Brauerei Ottakringer

The Ottakringer Brauerei (German pronunciation: [ˈɔtɐˌkʀɪŋɐ]) is the last large brewery remaining in Vienna, Austria and is located in Ottakring, the 16th district of Vienna.

The Ottakringer Brewery was opened in 1837 by the master miller Heinrich Plank under the name of Planksche Brauerei, after the ruling diocese of Klosterneuburg had granted approval for brewing. In 1850, it was taken over and expanded into a large brewery by the cousins, Ignaz and Jakob Kuffner from Lundenburg. Within ten years, the production increased from 18,318 to 64,183 hl. When Kaiser Franz Joseph ordered that the city walls be pulled down and a large number of residential building began to be built, the Ottakringer Brewery grew as well. A new fermentation cellar and a larger warehouse went into operation. Around 1890, the production was already at about 170,000 hl. Moriz von Kuffner, the son of Ignaz von Kuffner, took over the brewery in 1882 and increased the production to over 350,000 hl in the last year before the war, a quantity which was not again reached between the World Wars. In 1905, Kuffner converted the brewery into a joint-stock company.

Even before the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Moriz von Kuffner was forced to sell his business because of his Jewish background. It was sold for a rather low price of 14 million Austrian schillings (about 36 million euros at today's values) to Gustav Harmer, who was also forced out of the business for two years after the war. After the liberation by the Allies, the brewery was temporarily managed by the Russians, before the Harmer family managed to legally prove their purchase and again manufactured 150,000 hl as of 1955. The heirs of Moriz von Kuffner, who had died in Zürich in the meantime, were compensated because of their expulsion and the threats of the Nazi regime, which had led to the sale of the business to the Harmer family.

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