Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum

Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum
The Arabian Coffee Tree Building in 2015
Interactive map of Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum
General information
Architectural styleRenaissance, Baroque
LocationKleine Fleischergasse 4, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Year builtbefore 1556[1])
Renovated1718/1719[1] in baroque style, 1993-1998,[1] 2020-2025[1]
OwnerCity of Leipzig
Other information
Public transit accessLeipzig Markt station of S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland
Website
https://coffebaum.de/

Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum (in English: Arabian Coffee Tree) is a coffeehouse and museum in Leipzig, Germany. It is a listed building in the German state of Saxony.[2] Coffee has been served here since 1711.[3] This makes it one of Europe's oldest continuously operated coffee taverns, along with Café Procope in Paris. Numerous celebrities visited the restaurant regularly, for example, Robert Schumann (1810–1856) and his Davidsbündler met for the regulars' table in the "Arabian Coffee Tree" from 1833 onwards. Since the end of December 2018, it has been closed for renovation work. In April 2025, it was reopened for guests after renovation work at a cost of 3.8 million euros.[4]

Name

The name "Zum Arabischen Kaffeebaum" appears in the Leipzig address book in 1914.[5] In the description of Leipzig in 1799, written by Friedrich Gottlob Leonhardi, the house is simply called "Kaffeebaum".[6] The name's origin is a scenic sculpture above the portal. It shows somebody looking like an Arab or an historic Ottoman handing a bowl of coffee to a putto. The house sign thus symbolizes the history of coffee as a cultural gift from the Orient to the Occident. A flowering coffee tree bursts the roof on which the name of the café is written. An inscription reads Johan Lehmann | 1719. The sculptor is believed to have been Balthasar Permoser's pupil Johann Benjamin Thomae (1682–1751).[7]

Museum

The museum, as a facility of the Leipzig City History Museum, presents exhibits from 300 years of Saxon history of coffee culture in 16 rooms on the second and third floors, e.g. coffee grinders, Meissen coffee porcelain, coffee cups, coffee roasting equipment and coffee preparation vessels, supplemented by sound and film documents as well as past and present things about coffee as a pleasure and cliché, as a colonial good, as an explosive scarce commodity in communist East Germany and as a global commodity. During the renovation from the end of 2018, the museum was also closed, but on 1 July 2025, it was reopened with a conceptually revised design.[8]

Other prominent guests

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Menting, Annette (2022). Leipzig. Architektur und Kunst (in German). Ditzingen: Reclam. p. 91. ISBN 978-3-15-014310-0.
  2. ^ "Denkmaldokument" [Document in the Saxon Heritage List]. Kulturdenkmale im Freistaat Sachsen (in German). Retrieved 2025-09-20.
  3. ^ a b c d e f "Arabian Coffee Tree Museum". stadtgeschichtliches-museum-leipzig.de. Leipzig City History Museum. Retrieved 2025-09-20.
  4. ^ "To the Arabic Coffee Tree: Germany's oldest coffee house has reopened after several years of renovation". leipzig.travel. 2025-04-30. Retrieved 2025-09-20.
  5. ^ Leipziger Adreß-Buch (in German). Leipzig. 1914. p. 509. Retrieved 2025-09-22.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. ^ Leonhardi, Friedrich Gottlob (2010). Sohl, Klaus (ed.). Leipzig um 1800 [Leipzig around 1800] (in German). Leipzig: Lehmstedt Verlag. p. 27. ISBN 978-3-942473-03-3.
  7. ^ Hocquél, Wolfgang (2023). Architekturführer Leipzig. Von der Romanik bis zur Gegenwart (in German). Leipzig: Passage Verlag. p. 71. ISBN 978-3-95415-128-8.
  8. ^ Dominic Welters: Hommage an die "Gaffeesachsen". Museum im Coffe Baum öffnet ab 1. Juli. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung 131 (2025), Nr. 146 26 June, p. 18 (in German).
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Brekle, Ursula. "Die Legende "Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum"". leipzig-lese.de (in German). Retrieved 2025-09-20.
  10. ^ a b c d "Geschichte - "Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum"". coffebaum.de (in German). Retrieved 2025-09-20.
  11. ^ a b c d "Traditionsreiches Kaffeehaus "Zum Coffe Baum" in Leipzig wieder geöffnet". mdr.de (in German). 2025-04-09. Retrieved 2025-09-20.
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