Café Spörri

"Everything new in the world is a future antique."

Peter Spörri

We often move between worlds: from Paris to Appenzellerland, from the Grand Hotel to the village parlor, in search of protection and progress. Café Spörri effortlessly combined these apparent opposites and brought out the human in us.

For decades, the café was more than just a patisserie; it was the "town café in Appenzellerland". The story began with Jacques Spörri's years of travel during the Belle Époque, which took him from Nice via Paris to Glasgow. The craft he learned there laid the foundations for a dynasty that shaped Teufen. Under Peter and Helen Spörri, the hotel became a "bijou" in the 1960s and 70s, frequented by federal councillors, film stars and the village youth alike.

The exhibition is a contribution to the debate on building culture and the transformation of village life. It encourages people to think about the value of meeting places - places where the world stands still for a moment. But the story also tells of the painful end: the struggle for a new building, the conflict between operational necessity and the protection of the townscape and the loss of a place that creates identity.

The scenography brings the former "Viennese café in the countryside" back to life in fragmented form and allows visitors to experience it through Hans-Peter Spörri's archive. It shows original exhibits, from the recipe cards of the traveling years to relics of the interior. The exhibition not only documents the art of patisserie, but also the social transformation from a basic artisanal service to a sector of experience. It poses the question: how much change can a village center tolerate, and what remains when the meeting place goes, but the house remains standing?

"In the end, at the very end, it's love that counts, only love."

Helen Spörri

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.