Café Kranzler, from Unter den Linden to the Kurfürstendamm

01The received story

The Kurfürstendamm Kranzler was open for twelve years before the house on Unter den Linden burned

The story usually told is that the bombs sent Kranzler to the Kurfürstendamm. The record says otherwise. In 1932, Restaurant und Konditorei Kranzler opened at Kurfürstendamm 18/19, in the rooms of the former Café des Westens.

The house on Unter den Linden did not close. It traded on until it was destroyed in an Allied air raid on 7 May 1944, and then the firm moved east, not west: a hundred and thirty metres along the boulevard, to the Charlottenstraße corner.

A sector boundary arrived between the two addresses only in 1945: 3.03 km east of the Kurfürstendamm corner, 867 m west of the Linden house.

A black-and-white street photograph from above: pedestrians in coats and hats on a wide pavement, a café terrace with round tables and globe lamps, motor cars at the kerb. — Café Kranzler on the Kurfürstendamm, 24 March 1934: the branch in the old Café des Westens rooms, open while the house on Unter den Linden still traded.Willy Pragher, 1934. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

0years when both addresses traded at once

0years before there was a sector boundary to be west of

0 kmfrom the Kurfürstendamm corner east to the boundary

0 mfrom the boundary east to the Linden house

A black-and-white photograph through large café windows: tables with white cloths, wicker chairs and guests, the street and bare trees beyond. — Inside the glazed front of the Kurfürstendamm terrace, November 1935.Willem van de Poll, 1935. Wikimedia Commons. CC0.

A sepia photograph of a tall corner building with rows of tall windows and a balcony, a horse cab and a lamp post in the street in front. — The Konditorei Kranzler at the corner of Unter den Linden and Friedrichstraße, photographed by Max Missmann in 1901.Max Missmann, 1901. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

02Every address, at its true distance

Both Kranzlers traded for twelve years. The line between them came last

Across: the year. Down: where each address stood, west at the top and east at the bottom, at true distance. The Kurfürstendamm corner and the house on Unter den Linden are about four kilometres apart.

1825–2026every addresswest at the top
east at the bottom

A printed portrait of an elderly man with white hair in a dark coat with decorations. — Chancellor Hardenberg. · Löffler’s Fashionable Eisesser, 1842.Rijksmuseum (after an 1823 print). Via Wikimedia Commons (CC0). · Ludwig Loeffler, 1842. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

A coloured caricature lithograph: a row of young men in top hats and tailcoats lounging at small tables on a raised terrace behind a railing, with tall windows behind. — Chancellor Hardenberg. · Löffler’s Fashionable Eisesser, 1842.Rijksmuseum (after an 1823 print). Via Wikimedia Commons (CC0). · Ludwig Loeffler, 1842. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1816–1834

A chancellor’s cook opens a Konditorei

Johann Georg Kranzler, born at Tautendorf, Lower Austria, came to Berlin in 1816 as personal cook to Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg. He opened his own Konditorei in 1825; in 1833 he put tables out on the pavement, the Rampe, and in 1834 August Stüler raised and rebuilt the house; Café Kranzler took the whole ground and first floors.

Source: de.wikipedia, Johann Georg Kranzler · de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler

A colour-tinted postcard of the crossing with a domed corner building at the left and a tall building at the right, a crowd and carriages below. — Kranzler and Café Bauer, 1911.Unknown author, 1911. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1866–1926

The family lets the house go

Kranzler died on 24 December 1866 and his sons Martin and Alfred carried on. In 1911 the heirs leased the house and the Konditorei to the Berliner Hotelbetriebs-AG, which bought it outright in 1923; in 1926 the brewery group Aschinger took the majority.

Source: de.wikipedia, Johann Georg Kranzler · de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler

1932

A branch opens about four kilometres west

Restaurant und Konditorei Kranzler opened at Kurfürstendamm 18/19, in the rooms of the former Café des Westens. The house on Unter den Linden kept trading. From here on there are two Kranzlers, and both are open.

Source: de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler · de.wikipedia, Café des Westens

A black-and-white photograph of a bombed corner building reduced to rubble, a lamp post and a sign standing in front, people walking past. — The ruin and the sign to the new address, before 9 April 1945.Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J31402 / Unknown / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

7 May 1944

The Linden house burns. The firm moves east

The house Unter den Linden 25 was destroyed in an Allied air raid on 7 May 1944. For twelve years both addresses had traded at once. The firm moved a hundred and thirty metres east to the Charlottenstraße corner, taking the rescued gold mosaic frieze with it, and was trading there before 9 April 1945. How long that last address in Mitte traded is not recorded.

Source: de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler · Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J31402 · Stremlow, 1949

A black-and-white photograph of a bombed church with a broken spire, rubble and a wrecked vehicle in front. — The Gedächtniskirche, July 1945.Hewitt C H (Sergeant), No 5 Army Film Photographic Unit, 1945. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1945

The line arrives, thirteen years after the branch

The Kurfürstendamm building was destroyed in 1945. That year a sector boundary was drawn 3.03 km east of the Kurfürstendamm corner and 867 m west of the Linden house. The branch had already been open for thirteen years before there was a line to be on the west side of.

Source: de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler · © OpenStreetMap contributors

A black-and-white photograph of a busy pavement café under awnings with the word KRANZLER on the building, people strolling, a ruined church spire in the distance. — Schwebes’s flat Kranzler, July 1955.Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F002774-0008 / Brodde / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

1951–1958

Two new buildings on the western corner

Trading resumed in 1951 in a flat building by Paul Schwebes. In 1957–1958 it was pulled down for Hanns Dustmann’s two-storey block with the rotunda on the roof, and Café Kranzler reopened on 17 December 1958.

Source: de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler · Berlinische Monatsschrift 12/1998

A black-and-white photograph of a modern block with large windows behind a raised flower bed and a tree, with the archive’s caption strip along the bottom. — The Lindencorso, 1966.Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-E0505-0001-001 / Hubert Link / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

1961–1989

In the east the crossing got a Lindencorso, and no Kranzler

After the war the crossing lay in the Soviet sector and the surviving business lay in the west. From 1961 to 1989 the boundary was the Wall. On 5 May 1966 the East German state opened the Lindencorso on the Café Bauer corner, opposite where Kranzler stood, with a restaurant, a café, a dance bar and a night bar in it — and no Kranzler.

Source: de.wikipedia, Café Bauer · Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-E0505-0001-001 · © OpenStreetMap contributors

A colour photograph looking up at a tall glass office tower behind a low building with a striped awning and large lettering on its roof. — The Neues Kranzler Eck behind the old block, 2016.Fred Romero from Paris, France, 2016. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

2000–2026

The café closes. The name stays on the roof

The historic café closed in 2000; that December Helmut Jahn's Neues Kranzler Eck opened — café by day, bar by night. Café Kranzler closed again on 31 December 2015. In 2016 the rotunda reopened as a branch of the roastery The Barn. A full remodelling is planned, with interim use as KranzlerX.

Source: de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler · Berliner Morgenpost, 2015 · Tagesspiegel, 2016 · B.Z., 2024

A colour photograph in bright sun of a low building with red-and-white striped awnings and a round rooftop pavilion with KRANZLER on its rim, a glass tower behind. — The corner in March 2025.Wolfgang Dey, 2025. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0.

1825–2026

One house in the east. Three buildings in the west

119 years in one house on Unter den Linden; 94 years and three buildings on the Kurfürstendamm, where a fourth remodelling is announced for 2026 and is not counted.

Source: de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler · Berlin Denkmaldatenbank 09040517 · B.Z., 2024

03The first address

Berlin’s first café terrace survived the building police because the king protected it

A Konditorei is a confectioner's: a shop that makes cakes and ices and sells them to eat where they are made. Johann Georg Kranzler came to Berlin in 1816 as personal cook to Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg and opened his own shop in 1825.

In 1833 he put tables out on the pavement, and opened Berlin's first Raucherzimmer. Berlin had not seen that before: the building police tried to have the terrace removed and failed, because the king protected it. Berliners called it the Rampe, and for the next hundred years it was why people came.

25 April 1794born at Tautendorf, Lower Austria
1816comes to Berlin as personal cook to Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg
1824acquires Berlin citizenship (the article gives both 1824 and 1825)
1825opens his own Konditorei
1842Ludwig Löffler’s lithograph Fashionable Eisesser (“fashionable ice-eaters”)
1852appointed königlich preußischer Hofkonditor, “royal Prussian court confectioner”
24 December 1866dies; buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof II

A colour photograph of two dark gravestones among ivy, one with a bronze portrait relief and the name Alfred Kranzler, a brick wall behind. — The Kranzler graves in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof II, 2016.Z thomas, 2016. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

December 1866: three death dates

A pencil sketch with watercolour of a seated middle-aged man in a dark coat. — August Stüler, drawn by Menzel, 1861.Adolph von Menzel, 1861. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The first address is disputed

Unter den Linden 25: the Café Kranzler entry; Der Tagesspiegel · Friedrichstraße / Behrenstraße: the Kranzler biography. The two corners are about 168 metres apart, mostly a difference in latitude, not longitude — and both sources agree on the year. Map: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.

A charge that was never tried

In 1836 a woman living outside the excise wall was charged with procuring, for having brought Kranzler a number of young women and girls of school age. Two of them said he had forced them. No charge was brought against Kranzler: the girls withdrew their statements, and under §1060 of the Prussian General Law rape was prosecuted only on complaint. He had paid settlements to the families, of markedly different sizes. The police and court files no longer exist; the case is known only from the poor-relief administration's records, reconstructed by Jonas Geist and Klaus Kürvers in 1980.

Source: de.wikipedia, Johann Georg Kranzler · Geist and Kürvers, 1980

04Unter den Linden × Friedrichstraße

For a hundred years the Rampe on this corner was why people came

For the next hundred years it was why people came: Kranzler’s corner of Unter den Linden and Friedrichstraße, opposite the Café Bauer, was a fixed point of the boulevard, and it was photographed, printed and posted again and again.

1890190019101911

A colour-tinted photograph of a busy city crossing with tall ornate buildings on both corners, horse cabs and pedestrians. — Unter den Linden looking east, about 1890. Café Bauer on the left; Kranzler's corner beyond it on the right. The two cafés faced each other across Friedrichstraße.Photochrom Print Collection, 1890. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

A colourful greetings postcard: mounted soldiers in parade dress on the left, a round inset of the two café corners on the right. — A postcard of about 1900. Wilhelm II returning from a parade on the left; the two café corners on the right. Unter den Linden was the route the state used.Unknown author, 1900. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

A coloured postcard of a busy crossing: a domed corner building at the left, a tall block at the right, trams and carriages in the street. — The Kranzler corner itself, about 1910, at street level. The café held the ground and first floors of the house; the pavement tables are the Rampe.Rijksmuseum, 1910. Wikimedia Commons. CC0.

A black-and-white photograph of a heavy-set man in a dark coat speaking into a microphone on a stand, other men in coats and hats behind him. — Alfred Braun, chief announcer of the Funk-Stunde Berlin, at a microphone in November 1928.Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-06801 / Unknown / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

On the balcony

Until 1933, Alfred Braun, chief announcer of the Funk-Stunde Berlin, broadcast the New Year each year from the balcony of the house.

05Four kilometres

The sector boundary fell 3.03 km east of one Kranzler and 867 m west of the other

The boundary that divided the city after the war ran between the two addresses. Kranzler’s Kurfürstendamm corner lay 3.03 km west of it; the house on Unter den Linden had stood 867 m east of it. For twelve years before there was any line at all, both were simply Kranzler.

Distances are measured west to east between the street corners. Map: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.

06The forwarding address

No Kranzler has stood on Unter den Linden since the Charlottenstraße rooms closed

The house on Unter den Linden burned on 7 May 1944, and the firm moved a hundred and thirty metres east, to the Charlottenstraße corner, taking the rescued gold mosaic frieze with it. A sign in the rubble gave the new address; the Bundesarchiv photograph of it was taken before 9 April 1945.

How long that last address in Mitte traded is not recorded, and this story does not guess.

After the war the crossing lay in the Soviet sector and the surviving business lay in the west. In 1966 the East German state rebuilt the crossing as the Lindencorso, with a restaurant, a café, a dance bar and a night bar in it — and no Kranzler. There has not been a Café Kranzler on Unter den Linden since the Charlottenstraße rooms closed.

07What was already there

Kranzler took over a room where the Kurfürstendamm café had been invented, seventeen years after the café there closed

The Kurfürstendamm branch did not start from nothing. It opened in the 1893–95 house by Christoph Osten, façade Max Welsch — the former Café des Westens rooms. The Kleines Café there, from 1893, was the first coffeehouse on the Kurfürstendamm; the Café des Westens, called Café Größenwahn, followed from 1898 to 1915.

Between the café and the Konditorei the rooms were not empty: the Kabarett Größenwahn used them from 1920 to 1922. Kranzler arrived in 1932, seventeen years after the café there closed.

Kurfürstendamm 18/19, 1890–1960

1901the cabaret Überbrettl and Schall und Rauch conceived
1904Ernst Pauly takes the café over and expands it into the first floor
1910Herwarth Walden conceives Der Sturm
1911Franz Pfemfert conceives Die Aktion

A magazine cover with the black title Die Aktion over a line drawing of a bearded man resting his face on his hand. — A cover of Die Aktion, the weekly Franz Pfemfert conceived in the Café des Westens, with a drawing by Egon Schiele, 1914.Egon Schiele, 1914. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

A black-and-white photograph of a corner building on a wide street, with café awnings and lettering on the ground floor and trees along the pavement. — The Café des Westens on the Kurfürstendamm, about 1900: the rooms the Kranzler branch moved into.Unknown author, 1900. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

08Three buildings, one corner

Of Dustmann’s whole block, only the rotunda on the roof is still a café

Paul Schwebes’s flat building of 1951 lasted until 1957. Hanns Dustmann’s two-storey block replaced it, with a round pavilion on the flat roof, and opened on 17 December 1958.

The café closed in 2000, and that December Helmut Jahn's Neues Kranzler Eck opened — café by day, bar by night, in the rotunda alone. The two floors Dustmann designed for the café are offices and shops now. The building is listed, so the outside has barely changed; almost everything behind it has.

The listed building, part by part

1a covered terrace in front of the ground floornot a café today
2the ground floornot a café today
3the upper floor, with a balcony of white-and-gold metal grilles and striped awningsnot a café today
4the flat roofnot a café today
5the circular pavilion on the roof — the rotunda — with its striped awning and the metal band carrying the namecafé today

Source: Berlin Denkmaldatenbank, Gesamtanlage 09040517

A colour photograph of a round rooftop pavilion with a striped awning and the name KRANZLER, on top of a low building at a street corner. — The rotunda Hanns Dustmann set on the flat roof in 1957–58, photographed in 2009. Since 2000 it is the only part of the corner that is still a café.Times, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

A black-and-white photograph across a wide street corner to a low modern building with a round pavilion on its roof and the name KRANZLER in lights. — Dustmann’s Kranzler and its rotunda, 1960.Willy Pragher, 1960. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

A black-and-white photograph of guests at small tables on a covered balcony with hanging lamps, office buildings across the street. — On the terrace, April 1960.Willy Pragher, 1960. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

A colour photograph of a low building with red-and-white striped awnings and a round rooftop pavilion lettered KRANZLER, a lamp post in front. — The Kurfürstendamm corner, 1985.Willy Pragher, 1985. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

In song and on canvas

In 1984 Udo Lindenberg sang it into his song Russen:

„…und wollen im Café Kranzler die Sahnetörtchen sehn“ “…and want to see the cream cakes in the Café Kranzler” — translation by Berlinfographics

In 1987/88 Matthias Koeppel painted the Kranzler-Eck into his triptych Jahrhundertfeiern for Berlin's 750th anniversary.

A colour photograph of a singer in a wide-brimmed hat and a checked jacket singing into a microphone. — Udo Lindenberg, 1987.Michael Lucan, 1987. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0 de.

A colour photograph of an older man in a light shirt standing beside a stone column with a blue banner reading KOEPPEL. — Matthias Koeppel, 2014.Fridolin freudenfett, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

09Who has held the name

The Kranzler family let the business go in 1911. The name has changed hands ever since

Since then the name has belonged to a hotel company, to a brewery group, and after that to whoever held the lease on the corner. The last café to trade under it closed at the end of 2015; a year later the rotunda reopened, run by a Berlin coffee roastery, with the Kranzler name still on the metal band around the roof.

11825–1866Johann Georg Kranzler
21866–1911his sons Martin and Alfred Kranzler
31911–1923leased to the Berliner Hotelbetriebs-AG
41923–1926owned by the Berliner Hotelbetriebs-AG
51926–1945Aschinger holds the majority
61945–2000not established by these sources
72000–2015Neues Kranzler Eck
82016–2026the rotunda run by the roastery The Barn; the name stays because the building is listed

From the 1950s to the late 1980s a Kranzler also traded in Frankfurt am Main, in the Allianz building at the Hauptwache, with the Steigenberger company. The sources differ on the first change of hands: the founder’s article says leased 1911, taken over 1923; the café article says sold 1911; this story follows the more detailed account. Source: de.wikipedia, Café Kranzler

Café Kranzler · 1825–2026

What has survived: not a café, a corner and a word.

Café Kranzler opened in the west in 1932, not in 1945