“High from the snack and sausage con crauti!”, The painter Michael Heininger sings his gospel song in the kitchen of the Rheinpfalz, and he will not be the last to be musical that evening. Because the restaurant has always been home to artists and musicians, draftsmen and authors, cabaret artists and journalists, scientists and students. And all of them thought of something about the Rhine Palatinate.
Heininger quotes funny nonsense poems and tells from his youth. “For us art students there used to be only four bars in Schwabing,” he says in his humorous celebratory speech, “the Hahnhof because bread was free there, the Atzinger because the beer was ten pfennigs cheaper for art students, the winegrower because of him cheap soup and the Rheinpfalz, because we discussed our political actions at the academy there. ” That, he says, has remained that way to this day, the Rheinpfalz is still a place where eating, drinking and chatting is possible “and the crowd does not queue up to be poked”. And an entire pub nods in agreement.
It is an evening on which the guests celebrate their host and their favorite pub and toast to both persistence and perseverance. Everything had looked really, really bad for the legendary artists’ bar. Because the Rheinpfalz in the Kurfürstenstraße was about to end at the end of last year. The Hacker-Pschorr brewery no longer wanted to extend the lease and make the economy more profitable again.
That’s the way it is when only numbers rule. Then you often do not see what is decisive. The Rheinpfalz does not mean that it is an artist and pub biotope, an institution that can hardly be more Swabian (if there is this form of growth). And above all, a long social life that made this institution possible in the first place. Hans Karp, known only as “Hansel” or “Tschowanni” by regular guests, has been the landlord of the Rheinpfalz since September 1, 1971, and it was almost over by the end of April because his contract expired.
On Wednesday evening, however, a small party took place in the Rheinpfalz, with many long-time regulars, famous and less famous, but above all with the 77-year-old “Hansel” or “Tschowanni” at the tap. Because he was able to celebrate his 50th anniversary as an innkeeper. Following a tried and tested model, which Heininger describes as follows: “For 50 years, Hans has greeted, eyed and assessed his guests from his counter throne.” What the landlord dryly said: “That was also necessary!” commented.
Hans Karp (left), just called “Hansel” or “Tschowanni” by regular guests, has been the landlord of the Rheinpfalz since September 1st, 1971. Here he can be seen with the waiter Klaus Höhler.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
He owes it to some of his guests above all, and not least of all, brewery boss Andreas Steinfatt, who is visibly impressed at the party by the close relationship between the regular customers and their pub. He too takes the floor and tells how he was gradually drawn into the story. He received letters from the cabaret artist Ottfried Fischer (“Whoever enters the Rhine Palatinate”), from his colleague Luise Kinseher and from many others. Then he noticed that the Rhine Palatinate seems to be more “than one of a total of 4500 gastronomic objects in our brewery”. So the realization matured: “It is worth fighting.”
Florian Gandlgruber will certainly agree with him. At the turn of the year 2020/21, the architect and musician as well as a regular guest in the Rheinpfalz took the initiative and began to fight. He asked prominent Rheinpfalz guests such as Ottfried Fischer, Luise Kinseher, Former Mayor Christian Ude and Helmut Schleich for support in the form of letters to the brewery, tinkered with friends and acquaintances on an operating concept for the pub and negotiated with the house owner. It was mainly about the landlord’s apartment in which Hans Karp has lived for 50 years and from which he should have moved. Now the house owner, Bayerische Hausbau, which, like Hacker-Pschorr, belongs to the Schörghuber Group, has agreed that Karp can stay there in a kind of contract flat. The lease contract for the Rhine Palatinate was also extended for another three years, after which a young team will be at the starting line to continue the bar in his own interests and in the interests of the guests.
So there are many good reasons to celebrate. That is what the festival community did too, Ottfried Fischer had traveled specially from Passau with his wife Simone and shone as an Elvis double with sunglasses and glued sideburns. Luise Kinseher was there and the blues guitarist Nick Woodland, the pianist Edgar Wilson played traditional jazz and his own compositions on the pub piano. From next Monday on, the Rhine Palatinate will open again as normal. For regular guests and those who want to become one.