Historical

The building was initially constructed as a three-part residential building at the end of the 19th century by master builder Leonhard Schäfer from Mannheim. The year of construction of the building number 32 is indicated on the front window (on the second floor) “1892”. The architectural style of the listed building is not Art Nouveau, but the contemporary historicism in the stamp of the Neo-Renaissance. The architectural image of the three-part brick building with sandstone structure is embossed in its side buildings (nos. 28, 32) by loggias, bay windows and tail gables.
 
The address book of the city of Heidelberg leads for the year 1895 under this house address (formerly: Leopoldstr. (Annex) 32) as a house owner “L. Harrer” and “Pension Villa Beau Séjour”, as well as the well-known art historian “Prof. Dr. Henry Thode” and Count Joseph of Zakrzewsfi. Later entries, which are to be taken from the digitized address books of the University of Heidelberg, refer to the owner “Frz. Braun, hotel and guest house Harrer”. For the time after 1943, initially no entries can be found, which is certainly due to the war and postwar situation. In 1971, the hotel became the property of the Schultes family, who continue to run the house for the second generation.
 
Much of the information about the history of the hotel comes from the information provided by the Stadtarchiv of the city of Heidelberg, which also keeps contemporary documents such as historical postcards of the “Pension Harrer” in their archives. You can see some digitized versions of these postcards, as well as the originals of the hotel’s 19th-century engineering drawings.