Lutter & Wegner
| Lutter & Wegner
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|---|---|
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| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 1811 |
| Seat | Berlin , Germany |
Lutter & Wegner is a restaurant business and a sparkling wine producer in the Berlin district of Mitte . The furnishings date from the beginning of the 19th century. After an interruption of business activities of around 50 years, the company resides again on Gendarmenmarkt .
history
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The town house at Charlottenstrasse 49 was probably built around 1780 by the architect Carl von Gontard . In 1806/1807 the wine merchant Christian Sigismund Trenck moved in and opened a wine shop. The merchants Johann Christoph Lutter and August Friedrich Wegner leased the restaurant on the ground floor and opened it on August 15, 1811, which quickly became successful. In 1818 Lutter and Wegner were able to buy the restaurant and run it under their common name. Christoph Lutter became the sole owner from 1827. The restaurant had an inviting portal decorated with columns. The wine cellar, which was established in 1835 and enjoyed a good reputation, was located in the basement . Sparkling wines and precious red and white wines from well-known growing areas were stored in this cellar . The restaurant was also the regular pub of E. T. A. Hoffmann and his Serapion brothers , which in turn became the setting for the opera Hoffmanns Tales by Jacques Offenbach .
Another regular guest was the court actor Ludwig Devrient . According to the story, he and his entourage came to the wine bar one evening after the performance of Henry IV in the neighboring Royal Theater in 1825 . He is said to have called to the waiter: "Bring me sack, scoundrel!" However, the waiter was not quite clear what he meant by that, Devrient was probably referring to the Shakespearean term for sherry , sack (sæk). As a precaution, he brought him sparkling wine, which Devrient always liked to drink there. The regular guests then adopted the term Sect .
In the course of time, more guests kept coming. Otto von Bismarck frequented the Lutter & Wegner , as did Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia . Due to the high quality of the products and the merits, Kaiser Wilhelm I appointed Lutter & Wegner purveyors to the court for the Prussian nobility in 1851 . In addition to actors and politicians, other personalities such as Heinrich Heine , Christian Dietrich Grabbe , Adelbert von Chamisso , Carl Maria von Weber , Friedrich Feuerbach , Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué , Willibald Alexis and many others were among the visitors to the wine cellar. The restaurant became an important meeting place similar to the literary salons . In a document from 1837 even the term "Lutter and Wegner Age" appeared.
The First World War and the subsequent post-war period did not result in any major business losses. In the " Golden Twenties " the restaurant was a real meeting place for poets and artists. After the premieres, the directors and actors came or the stars from the theaters and cabarets . The guest book recorded Josephine Baker , Marlene Dietrich , the Tiller Girls , Claire Waldoff and Friedrich Hollaender , among others .
However, the company could not survive the Second World War and the bombing of Berlin. The house suffered direct hits in 1944 and was completely destroyed. The wine tavern in the cellar was still in use after 1945, but soon had to stop serving. The Berliners now had little money or time to go to restaurants. A planned reconstruction of the destroyed house did not take place, so that the name Lutter & Wegner was soon forgotten. The ruins of the house, including the historic cellar, were completely torn down when the former Gendarmenmarkt was rebuilt in 1975 and was now called Platz der Akademie .
After the political change in the early 1990s, the area of the house at Charlottenstrasse 49 was acquired by a private investor who had a five-star hotel built here. While preparing the foundation in 1993, archaeologists came across an overturned shelf in the basement of the house. Silver tableware, glasses and cutlery damaged by the fire could be recovered. Parts of it are exhibited in the Neues Museum .
After 1995, a local under the traditional name in Charlottenburg of bankruptcy was threatened, the restaurateur took Josef Laggner with a partner, the West Berlin Lutter & Wegner . In 1997, they relocated to the location at Charlottenstrasse 56 on the corner of Taubenstrasse - near the historic restaurant. The building was the seat of the former Friedrichstadt trading center from 1906. E. T. A. Hoffmann lived in a previous building from 1815 until his death in 1822. A memorial plaque with the following inscription was still located here in the 1970s:
"The writer Chamber Court Councilor Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann lived there himself from July 1815 until his death on June 25, 1822."
There was a portrait of Hoffmann on the bronze plaque . The traditional restaurant opened in 1997 at the new location offers space for 80 people and has a green inner courtyard with a terrace. The interior was designed by the architect Hans Kollhoff . Guests are offered a selection of more than 700 - mostly high-quality - wines from fine dining .
Other Lutter & Wegner restaurants in Berlin are in Charlottenburg and on Potsdamer Platz near the Sony Center . Lutter & Wegner was also opened in Mannheim , Munich , Hamburg , the Baltic Sea resort of Heringsdorf , Bad Gastein as well as in Remagen im Rolandsbogen and Osnabrück .
Sektkellerei Lutter & Wegner Sektkellerei GmbH was taken over in 1960 by Söhnlein Rheingold Sektkellerei , which in turn merged with Henkell & Co. in 1987 ; Lutter & Wegner will continue to operate as a brand.
literature
- Gerhard Hoffmann (ed.): Lutter & Wegner on the Gendarmenmarkt: with recipes from chef Mario Mauthner. Laggner, Berlin 2002.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Lutter & Wegner. Edition Luisenstadt, 2002, October 7, 2009, accessed on November 29, 2009 .
- ↑ An old pub. In: Die Zeit , January 15, 1965
- ^ A b Winfried Löschburg: The Lutter and Wegener wine tavern. In the footsteps of the writer E. T. A. Hoffmann in Charlottenstrasse. From the series Walks through Berlin History in the Berliner Zeitung of March 27, 1979, p. 4
- ↑ New director at Rolandsbogen . In: General-Anzeiger , October 2, 2012
- ↑ Lutter & Wegner Osnabrück website
- ↑ Chronicle of Henkell & Co.
- ^ Lutter & Wegner Gendarmenmarkt
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 47.8 " N , 13 ° 23 ′ 28.2" E