Brasserie Lipp

Brasserie Lipp began as a defiant act of cultural identity. In eighteen eighty, its founder, Léonard Lipp, arrived in Paris as a refugee after the Franco-Prussian War resulted in his native Alsace-Lorraine being annexed by Germany. He opened his beer hall at this site to serve the hearty, fermented fare of his homeland, essentially planting a flag of Alsatian tradition in the middle of the French capital as a form of personal protest against the Kaiser. The original sign above the door read Brasserie des Bords du Rhin, or Brewery of the Banks of the Rhine, a clear signal of his loyalties that he maintained until rising anti-German sentiment during the First World War forced him to obscure the name.