In 2004 the Bremer Marketplace was awarded the title “World Cultural Heritage”. Rightly so, I think, as the town hall and the upright Roland bear witness to a free bourgeoisie, which could arise here through the long work of the Hanseatic League.
What is probably far less well known, however, is that Bremen is also the secret coffee capital of Germany.
As early as 1673, the first coffee house opened its doors here, making it the first in the entire German-speaking world. By the way, the Dutchman Jan van Huesden received permission to brew and serve the then little-known “Indian drink”.
Since those days Bremen has developed more and more into a city of coffee. The Hanseatic “Waaren-Agent” J. C. Zimmermann noted as early as 1849: “The coffee has become a need, and one cannot deny it its beneficence”.
Bremen’s transformation from a city of coffee lovers to a city that saw coffee as an economic factor did not begin until the end of the nineteenth century.
During this time, Johann Jacobs founded a coffee treatment company with its own roasting plant, Carl Ronning sold the first packaged coffee and the mail-order company of Elisabeth Schilling shipped coffee beans to the most remote regions of the German Empire.
It was also in Bremen that Ludwig Roselius developed the decaffeination process for his HAG coffee.
Visitors will always find this city worth a visit, with its many cafés, which gather within a few hundred metres of the cathedral and market square.
The most beautiful coffee houses are located behind the magnificent facades of the city centre. Café Stecker, for example, spoils its guests on two floors in a typical Old Bremen house. Café Tölke and Café Haus are also housed in honourable Bremen trading houses and the Raths Café has found its home in one of the oldest buildings on the market square.
Apparently the wives of the thrifty merchants have always paid attention to style and quality in their coffee gossip and have gladly spent a little more money on it. Which is not surprising in a city that at times produced every third cup of coffee drunk in Germany.