Tradition since 1785 – 241 years of history
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Current information about restaurant operations
Our restaurant currently has no regular opening hours. Service for overnight guests is also subject to availability and staffing.
External guests may be served occasionally and at irregular times, depending on availability and staffing. The restaurant may therefore open for only a few hours.
Whether food is available in addition to drinks also depends on availability.
Today’s opening status is shown directly below. Further information about restaurant operations is available in our imprint.
Is our restaurant open today?
Our restaurant is closed today.
When the restaurant is open, you can also tell by the clearly visible “Open” sign in the window.
Our hotel is not affected and remains open. Even when we are unable to offer restaurant service at all times, we are pleased to welcome you as a hotel guest.
Parking spaces at the property:
The parking spaces at the property are for hotel use. Regardless of whether the restaurant is open or closed, they are not available as public parking and are needed for our overnight guests.
Important notice: Active butchery operations are currently suspended
The butchery remains registered; it has not been deregistered. For staffing reasons, retail sales, production and slaughtering are suspended until further notice. There are currently no sales, including through the restaurant. There are also no online sales, no party catering or other catering services, and no production.
Current hotel operation: 8 guest rooms
Today, the main focus is our hotel operation with 8 guest rooms. Room enquiries, reservations and arrival arrangements are handled exclusively by telephone and in German. E-mail is intended for general enquiries only. Payment is cash only.
Karl (Carl) Mayer forms part of the documented succession of proprietors and operators of the former “Ochsen” in Hohenstaufen. This house chronicle treats 1907 to 1919 as his documented period.
Other sources and older references give a starting year as early as 1903 or 1906. Such differences are not unusual in historical business chronologies: sources may record a transfer of ownership, day-to-day management, a family transition or a later formal entry at different points in time.
For this page: 1903 and 1906 are retained as differing source information. The main chronology continues to use 1907 as the documented starting point and 1919 as the end of Karl Mayer’s tenure.
In 1919, the family business passed to his son Hermann Mayer I, who then ran the “Ochsen” until 1964.
In a surviving hotel guide, the former “Ochsen” in Hohenstaufen appears with Karl Mayer listed as proprietor. The exact publication year of this guide has not been established with certainty; the guide alone is therefore not used to derive a starting year for his tenure at the “Ochsen”.
A colourised Hohenstaufen postcard carries the wording “Gasthaus z. Ochsen v. Carl Mayer” beside the inset view of the house. This source also directly links Carl/Karl Mayer with the property, but by itself it does not permit a more precise date within the documented period.
The house chronicle gives 1907–1919 as the documented period. Differing references to 1903 and 1906 are recorded separately.
The spellings Karl and Carl are deliberately used side by side on this page because surviving historical documents contain both forms. This is not interpreted as a change of person.
The early Hohenstaufen telephone number 2 is documented for the “Ochsen” from 1894. It must, however, not be used to date the start of Karl Mayer’s tenure.
The number therefore existed before the Karl-Mayer period that this house chronicle securely places from 1907 onward. Historical material from Karl Mayer’s own tenure continues to show the number, but it marks neither the beginning of his tenure nor the year 1907.
This distinction matters to the house history: the evidence for no. 2 from 1894 documents the early telephone accessibility of the “Ochsen”, but it does not establish the exact installation year of the connection. The change of proprietor to Karl Mayer is a separate chronological question.
At the time, the business combined an inn, a butchery and farming. Farming had long formed part of the economic basis of the house; its own land, livestock and a high degree of self-sufficiency were closely connected with the inn and butchery.
Karl Mayer’s tenure therefore belongs to an era in which the “Ochsen” should not be viewed solely as an inn. The house, farming, butchery and supply system formed an interconnected family business. The surviving photographs with an agricultural context fit within this broader historical setting.
The following two photographs are attributed to Karl (Carl) Mayer in the house records. The captions reproduce that archival attribution; the identification is not derived from the visual appearance alone.
The development of the house during the 20th century is placed in a broader context on History from 1900 onward.
The next generation is documented on the page about Hermann Mayer I (1919–1964).
The historic hotel guide listing Karl Mayer as proprietor is documented under Historic Hotel Guide. The postcard bearing the wording “Gasthaus z. Ochsen v. Carl Mayer” appears in the postcard collection.