poison hut. He addressed a petition to Ferdinand Weber von Ebenhof , director of the Landesgebäranstalt and brother of the governor Philipp Weber von Ebenhof . The pastor turned against the dance events and asked Weber to forbid the midwives from visiting the iodoform wreaths. He did nothing; Weber, who drank the daily morning pint in the poison hut with his listeners and employees, put the complaint aside and left everything as it was. In his memoirs, Robert Raudnitz reports an episode in the later days of the poison hut:

“In the low“ salon ”of the poison hut, supported by wooden pillars, where a longer person bumped his head against the ceiling, which was blackened like a forge and full of tobacco smoke,“ Schwof ”or“ Zangenkranzchen ”took place every Wednesday and Saturday. The dancers were the two lovely host's daughters and their extensive mother, midwives and caretakers. Once we had a distinguished visitor. A widowed old court councilor lived nearby with her faded daughter. A two-part delegation led by the late doctor [Julius] Eckstein, Corps Moldavia, went to her and invited the young lady to "Réunion". Unsuspecting, she came with her mother in a white summer dress with long, white gloves and roses in her hair. But then the safety of the ladies was evident. As if they hadn't noticed that the other women belonged to a different social class, they sat down and the daughter danced with the students without saying a word about the mystification. After half an hour the ladies said goodbye and we all remained orphaned. "

- Robert von Raudnitz

Until the division of Prague University into the German Karl Ferdinand University and the Czech Charles University , German corps students and fraternity members are said to have completed quite a few quodlibets with Czech doctors ; but after the increase in the nationality struggles, the German physicians soon stayed away altogether. The Czech students, who now lacked the right objects of dispute, also avoided the restaurant. After several changes of ownership and auctions, it finally became completely deserted. In 1935 the building was demolished and replaced by a new building.

See also

literature

  • Egon Erwin Kisch : The Adventures in Prague. Ed. Strache, Vienna Prague Leipzig 1920.
  • Wilhelm Klein: In memoriam: The poison hut . Deutsche Hochschulwarte, year X, September 1930, issue 4, p. 64.
  • Hartmut Binder : Prague. Literary walks through the Golden City , 5th edition. Vitalis Verlag, Prague 2017, pp. 296–299.

Web links

Commons : Jedová chýše  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Kraus: Letters to Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin 1913-1936 (2005)
  2. ^ A b c Adolf Siegl: The Elegy to Prague by Dr. med. Germ . Once and Now, Yearbook of the Association for Corps Student History Research, Vol. 18 (1973), pp. 197-201.
  3. ↑ Kateřina Becková: Zmizelá Praha . Nové město, Praha 1998, p. 354.