From historical records concerning Ingolstadt’s oldest inn:
The Goldene Adler through the years
Proprietors: Rosemarie Amann, née Hurler; Peter Hurler
“With sincere gratitude for the warm welcome accorded to me in beautiful Bavaria in the first year following the restoration of the German Empire. Ingolstadt, 25 August 1872 – Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince”
It was at Hotel Adler, where he occupied a bay-windowed room during his visit from 25 to 27 August 1872, that these words were written in the town’s charter book by the man who would later reign so briefly as German Emperor. The charter book is one of Ingolstadt’s most precious artifacts, and contains a portrait of upper parish church provost Georg Schober von Tachenstein, who died in 1547 and whose family is mentioned in documents dating back to 1463. In that year, Andreas Schober is named as the owner of the property at what is now Theresienstraße 22. Six years later, the titleholder is listed as Hans Schober. However, the family is believed to have started keeping an inn there in 1464.
According to records kept by chronicler Dr. Mederer, the Schobers’ business was popular among those of higher status. Guests may well have been partly attracted by the address (Weinstraße, or “wine street”, as Theresienstraße was then called), but this level of patronage is in no small part due to the owners’ constant position among the pillars of Ingolstadt society at the time. Around 1515, for example, a son of the house was a Greek professor at the University of Ingolstadt. He later became a law docent there. His brother served as privy councillor at the imperial court in Vienna, where he died in 1572.
Another family member, Veit Schober von Tachenstein, was a professor and university treasurer in Ingolstadt when he died on 26 June 1620. Dr. Wolfgang Schober was a priest and dean in Schärding in 1605. On 23 January 1591, a banquet was served at the Schobers’ inn to honor Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, who was studying in Ingolstadt, and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. This was attended not only by all the professors from the university, but also the town governor Rudolf von Polweiler, the town steward who was a man from Munich by the name of Fiebeck, and Ingolstadt’s entire inner council with Altkirchen-born magistrate Hans Eberhard Stecher. Even before this, however, historical records document the presence of high-ranking foreign and local guests, including bishops, aristocrats and scholars. There are records of unpleasant incidents, too. In the annals of Dr. Mederer, we find a report on the Friday before Shrove Tuesday, 1544. That evening, at around five o’clock, a Mr Spaur killed his fellow student Cyriakus Preisinger and fled to the Minorite (Franciscan) monastery. The building was kept under constant watch for five weeks – but to no avail. The name Schober von Tachenstein vanishes in the chaos of the Thirty Years’ War, and the inn was either inherited or bought by Professor Christoph Besold, a renowned Ingolstadt legal scholar, in around 1633. However, ownership of the building soon passed to Hohenwart Abbey – as we learn on page 108 of the Neuburger Kollektaneenblatt history journal for 1869. The last decade of the Thirty Years’ War saw a great many noblewomen entering the convent and bequeathing their property to it. In 1648, the final year of the war, they were joined by Besold’s widow, Barbara, and their daughter Dorothea. In the process, Barbara endowed the abbey with two large houses and a valuable library. At that time, the splendid corner building had an old student residence called the Adlerburse or Dingolfingerburse on its western side. A public well (the Walpurgisbrunnen) stood in front of this residence for hundreds of years before being demolished in 1870 when Theresienstraße was redeveloped.
We have no information on who lived in these two houses over the next 68 years. On 20 October 1716, however, they were sold to a syndic by the name of Matthias Ludwig Mayer, and his wife, for 1,760 fl. (guilders). One month later, Mayer sold the house by the well to a brewer named Josef Kügler, who in turn sold it to councilman Georg Anton Wolf on 28 February 1727. From this point, the now separate properties change hands in quick succession.
Wolf’s daughter married a lawyer called Johann Michael Joseph Speckner. The house was next purchased by Johann Alois von Reichl, the town mayor and originally from Knodorf. On 20 December 1786, it was bought by Professor Georg Franz Xaver Semmer for 2,010 fl. (guilders). The corner building, which became no. 279 when street numbering was introduced, was purchased by Professor Paul Sutor, privy councillor – likely from the royal councillor Johann Franz Barthlmä Pamßl. His widow, originally from the von Sartor family, sold it on 15 October 1788 to Friedrich and Margarethe Luft.Thanks to the sale agreement on 24 April 1802 between Josef Merwerth, his wife, the widow of Commander Joseph von Willneuf from Donauwörth, Professor Georg Xaver Semmer from Landshut, and the Lufts, the two parts of the original Schober von Tachenstein property were briefly reunited under the same ownership. Just a few years later, on 30 July 1806, Merwerth sold the Goldene Adler to Johann Haunschild and his bride Viktoria Pirner. During the bitterly cold night of 15 December 1808, the house next to the Walpurgisbrunnen was reduced to ash by a fierce blaze. Although the inhabitants of Kösching, Gaimersheim, Großmehring and Etting had hurried to their aid, it was not until the following day that the townspeople and military were able to make the neighboring houses safe from the fire. On 15 March 1819, the Goldene Adler came into the possession of Xaver Gietl von Reichertshofen. It was then bought by district magistrate Christian Meinberger on 14 October 1820. A year later, the Haunschilds sold Meinberger the neighboring building, complete with courtyard, stables and garden. The son of a Nuremberg merchant, Meinberger built up a worthy reputation for the now consolidated property.
Only the death of his wife and two children induced him to sell the house, which passed on to brewer Anton Obermeier von Abensberg on 23 July 1846.
But he was unable to make it a success – and nor were Alois and Fraziska Kapeller from Passau who bought the property in 1850, or their successors Anton and Walburga Schützinger from Pfaffenhofen who acquired it in December 1857. And so in 1859, the Sparkasse Ingolstadt bank took the whole premises as part of bankruptcy proceedings, selling it on for 20,200 fl. (guilders) on 1 September 1860. The new owners were innkeeper’s son Ferdinand Wellhöfer from Feuchtwangen and his wife Karoline Wilhelmine (née Hettinger), originally from Ansbach. Wellhöfer got rid of the “servitus prospectus horologii” which had existed for around a century and a half. In 1867, he built a second annex on Luftgasse, adding another floor to it four years later. He also removed the large ballroom, creating the space for a series of new rooms and laying the groundwork for the hotel to become what it is today. In 1938, the Goldene Adler was bought by Georg Hurler. His family has been responsible for the fate of this long-standing establishment ever since. And now there are several milestones to celebrate: 60 years of family ownership, more than 150 years as a hotel, and more than 550 as an inn. Generations have come and gone, with many a destiny tied to this building. But history has left one thing behind in these rooms – the patina of the merriment enjoyed by our city’s great forefathers.
