Schelling-
Salon
A Viennese-style café-restaurant since 1872, four generations of the Mehr family, from 2026 with a new tenant, Klingele. Lenin coordinated the distribution of Iskra here from 1900–1902. Hitler’s early haunt — until unpaid drinking debts got him barred.
The Mehr family — 1872 to 2025
The Schelling-Salon is founded in 1872 by Silvester and Fridoline Mehr — initially bought as “Herrmann’s Salon”, later turned into a bourgeois inn. The present building is erected in 1898 by the Grübel brothers. From 1911 Engelbert Mehr fits out the salon as a Viennese café-restaurant; four generations run it until 2025. Evelin Mehr hands over at the end of 2025.
From 1 January 2026 the trio of Christoph Klingele and his children Anna-Sophia and Leander take over the Schelling-Salon — they already run Café Puck on Türkenstraße. The building remains in the Mehr family. The concept: keep as much of the original Schelling-Salon as possible — only card payment is new.
Regulars — Lenin, Brecht, Rilke, Hitler
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin lived in Munich from 1900–1902 and coordinated the clandestine distribution of the Bolshevik newspaper “Iskra” from the Schelling-Salon. Over the decades it has hosted Rainer Maria Rilke, Bertolt Brecht, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Henrik Ibsen, Ödön von Horváth, Joachim Ringelnatz, Hans Carossa, August Heisenberg, the future federal president Theodor Heuss and Franz Josef Strauß. Munich folk singers and actors were regulars too.
Banned over unpaid bills
In the 1920s, during Hitler’s Munich years after the failed 1923 putsch, the Schelling-Salon is a meeting place for him and his political circle. Several sources — Wikipedia, the Schelling-Salon itself, local guidebooks — agree: Hitler was politely escorted out of the Schelling-Salon over unpaid bills. He then moved to the Osteria Bavaria, a few doors away at Schellingstraße 62, which would become his later regular.
The exact date of the incident is not on record — the anecdote is consistent, the documentary trail thin. The salon has never put up an official panel on the Hitler episode; the story is, however, addressed in the in-house “Schelling-Salon Museum”.
Today — student pub, billiards, Wiener Schnitzel
The Schelling-Salon is one of the liveliest and most unaffected institutions of Maxvorstadt. Wiener Schnitzel as the classic, Bavarian and Viennese cuisine, billiard tables and ping-pong tables downstairs — a tradition kept up for decades. Reviews often come with a historical aftertaste (“Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun’s Old Haunt” — a Tripadvisor headline), but the venue itself remains ostentatiously a Munich tavern.
Words.
“an important meeting place for different social strata, where the world of craftsmen and clerks crossed paths with that of bohemians and failed existences”— Munich guidebook
“Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun’s Old Haunt”— Tripadvisor · review headline
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Königsplatz, Honour Temples, Führerbau, Administrative Building, NS-Doku, Schelling-Salon, Osteria, Prinz-Carl-Palais, Consulate General.