From the White Swan to the Golden Eagle.
Our house at Handschuhsheimer Landstraße 96 is one of the old inns of Hendesse, and it carries its history in its name to this day.
Zum Weißen Schwanen: the White Swan
Long before the eagle hung above the door, guests stopped in at „Zum Weißen Schwanen". Then as now, the inn stood on the old country road running north through Handschuhsheim: the place where the village quenched its thirst, and where news travelled faster than the carts outside.
Genuine witnesses of that era survive: the darkened wall paintings in our parlour. They were created in the 1870s, shortly after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. Painters brushed them straight onto the wall, buying food and drink with their art. More than 150 years later, the paintings still watch our guests dine.
1886: the Gilbert family, tavern & brewery
In 1886, Sofie and Peter Gilbert took over the Swan, and not just the tavern, but the brewery that came with it: beer was once brewed in our house. From 1916, their son Albert Gilbert carried on the business. The Gilberts were considered innkeepers „well known and well liked far beyond Handschuhsheim", and for decades they shaped the house with their own brand of hospitality.
Our name remembers this family to this day: Gilbert's.
Clubhouse, bohemians, student haunt
In the very year the Gilberts took over the Swan, the gymnastics club Turnverein 1886 was founded in Handschuhsheim, and the „Golden Eagle", as the house was by then called, became its clubhouse for many years. The Heidelberg address books of the interwar period record it in black and white: this is where the club met, celebrated and held its general assemblies. After Albert Gilbert, Josef Schuhmacher carried on the tavern, and the Eagle remained what it had always been: an inn at the heart of the neighbourhood, and later a favourite haunt of Heidelberg's students.
In the years after the Second World War, Heidelberg's bohème gathered in Handschuhsheim, and their regulars' table stood here: a circle of intellectuals and artists met at Gilbert's so regularly that they named themselves after the house: the „Gilbertisten". The renowned caricaturist Marie Marcks was part of the neighbourhood in those years.
Since 1997: the Löchel family & the Alt Hendesse family
Since 1997 the Löchel family has run the house as „Gilberts Goldener Adler", the second tavern of the family around the wine tavern Alt Hendesse, the parent house at the entrance to the Mühltal valley. On the table: honest, home-style southern German tavern cooking.
And some things haven't changed at all: everything is homemade, the vegetables come from the Lenz nursery in the Hendesse fields, and the meat has always come from the same regional butcher.
Sources: Heidelberg Historical Society, ABC of inns (northern districts); Heidelberg address books of the 1920s/30s; Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, January 2024.