History

Chronicle of the Eden Hotel Wolff

In 1890 the so called “Salzstraße” was renamed to “Arnulfstraße” according to the youngest son of “Prince Regent Luitpold”. The Bavarian Capital Munich was still quiet and sleepy. In this year the business man Carl O. Wolff from Plauen decided to buy the property No.4 in the Arnulfstraße, restored it completely and opened the “Hotel Wolff”. This was well planned, especially as 11 years before the construction of a new train station exactly opposite the hotel had started which should emphasize Munich’s importance as a Royal Residency

In 1919, after World War I, the Munich Stengel family bought the Art Nouveau building and turned the hotel into one of the most popular meeting points of Munich’s society during the 1920’s.

World economic crisis, war and bomb attacks

Successful years supported improvements and upgrades of the hotel, however, there were also years of inflation and the world depression at the end of the 1930’s which had to be survived. During World War II during the years 1944/45 the hotel was severely damaged by air raids and its most beautiful Art Nouveau dining room was completely destroyed. After the war the reconstruction started and the restaurant could be re-opened in 1948. The opening of the hotel followed 1950 – just in time for the passion plays in Oberammergau.

In 1953 the Stengel family purchased the neighbouring property Eden Hotel which was destroyed as well during the war. 1955 a quite impressive new hotel building was completed and combined with the Hotel Wolff, hence the new name “Eden Hotel Wolff”. In this new building the “Europa-Filmtheater”, a cinema for movies in English, was integrated.

In 1987 the rooms of the cinema became part of the hotel again. Due to this it was possible to enlarge the hotel lobby and to extend the offer of conference facilities. The hotel’s largest conference room, the Europa-Saal, was introduced and formally opened at the hotel’s 100th anniversary in 1990. An extensive reorganization of the hotel lobby and the hotel bar, Kaminbar, was finished as well

The Restaurant – popular meeting place for the elegant Munich society

From the very beginning the hotel restaurant was a part of the Eden Hotel Wolff. Its beautiful dining room in Art Nouveau quickly became a popular meeting place for the elegant Munich society. Unfortunately a large part of the hotel building including the restaurant was destroyed in the last months of World War II due to a massive bombing of the station area. In 1948 the restaurant was re-opened.

The restaurant owes its original and long-standing name of “Zirbelstube” to the Swiss pine (“Zirbelholz” in German) that gave the restaurant a very distinctive atmosphere – a mixture of elegance and rustic flair. At the back of the restaurant is the Rembrandt Room, which survived the chaos of the war without damage and is therefore the only room in the hotel that is still in its original condition from when the hotel was founded. To one side of the day-to-day operations of the restaurant and under the gaze of the noblemen painted by Rembrandt, the Rembrandt Room offers an elegant setting for family celebrations and business dinners. The restaurant was renamed Peter & Wolff in 2015 to mark the 125th anniversary of the hotel.

Following extensive conversion work, the newly designed Restaurant Central Café was opened in 2021. The design of the Rembrandt Room, which dates back to the period when the hotel was founded, is now reflected here. After previous incarnations as the Zirbelstube and Peter & Wolff restaurants, this gives the two rooms a visual unity and recalls the architectural elegance of the period in which the hotel was established. The Eden Hotel Wolff and its restaurant remain a popular port of call for anyone looking for a central meeting point in Munich, as its proximity to the main railway station and its connections to all types of public transport and the airport bus make it easy to find, even for those who do not know the city.