Description
Schaurté, Louis. Menu from Restaurant Schaurté in the Monopol-Hotel, Berlin for Dinner, June 16, 1900. Printed on mulberry paper, 27.5 cm x 19.7 cm, the multi-colored menu depicts a Japanese scene of three Japanese women in formal traditional Japanese attire and two children similarly attired with a black-and-white cat in the foreground playing with a ball. The branches of a potted blooming tree frame the dinner menu offerings, which are priced at five marks. Across the top of the menu in the branches of the tree are mounted five cancelled nineteenth century Japanese postage stamps.
Known for his “patriotic offerings” Schaurté (1851 – 1934) also ran restaurants in the Reichstag building. The Hotel Monopol was situated at 99-100 Friedrichstraße, at the Friedrichstraße Station. In The Gourmet’s Guide to Europe by Lieut.-Col. Newnham-Davis and Algernon Bastard, London: Grant Richards, 1903, p. 145, Schaurté’s restaurant got a very good endorsement both for quality and price, ranking it at the top of Berlin restaurants. This menu for dinner on June 16, 1900 may have been designed to show solidarity with the Ambassador Baron Nishi, whose chancellor, Sugiyama Akira, was murdered on June 11, by the Boxers in Peking during the infamous uprising. The German Ambassador to China, Baron von Ketteler, was also attacked and killed. (Baron von Ketteler was married to the daughter of H. B. Ledyard, President of the Michigan Central Railroad.) See: The World, June 16, 1900, front page headlines, and The Evening Tmes of Washington, June 16, 1900, front page. Slight creasing on the left side, with a few browning spots, otherwise a very good and rare surviving menu from the best restaurant in Berlin.
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