Café des Westens
The Café des Westens on No.18/19 Kurfürstendamm Berlin, was an establishment which operated from 1898 to 1915, and became famous as a meeting place for the artists of turn-of-the-century Berlin. It was known colloquially as the Café Größenwahn; the German Größenwahn meaning "delusions of grandeur".
It was the setting for Rupert Brooke's poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester subtitled Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May 1912. "This was the time when the Berlin cafés played an important part in our lives," Walter Benjamin wrote of 1914, “And let there be no mistaking: the headquarters of Bohemia up into the first years of the War was the old Café des Westens. Our world was a different one from the emancipated crowd that surrounded us there...Once, Else Lasker-Schüler drew me over to her table...”[1]
The café lost the patronage of many artists after management changes in 1912 and closed in 1915. The building reopened as the Rosa Valetti's Kabarett Größenwahn from 1920 to 1922.[2] In 1932 the rooms were reopened as a branch of the Café Kranzler but the building was destroyed in bombing in April 1945.
References
- ↑ Betty Falkenberg, "Else Lasker-Schüler: A Life"
- ↑ Stephanie Singh Berlin 2007– Page 42 "Weitere bedeutende Kleinkunstbühnen waren das Kabarett Größenwahn von Rosa Valetti, die Wilde Bühne, auf der der noch unbekannte Bertolt Brecht auftrat, und das Nelson-Theater am Kurfürstendamm, wo Marlene Dietrich und Hans ...
Coordinates: 52°30′14″N 13°19′52″E / 52.50389°N 13.33111°E