Germany Guide
Bremen
Böttcherstrasse
Bremen boasted the first coffee shop in Germany (1673) and half the country's beans still enter through its port, Bremerhaven. So it's fitting that a Bremen coffee baron funded the transformation of Böttcherstrasse southwest of the Markt into an eccentric fantasy. Ludwig Roselius, who made his fortune through decaffeinated coffee, Kaffee Hag – the story goes he stumbled upon the secret using beans that had been soused in sea water – commissioned a team of avant-garde artists, notably sculptor Bernhard Hoetger, to jazz up the alley's Gothic houses with cutting-edge Jugendstil, Art Deco and Expressionist styles. Soon after the makeover of his 110m "Kunst Schau" (Art Show) in 1931, the Third Reich condemned it as degenerate. Only Roselius's wily suggestion that it should stand as a warning against further cultural depravity saved it from demolition. Today prime retail estate, Böttcherstrasse still astounds for the invention of its impulsive brick work, the artistry of its sculpture and wrought iron and its weird glob lights – it's especially enigmatic when spotlit at dusk.
Its overture is Hoetger's gilded relief Lichtbringer (Bringer of Light), which bathes the street's entrance in a golden glow. Hoetger lets rip a kaleidoscope of Expressionist brickwork – circles, stripes and impassioned splurges – a bust of Roselius and a fountain which immortalizes Bremen's caterwauling musicians. A courtyard space opposite the casino (Böttcherstr. 3–5; 3pm–3am; €2.50; jackets and ties required for men) fills several times a day for a Meissen china glockenspiel which chimes out ditties (May– Dec hourly noon–6pm; Jan– April, except when frosty, noon, 3pm & 6pm) while panels bearing the images of craggy transatlantic pioneers, from Leif the Viking to Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin via Columbus, revolve in salute to the adventurous zeal of Bremen's Hanseatic merchants. Further down, Atlantis-Haus (now the Hilton hotel) has a spectacular Art Deco staircase that spirals up within blue glass bricks and bubbles in approximation of the lost city; and almost opposite, Robinson-Crusoe-Haus has carvings of the castaway for no other reason than that Defoe mentions in passing that his father is "a foreigner of Bremen".