Leipzig celebrates: Historical coffee house opens new exhibition!

Leipzig celebrates: Historical coffee house opens new exhibition!

Leipzig, Deutschland - Leipzig, the city of coffee house culture, has reason to be happy: after six years of renovation, the museum "Zum Arab Coffee Baum" opened its doors again. A place that not only tells the history of coffee, but also offers a journey through cultural and political dimensions of the popular drink. This coffee house, which has been in operation since 1711, is one of the oldest of its kind in Europe and has received many famous personalities, including Erich Kästner and Bill Clinton. Now the new permanent exhibition invites you to discover the fascination of coffee from different perspectives. This reports Tagesschau .

But what can visitors in the newly designed museum expect? The exhibition not only addresses the coffee house regulations of the 18th century, but also the coffee crisis of the GDR, a time that was characterized by care -related difficulties with the popular drink. In the 1970s there was a dramatic increase in world market prices, which caused significant problems for the GDR. The coffee became in short supply, and the citizens often had to fall back on replacement coffee, which ultimately led to protests. The policy of the GDR reacted with exchange transactions and the support of their own coffee growing projects, such as in Vietnam, which in the 1990s rose to the second largest coffee provider in the world. This turbulent story is impressively illuminated in the museum, as wikipedia describes.

The cultural meaning of the coffee

A special highlight of the exhibition is the space that is dedicated to the famous “coffee maker” by Johann Sebastian Bach. This musical homage to the coffee house is the connection between music and coffee culture. In addition, the collection of precious moccats and historical devices for coffee preparation is a feast for the senses. In the structured exhibition rooms, many myths around the coffee are also tidied up, such as the story of the "Bliemchengaffees", which was often romanticized. This shows how important it is to understand the overall social relationships of coffee cultivation that were often shaped by colonial structures, as the Kaffee Genius

The exhibition attaches great importance to the colonial interdependencies that were accompanied by coffee cultivation. Historically, the coffee trade not only brought economic impulses, but also led to the exploitation of workers in the growing countries. The role of specific European colonial powers and the establishment of large coffee plantations is observed in the exhibition in order to illustrate the complexity in the history of coffee. Topics such as Fairtrade and the challenges of modern coffee trade, such as the effects of climate change on production, are also discussed.

Back to today: The museum not only celebrates the cultural and historical importance of coffee for Leipzig, but also also explains how the coffee trade still influences the global markets. A visit to the new exhibition is not only a journey of discovery for coffee lovers, but also a deep immersion in the history of a drink that has accompanied us over centuries. If you want to learn more about the fascinating story of the coffee, you should definitely visit this coffee culture monument and be kidnapped into the world of hot drink.