photography taken in 1933

The area where the house is located in the "Walkmuehlstrasse 13" was mentioned in historical recordings of archives of the city of Erfurt already in 1376. Because Dutch and Flemish immigrants strove already at that time to put the swampy area drying.

 

Large floods flushed the place again and again, as also in the year 1890. On 21 May 1891 it meant in the "Erfurt daily news": ?... some places of the swamps around the Stock Exchange (later the Opera House) the heat of the sun had put drying in the last days and caused thus a most interesting phenomenon. The basic mud interspersed with a great deal of rotten material is now covered with a close layer of green slime of sweet water weed, which phosphoresces in warm evenings completely strange, flickers and caused by light winds real will-o´-the-wisps appear.

 

Only the marshes of southern Russia, the homeland of the Cholera offers a similar feature. The German Association for Public Health Care set on the agenda: The glowing Marsh in the roads of Erfurt... The last downpours filled our swamp areas on the dirty triangle at the theatre barn again quite prettily ". Today - more than 120 years later - no more living person can remember that.

	draft from 1888

The property was acquired first 1796 by A.M. Vogel and was cultivated starting from 1824 by George Vogel, his son. For the time being there was a nearby and far well-known entertainment restaurant - "Vogels Garden". 1831 the bartender Christian Werner built exactly here a house with a Pub, which 1858 was sold to the innkeeper Franz Poppe. That one passed it later on to the restaurant operator Johann Gottlieb Otto Helling.

 

Under his influence the building went 1879 into the property of the Concert & Theatre Association and received from urban supply the first drinking water connection. Thus the foundation-stone was laid to convert the house with the theatre restaurant into a "winterproof elegant restaurant" in 1884.

 

By intercession of Privy Councillor Lucius the town council obtained permission for building the new club restaurant four floors high on 24 September 1888 and thus the Concert & Theatre Association could already move into it again with 29 June 1889.

 

Only in the year 1900 the Building Department permitted the lateral extension of a hall "to the elevation of the tourism in this city". Eleven years later the Hotelier Alexander Rohr announced in the local press the acquisition of the house and afterwards let carry out immediately structural corrections to make it "the most modern requirements become fair" by the architect Hermann Peter.

advertisement 1913

The "Hotel Rohr" as a family business was led finally by Mrs. Charlotte Rohr until 1984, when she died.

 

In the meantime the Culture Federation already had established the "Club of Intelligence" in the house and the theatre moved in then with its administration offices at the highest floor. In the ground floor a popular Bar for actors was established. Later the converted restaurant was renamed after the partner city "Lowetsch" and as this it is known by many citizens of Erfurt still today.

 

The tactics of the GDR politics regarding the "away-from-private-property" succeeded and after the death of the owner her children waived on the insolvent inheritance. Because of rent-limit-regulations prevented any economically efficiency of real estates this way the house fell into the hands of the state.

	advertisement 1894

Directly after the Berlin Wall came down the heirs applied an inheriting request for their property they once were forced to give up under economic obligation and it took 14 years full of bureaucracy, until ground and house could be returned.

 

In the meantime in 1997 the restaurant "Kartoffel House" was opened with its home-made Thuringian and International Specialities and receives its guests still today.

 

Finally it came in 2003 to the free sale of the house to the today's owner. Slowly and gradually began approximately at the same time the growing and ripening of the idea to turn the former hotel and listed monument again into a lodge for travellers and visitors. However - real planning and nearly simultaneous conversion of the "OPERA Hostel" just began in January 2006 and our house was to be opened after only five months time by May 2006.

 

In July 2009 on the ground floor a new, outstanding Restaurant - Bar - Lounge opens. The Sol-y-Mar offers relaxation, taste and style - open daily. For our guests it holds besides the breakfast also the opportunity to eat, party or simply to chill in an very special atmosphere...

 

Welcome to our house!