Post #641515 by bigbrotiki on Sun, Jun 24, 2012 6:41 AM

What would a Don The Beachcomber bar opened by Nazis in 1930s Germany look like? Perhaps a little bit like the Golden Bar at the Haus der Kunst in Munich...

Housed in the "Haus der Kunst", which was supposed to be the new art temple for the type of heroic art deemed proper by the Nazi demagoges...

...while exhibitions about "Degenerate Art" denounced any modernist and abstract creativity. Meanwhile, the Golden Bar's golden murals were supposed to convey the regime's "openess to the world"

For decades after the war, anything associated with Hitler's rule was taboo in Germany, so the murals were hidden behind wood panelling.

Luckily, expert cocktailian Klaus St. Rainer (right) happend to stumble on the room, and resurrected its former state (sans the bad guys):

Now one can enjoy classics like the Ti Punch...

...gaze at the vintage rums on display...

while surrounded by mural maps of the world's liquor making countries

One can even imbibe a "Van Hagen" cocktail created by Jo Hirschfeld (The DVD of Tiki) in a mug designed by Kai Sarnes:

Though not a Tiki Bar per se, the Golden Bar is a significant urban archeological discovery, and among the many craft cocktail offerings in Munich, a place that should not be missed.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2012-06-25 12:00 ]