Eduard von Grützner, Painter of Beer-Quaffing Monks

At the Wirtshaus

It’s early evening and you’ve just hiked over the hill from the next town. An elaborate wrought-iron sign marks the spot, an old wizened door beckons. Inside, the Wirtshaus echoes with the sounds of merriment and the clinking of glasses.

After a few beers you realize you’re surrounded not only by a full house of folks engaged in the same imbibing pursuits as you, but also by paintings of beer-drinking revelers, a kind of mirror image. In the corner, a statue of Gambrinus raises his mug, exhorting you to drink another, which you invariably do.

These paintings, statues, and likenesses are common Wirtshaus motifs, as are hop garlands and harvest scenes. Depending on the region, you’ll find trophies of the hunt, cow bells, pitchforks, and ploughs, or depictions of people in traditional attire.

Grützner’s Merry Monks

Chances are you’ll also come across reproductions of paintings by Eduard von Grützner, whose iconic renderings of beer-quaffing monks have shaped our views and stereotypes of monastic life.

Grützner (1846­–1925) was a German painter and professor of art. He became known for his genre paintings of literary figures (like Falstaff and Don Quixote), and, of course, for his prodigious body of work depicting merry monks.

In Bruder Braumeister im Bierkeller (Brother Brewmaster in the Beer Cellar, 1902), a contented monk leans back against a wooden mash tun, relaxing with a glass tankard of beer after a hard day of brewing. Other paintings like Drei Mönche bei der Brotzeit (Three Monks Enjoying a Snack, 1895) depict beer as one of the main sources of nourishment in the monastery. In Braumeister bei der Brotzeit im Klosterkeller (Brewmaster Taking a Snack Break in the Monastery Cellar, 1892), the aproned monk has just set his bread and radish atop a small cask as he ponders his beer poured from a large earthenware jug.

Bierprobe (Beer Taste Test, 1881) portrays a monk in a patched apron holding a lidded copper pitcher in one hand, perhaps filled with beer drawn straight from a lagering cask in the monastery cellar. In his other hand, he holds up an amber-red beer to the light, inspecting it for clarity before tasting it. His eyes glint with anticipation. Another painting of the same name (1905) captures the monk’s sense of satisfaction as he gazes at his tankard of beer after taking that first draught.

The Session: Beer Blogging Friday

Grützner’s paintings seemed an apt contribution to this month’s edition of The Session: Beer Blogging Friday. (Grützner’s birthday was also this past Monday, 26 May, so his paintings were fresh in my mind.) The Session was a mainstay of the beer blogging world in the 2000s and 2010s, gradually tapering off as beer writing shifted to other social media platforms. I’ve contributed to a few sessions in the past, including my first-ever blog post, which was a belated response to a question posed a few months before I launched A Tempest in a Tankard way back in 2013.

The Session was revived in early 2025 by veteran beer writer (and fellow Canadian) Alan McLeod of A Better Beer Blog. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he was one of the founders of The Session along with Jay Brooks?) At any rate, Phil Cook of the Beer Diary came up with the following prompt this month:

I’d like to take us out of the ‘real world’ for a moment to share the beers and pubs in art and fiction that have grabbed our attention, whether they were sublime, surprising, moving, amusing, somehow significant, or symbolic of something. […] Feel free to interpret ‘art’ and ‘fiction as broadly as you like.

My post hews narrowly to the prompt. If you’d like to see how other beer writers approached the brief, the host posts a roundup in the week or so following The Session.

Back to the Wirtshaus

One last word before I go have my lunch of bread, radishes, and Salvator Doppelbock. The above is an excerpt from my book chapter on the Wirtshaus. For those wondering, the book is coming along more slowly than surely, but nicely no less. For those who’ve never heard of a Wirtshaus, it’s an inn. The Wirtshaus is to Bavaria and Austria what the pub is to Britain. And for those who missed it, I posted drafts of the chapter as a three-part series:

The Wirtshaus: Beer, Taverns, and Everyday Life

The Origins of the Contemporary Wirtshaus

At the Pub, German and Austrian Style

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Credits

Drei Mönche bei der Brotzeit: Wiki Commons

Bierprobe: Artvee

*As far as I know, all of the works above are in the public domain.

Bräustüberl, Garmisch-Partenkirchen: Franz D. Hofer

For more merry monks, check out Jay Brooks’ “Beer in Art” series.

© 2025 Franz D. Hofer and A Tempest in a Tankard. All rights reserved.