House Töller
The house Töller is in the southern Cologne's Old Town located boarding house in traditional brewing style . The company was founded in 1871 by Theodor Töller (* July 9, 1854 in Cologne , † October 23, 1926 in Cologne) as the " Töller Brewery " in a building that has been occupied since the 14th century. After the brewery closed in 1881, the house was run exclusively as a bar and inn. The Töller house largely retained its original condition in terms of furnishings and room layout, whereby the floor plan corresponds to the structure of small Cologne breweries that has been widespread since the 17th century. The inn is one of the last establishments in Cologne to operate a bar in its original function.
history
The "Haus Töller" is located on Weyerstraße, which, following a Roman road in its extension outside the city wall, led to Trier and Luxembourg as Luxemburger Straße . A few meters from the building was the Weyertor, one of the most important and largest gates in Cologne's medieval city wall .
On this important western arterial road, the first hostels, inns and home breweries have settled since the 15th century. In the short course of the road between Rothgerberbach and Weyertor, there were up to nine establishments at the end of the 19th century, each of which also had a bar.
Steynen Huys
The core of the brewery building is one of the oldest preserved buildings in Cologne. The first documented mention and dating of the house differ between 1343 and 1451. The "Steynen Huys", in contrast to the modest half-timbered buildings in the neighborhood, was built directly next to the "Tollhaus" (toll house) of the Weyertor City. It was initially designed as a semi-detached house divided into two “half-sheaths”. These represented separate possessions and were sold and inherited several times over the centuries, giving them numerous noble and wealthy owners, including the Cologne Cathedral Chapter and the Cologne Alexians . From 1772 both halves were combined into one property, which is ascribed to a Lintlau family until 1813.
During the French era , the house was given a house number for the first time in 1797 , 6377. The Prussian government introduced the numbering of houses within the same street, which is still common today, giving the house the address Weyerstraße 90 in 1813 (from 1893 until today: number 96) . Also from 1813, a gastronomic operation serving alcohol under the owner Joseph Geerling is documented for the first time in the "Steynen Huys" .
House Töller
Peter Töller, who ran a distillery in a neighboring house from 1859 , bought the house from the Geerling family in 1864. He had the gable set back in the street alignment at the time and had the house raised and plastered first by one and then later by another floor, so that it got its current appearance.
In 1871 his son Theodor Töller founded a brewery in the building , but it was only in operation for ten years. From then on, Töller, who was also called "Father Töller", "clean Dores" or "Dores met däm naasse Plagge", successfully ran the house as an inn. Theodor ( Kölsch : Dores) Töller got his nickname because he was always equipped with a "plaggen" (wiping cloth) and was considered very orderly and clean. For a long time, he resisted the consumption of the cigarettes, which appeared at the end of the 19th century, in his restaurant, because the ashes fell off more easily than was the case with the cigars that had been widespread up to that point , so that the inn was threatened with contamination. In addition, in his opinion, only very young people or older people with an immoral lifestyle smoked the “Zibibbcher” - he did not want either group in his restaurant. In an almost pedantic way he adjusted the chairs and laid out the newspapers in a fixed system, separated according to political orientation and issue date on different tables. From the bar, he kept an eye on this order and intervened immediately if a guest confused it. It could get really rough when guests knocked on the table to draw attention to an empty glass or even accidentally knocked over a glass. The "clean Dores" withdrew from the business on April 30, 1912. Various anecdotes have come down to us about him, and several poems deal with his embodiment of a strict innkeeper. Today it is considered a Kölsch original .
The name Töller stayed with the inn over the following decades. Likewise the emblem, the three crowns based on the Cologne coat of arms above the letters H and T, which is still attached to the drinks and menus, in the interior and on the brands for billing the beer serving to this day.
The "Era Eater"
On May 1, 1912, the innkeeper Peter Esser took over the house and ran it under the name Schenkwirtschaft und Restauration von Peter Esser. Vorm. Th. Töller continues. In 1915 he had a small hall added to the rear as an extension of the dining room, which today still increases the capacity of the house. His son Willy Esser, also known as "dä akademische Zappjung" as a student, later took over the business and continued it until the 1980s.
After the Second World War , the inn was one of the few almost undamaged buildings in downtown Cologne, which was more than 90% destroyed after the Allied bombings. In 1947 it became the starting point for the re-establishment of the Catholic German Student Union Rappoltstein (Strasbourg) in Cologne .
From the immediate post-war period, Willy Esser is reported to have traveled from the destroyed Cologne to the Carlsberg Brewery in Denmark and imported top-fermented yeast for the first post-war Kölsch , which was urgently needed by several Cologne breweries.
In the 1950s to 1980s, the eatery attracted many celebrities as regulars and occasional visitors. Evidence of this is given in a guest book kept from the 1930s onwards, which includes entries by Heinrich Lübke , Roy Black , Rolf Stommelen , Brigitte Mira , Max Inzinger , Gilbert O'Sullivan , Bill Ramsey , Karl-Heinz Schnellinger , Anton Räderscheidt , Tankred Dorst , Konrad Adenauer , Berti Vogts , James Last , Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Joseph Beuys or Wencke Myhre also collects many newspaper reports about the Töller house. Today it is exhibited behind glass in the dining room.
present
After several tenant changes, the current owner Henning Heuser took over the Töller house in November 2003. In addition, the supplying brewery changed: after 51 years of Sion - and 34 years of Mühlen-Kölsch, the small Päffgen brewery has been supplying the Kölsch for the restaurant since 2007 . Along with the Päffgen parent company, Haus Töller is one of only six restaurants that carry this Kölsch brand.
Establishment and operation
Because only a few changes have been made to Haus Töller since it was founded, the facilities and catering operations of the house largely correspond to a Cologne inn of the 19th century. Most of the furniture has not been replaced since 1871, but only repaired and restored, so that, for example, many tables in the dining room have been treated with scrubbing brushes for decades. The original wooden coffered ceiling of the dining room has also been preserved , the last of its kind in Cologne.
- Interior
Dining room with coffered ceiling
Scrubbed table in the dining room
"Pomade strip" to protect the wall
Lock the toilet door
construction
The floor plan of the inn follows the traditional structure of the Cologne breweries: As with a residential building, the entrance door on the street side first leads to a hallway that leads sideways to the dining room and straight ahead to the former brewery and the cellar. The corridor is not only used as a passage: He is simultaneously taproom (kölsch: et Zappes ) to drawing the beer from a wooden barrel Bank, formerly focal point for retail sale outside the home and glut of residence of such guests, where the entry into a tavern not was allowed. In the times of the imperial city, this included the executioner and his servants, the knackers , the servants of the court of violence and also the city soldiers . After the French had ended this "class society", a different class- specific use of the bar and dining room with chairs remained widespread, which still provided for beer in the hallway for "certain classes".
In "Haus Töller" there is still no dispenser . The Köbesse draw the beer in the taproom directly from wooden beer barrels, which are lifted with a chain hoist through an opening in the floor out of the cold store in the basement and then placed on the inclined tap bench.
From the hallway, a wooden spiral staircase leads to the upper two floors, where there are living rooms. Originally, the house servants lived there next to the host couple : Brauknechte and Köbesse, Kaltmamsell and Koch .
Counter sheep
The taproom and dining room are connected in the "Töller House" by a passage, which is surrounded by a lush carved wooden frame. The carved counter sheep , also known as the “confessional”, is installed between the two rooms . This traditional place of work for the landlord is arched into the taproom. Behind the carved wooden construction with windows there is a double bench and a desk with drawers for cutlery on the restaurant side. The bar table is still used today in its original function: It is regularly manned by the landlord, who can watch the dining room and taproom up to the kitchen behind. The Köbesse give their beer tokens at the "confessional", where they are lined up on a metal bracket attached to the table top. At the angle, which can hold exactly 100 beer brands, the innkeeper reads the number of Kölsch beer that has been poured and can thus see the fill level of the keg that has been struck. The “confessional” is both an office and storage space for tobacco products and sole eggs , which are presented in a large glass bowl. The telephone, in this case an old W 48 desk telephone , is also in the bar.
Some of the tables at the bar counter are marked as regulars ; they are reserved for the regular guests, some of whom have been coming to Töller for decades.
business
The Töller house now has 199 seats with the hall that was added to the rear at the beginning of the 19th century, 87 of them in the original dining room. The service of the guests is carried out by the Köbes in traditional blue work clothes. As in many Rhenish breweries, an empty beer glass is exchanged for a full one, even without an order, until the guest puts a beer mat on the glass.
In addition to the Köbessen, a cook and a cold man in the background take care of the entertaining of the guests.
The Koelsch rustic menu includes typical brewery and mostly homemade dishes such as Halven Hahn , Hämchen , Himmel und Ääd , Rhenish sauerbraten from the horse or, only on Rhenish potato fritters , Rievkooche with black bread, beet cabbage or apple sauce. Features of many modern catering establishments such as music systems, slot machines , cash registers , espresso machines or televisions cannot be found in Haus Töller.
literature
- Heinz Magka: The Töller house - from the history of a Cologne pub. Publishing house Oberberg. Bote, Cologne 1937
- Bernd Imgrund: House Töller - The spirit of the clean village. In: 111 Cologne pubs that you have to know. Emons 2012, ISBN 978-3-89705-838-5 ; Pp. 106-107
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Edmund Renard: Famous Art Places Volume 78: Cologne . Verlag Seemann, Leipzig 1907, p. 180
- ↑ a b Rudolf Spiegel, Franz Mathar: Kölsche beer and breweries . Greven, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7743-0248-0 . P. 105
- ↑ Heinz Magka: The house Töller - from the story of a Kölsch pub, p.5; without further information on the certificate.
- ↑ a b Hermann Keussen : Topography of the City of Cologne in the Middle Ages , in 2 volumes. Cologne 1910. ISBN 978-3-7700-7560-7 and ISBN 978-3-7700-7561-4 , p. 226
- ↑ Magka, p. 6
- ↑ Reinold Louis : Cologne originals. The world of old Cologne originals and street figures 1997, ISBN 377430226-X , pp. 177–184
- ↑ www.rappoltstein.de: Sixty Years of Peace , page 19 (pdf)
- ↑ Little hops and a lot of "rubble malt" , website of the Cologne Brewery Association
- ^ Website Haus Töller, "The Eater Era"
- ^ "Like fountains in the Sahel zone", Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger June 29, 2007
- ↑ Website Haus Töller, "Ambiente"
- ^ Kölsch dictionary
- ↑ Ernst Menden: Cologne on the Rhine a hundred years ago - moral images along with historical allusions and linguistic explanations in the reprint of the book published in 1862 under the title Cologne on the Rhine fifty years ago . Verlag Stauff & Cie., Cologne 1913, p. 109
Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 49.1 ″ N , 6 ° 56 ′ 34.5 ″ E