Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany

Chapter 2: Augsburg’s Tavern Keepers

2 Augsburg’s Tavern Keepers S    of Augsburg’s populace during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were between  and  public taverns. The previous chapter outlined their locations and role in defining and supporting social status. But what exactly was a public tavern? What services did it provide and what drinks did it serve? How did tavern keepers identify themselves with their trade? What status within the community did their position confer on them? An examination of the drink trade in Augsburg offers further support for the thesis that taverns buttressed rather than undermined established norms of status and identity. This point is illustrated first by the gradual rise in the status of wine in relation to beer during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Although both beverages were popular with all of Augsburg’s inhabitants during the early sixteenth century, wine eventually came to be identified with the wealthier classes and beer with more common folk. Just as drinking rooms were segregated according to social status, the dynamics of supply and demand led to a gradual segregation of the drinks themselves. The process was accompanied by a professionalization process in the licensing of wine taverns. Also of significance is the relatively high economic and social status of Augsburg’s tavern keepers in the community. The purveyance of drink reveals itself as an especially stable and lucrative trade even in difficult economic times, and the social status of tavern keepers was boosted by the importance of notions of hospitality to the city’s corporate identity as a merchant city of international reputation. The Drink Trade Public taverns (Offene Wirtshäuser), according to the definition provided by Augsburg’s licensing laws, were institutions licensed for seating customers, serving food and drinks, and putting up overnight guests. They were not the 35 Tlusty FINAL 02 (35-47) 6/6/01 3:44 PM Page 35 only suppliers of drink in the city. In addition to the elite drinking rooms discussed in chapter , virtually any citizen could obtain permission to sell beer or wine on a retail basis for customers to take home. These tap landlords (Zapfenwirte), however, who were not licensed to seat guests at tables or serve food, could not normally earn an independent living through alcohol sales. Rather, tap landlords were practicing craftsmen who bought and resold drinks only as a sideline to supplement their incomes. Although customers occasionally gathered in front of a tap landlord’s shop for a drink or two, these shops did not have the character of a public tavern and will not be considered as such. In addition to wine and beer, Augsburg’s citizens enjoyed mead, brandy, and gin. Mead taverns, however, were few, and by the seventeenth century only one permanent Augsburg mead tavern is identifiable. The sale of brandy and other spirits was illegal in public taverns throughout the sixteenth and most of the seventeenth century. Distilled liquors were available only in apothecaries, grocers’ shops, and directly from brandy sellers, who could legally sell their wares only for taking home or in limited amounts for immediate consumption standing up. Although distilled liquors were popular by the end of the sixteenth century, they did not yet belong to tavern life, and brandy sellers could not in this period be defined as tavern keepers. Early modern people also drank milk, juice (both sweet and fermented), and other beverages at home, but there is no record that they were served in taverns. Tavern visitors never reported asking for milk or juice, nor are such beverages listed in ordinances regulating food service in taverns or in bills for tavern service. In defending their right to keep cows against infringement charges brought up by the butchers, brewers did make the claim in  that they provided an important service in supplying milk for the city’s young children; it is unlikely, however, that this milk was served at tavern tables, where the only drinks appearing in the records are those containing alcohol.1 In order to seat customers at tables, thus allowing social drinking, gambling , food service, and other entertainments, tavern keepers had to offer facilities for overnight guests and the stabling of horses. This rule was enforced only intermittently until , when the council charged the city steward (Stadtvogt) with inspecting all city taverns and closing down those that did not provide at least four beds and stables for eight horses.2 36 The Culture of Drink in the Early Modern German City Tlusty FINAL 02 (35-47...