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Robert Goodrich
most clubs met at local pubs in their early years. Public meeting halls were
unaffordable on a regular basis. Men refused to gather in the feminine space of
the church, and the clergy wished to avoid the appearance of dictating to the clubs
by meeting in church venues. Private space was also unavailable in the worker’s
home, both to the family head and the ubiquitous lodger. The urge for extrafamilial
sociability, heightened by suffocating housing conditions, could thus only
be expressed in the pub or associational life. Since only a few KAB clubs (Kalk,
Ehrenfeld, Cologne-South) possessed the capital to maintain private clubhouses,
they met instead in the only public space readily available—the pub.
Though the meeting places of many Cologne clubs remain unknown, those
available almost uniformly listed pubs and restaurants as their meeting locales.
Cologne-Bickendorf met in the pub In der Lier. Cologne-Zollstock held its
monthly meetings in the restaurant Ettelt. The rural Cologne-Hohlweide held its
organizing meeting at the pub of Adolf Groß on Schweinheimer Straße. Club
Deutz met for its founding assembly in the pub Schwippert; Cologne-North in the
brewery pub of Herr Vogel on Ursulaplatz; Cologne-South in the brewery pub of
Herr Eschweiler; Cologne-Middle in the pub Zur Krone on Großer Griechenmarkt.
Nippes initially gathered in a brewery bar in Wißdrof on Neußer Straße. Not
surprisingly, pub-drinking rituals, rules of socializing, and patterns of interaction
easily transferred to the clubs. Indeed, in 1887, the middle-class Catholic daily
Kölnische Volkszeitung favorably commented on the joint Founder’s Day celebrations
of Cologne-South and Cologne-North, “The owner of the Victoria Room
. . . kindly accommodated the meeting by allowing as an exception the serving of
beer, the quality of which earned everyone’s recognition.” 21 The clubs, it seems,
demanded beer even from normally alcohol-free establishments, imposing the pub
culture on non-pub venues.
The pub as meeting locale inevitably featured in every activity of club life.
Founding assemblies gathered in pubs – the promise of alcoholic socialization
always succeeded in bringing in men even if the agenda did not. Once established,
clubs found no reason to withdraw their regular business meetings from the
established venue. The festival life of clubs correspondingly centered on the pubmeeting
hall. When the club in Ostheim, a rural annex on the right bank, consecrated
its flag in 1910, the festivities included an early morning joint Holy Communion
followed by breakfast in the pub of Gottfried Schmitz. The members of twentyone
fraternal clubs were greeted “in one of the three local pubs.” A parade through
town once again gathered the attendees at the Schmitz hall where they convened
“until the early morning hours.” For Ostheim, the celebration’s links to the local
pubs were natural. The monthly business meeting convened in one of the pubs,
and annual festivals were held “in the same place at Gottfr. Schmitz.” 22 All of these
Ostheim events were held in drinking establishments, and we can safely assume
that alcohol was consumed since the publicans relied on alcohol sales for profit.
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