Sale of a legend: furniture from the Bayerischer Hof in Starnberg is auctioned off

Created: 04/20/2022, 19:00

By: Peter Schiebel

The interior of the König Ludwig junior suite only goes under the hammer as a whole.

However, the portrait of Empress Elisabeth shown by hotelier Nicolas Schrogl is a single article.

© Dagmar Rutt

Entire room furnishings, furniture, paintings, crockery, kitchen appliances: almost all of the furniture in the Bayerischer Hof in Starnberg goes under the hammer.

The auction has already started online and a viewing is scheduled for Saturday April 30th.

Starnberg – The yellow slips of paper with the black numbers are stuck everywhere.

On the bust of King Ludwig as well as on the slightly dusty poster of a steamship trip on Lake Starnberg, on the rows of coffee dishes as well as on every single chandelier.

There are 571 of these numbers - each one stands for an article or a group of articles from the listed Bayerischer Hof in Starnberg.

On December 20, 2020, the hotel was officially closed - danger of collapse.

Less than a year later, an expert report listed so many structural and technical defects that there was even talk of a list of horrors.

Nicolas Schrogl (42), the last hotelier at the Bayerischer Hof, has now cataloged the entire inventory and commissioned the Middle Franconian auction house Rockmann to handle it.

He should have vacated the hotel by mid-March, but the city extended the deadline to May 31 at his request, Schrogl said at the on-site visit with Starnberger Merkur.

“Everything in the house has been photographed and numbered,” he explains.

He had been working on it since December, "I finished last Friday".

It had been clear to him for a year that he would auction the inventory.

And so, for example, the Café Prinzregent looks like a warehouse.

Crockery, vases, glasses, furniture are there where so many Starnbergers and guests, so many clubs and parties, so many groups and individuals have met and felt comfortable for years.

Vases, candlesticks, plates lined up in Café Prinzregent.

© Dagmar Rutt

But all these things are not done yet.

Because the kitchen appliances from Schrogl's property are also for sale, including a dishwasher, a fully automatic coffee machine and an entire refrigerated island.

In addition, there are the 22 fully furnished hotel rooms that Schrogl was recently allowed to rent out.

The hotel itself has 31 rooms, but nine had already been shut down for safety reasons after an initial statics report in 2011.

The rooms, i.e. the furnishings, are only available complete, including a bed, wardrobe, table and curtain rod.

"I find it super sad," says Schrogl about developments in recent years.

After he and his father Henning took over the hotel in 2004, they "brought the business back up," he says.

Black numbers were written, the turnover in the café was tripled.

"In the end, everything went extremely well." In addition, they would have invested well over a million euros in the renovation of the interior, not to mention the personal contribution, such as the renovation of the 176 windows and doors.

Over the years, he has repeatedly tried to talk to the city about future use – without success.

"It's really a shame that the house didn't get more attention from the city," says the 42-year-old.

"I did everything for it."

So now everything comes under the hammer – almost everything.

Some paintings will not be sold at first, including the large picture that shows Prince Regent Luitpold and belongs to the city.

And the 40-centimetre porcelain figure that was always on the cake buffet, Nicolas Schrogl probably wants to keep.

"She was the keeper of the café," he says.

"Had enough problems": Hotelier wants to advise others in the future

Interested parties can already look at the individual lots and place bids on the website rockmann-industrieauktionen.de.

The bids will be awarded on May 5th and 6th.

In between, a viewing appointment is planned on Saturday, April 30, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.

He has permission from the district office to let people into the house in connection with the auction, says Schrogl.

However, there should not be too many at the same time.

So there could be waiting times.

Anyone interested in objects from the Bayerischer Hof can also contact Rockmann: (0 91 41) 8 77 11 46.

And Nicolas Schrogl?

The passionate hotelier is currently training to become an EKS manager and wants to pass on his experience and knowledge as a consultant in the future.

"I've had enough problems here," he says.

"Others don't necessarily have to have this experience." But he doesn't want to do without the time in Bayerischen Hof, even if the time was enormous.

"The contact with the guests was just a lot of fun."

Also read on the topic:

Church square instead of Bayerischer Hof