Aschinger at the Alexanderplatz

The third season of the Babylon Berlin series is being aired these days in Germany, and it will soon be viewable in the rest of the world. 

As was the case in the previous seasons, café-restaurant Aschinger is a favourite of the young and ambitious  Charlotte Ritter. Not surprising, as it was a cheap and friendly place. In earlier seasons we saw Charlotte there, meeting her friend Greta Overbeck, now in prison. In the beginning of this season we see her sharing a table with Gereon Rath but also with her little sister Toni.

Aschinger's customers were primarily the growing army of urban employees: women and men who worked a lot and had little time and money to eat. Here everyone could eat their fill quickly and inexpensively. Still, the local was nicely decorated, the range of cold dishes was appetizingly set up behind glass showcases and the waiters wore uniforms.

Around 1910, the expanding company owned around 30 beer sources and 12 pastry shops. In the following years, there were also luxury restaurants and hotels. The Aschinger group also maintained food factories on Saarbrücker Straße, where the food and ingredients offered were produced or pre-produced centrally: among other things, a large bakery, sausage factories, an ice cream and a mineral water factory. In 1938, Aschinger took over the competing group Kempinski, whose Jewish owners had to sell under duress, and thus benefited from the policies of the National Socialists.

One of the best-known Aschinger branches was located on Alexanderplatz, initially in the building of the former Königstädtisches Theater, and from 1932 in the newly built Alexanderhaus. If one believes Volker Kutscher, the author of the novels about Gereon Rath, the employees of the police headquarters on Alexanderplatz fed almost exclusively on Aschinger products...

The Aschinger sequences in the series were filmed in the restaurant (Ratskeller) of the Schöneberg town hall. The hall of the former wine cellar fits almost perfectly: it is large, wood-paneled and tastefully decorated.

Alfred Döblin mentions several times Aschinger in his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. As for Erich Kästner, he makes Fabian, the protagonist of one of his novels, stop at Aschinger for a quick cup of coffee. And Gereon Rath, leading character of Volker Kutscher’s novels set in 1930s Berlin, is found several times at the Aschinger on Alexanderplatz. And of course, Babylon Berlin is based on just those novels by Mr Kutscher.

The restaurant in Schöneberg where the Aschinger scenes were shot

An Aschinger restaurant in the 1920s