Grand Café Odeon
The Grand Café Odeon is a coffee house on Bellevue in Zurich .
history
1909–1911, the merchant and colonel Julius Uster had Zurich architects Robert Bischoff and Hermann Weideli build the Usterhof , a multi-storey office and commercial building with a tufa facade , on the corner of what was then Sonnenquai (now Limmatquai ) and Rämistrasse . A coffee house based on the Austrian model was set up in Art Nouveau style with large windows, chandeliers, brass panels and walls clad with reddish marble.
On Sunday, July 1, 1911, the Grand Café Odeon opened its doors for the first time at 6 p.m. There was a confectionery shop in the basement and a billiard room on the first floor. The Odeon was run by the Munich restaurateur Josef Schottenhaml. International newspapers and encyclopedias were available, and chess was often played. There was no police hour. In Zurich, the 'Odeon' was the first place in which champagne was served by the glass by the glass.
Numerous writers, painters and musicians frequented the Odeon and for decades gave the café the reputation of an intellectual meeting place. Prominent visitors included Stefan Zweig , Hans Arp , Franz Werfel , Albert Einstein , Else Lasker-Schüler , Claire Goll , Frank Wedekind , William Somerset Maugham , Erich Maria Remarque , Klaus Mann , Friedrich Torberg , Franz Lehár , Arturo Toscanini , Wilhelm Furtwängler , James Joyce , Lenin , but also Swiss artists frequented here: Max Frisch , Friedrich Dürrenmatt , Carl Seelig , Hugo Loetscher and many others. In 1957, the later friends and neighbors Max Frisch and Alfred Andersch met for the first time at the Odeon . A confidante of the emigrants was the bookseller and publisher Emil Oprecht , who published the works of many writers in exile. Even Benito Mussolini wrong in his youth at the Odeon.
After the Second World War, the Odeon was and remained a meeting place for the younger intellectual generation for several decades. In the early 1970s, the Odeon was hit by the neighboring drug scene. The facility was partially destroyed by rioters and had to be renovated. There were clashes among drug dealers for supremacy in the Odeon; the restaurant's losses increased. To make it easier to see, the restaurant area was reduced and the northern entrance removed. On July 1, 1972, the café had to close, after which it was placed under monument protection and continued on a third of its original area. A pharmacy has been housed in the part of the former café since 1991.
Popular culture
In 1959 Kurt Früh shot his film Café Odeon with Emil Hegetschweiler and Margrit Winter in the leading roles as a homage to the hot spot. Although the drama turned out to be less realistic than early on, it was not released for performance in some cantons.
literature
- Curt Riess : Café Odeon. (with a text by Esther Scheidegger ) Verlag Europa, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-905811-24-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Andersch, Max Frisch, correspondence. Zurich 2014, p. 112.
- ↑ mapsofworld ( memento of the original dated November 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Filmography: Café Odeon (1959). In: srf.ch. Retrieved August 18, 2018 .
