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Papa Danziger and the Man who saved the Rathskeller
by Dan "Arthur" Gifford
Long before snicklefritz came to mean a batch of bad marijuana or the name of a cartoon cat in modern American popular culture, it was for centuries a German term of endearment for a small boy. And it was with that word and a pinch on the cheek that "Papa" Gustav Danziger used to greet me when I would visit his Viennese Candy Kitchen and Old World Restaurant -- simply called "Danziger's" -- or the Rathskeller below it with my father.
Edward "Papa" Danziger at Danziger's Old World Restaurant and Candy Store Chapel Hill
The greeting was quickly followed by a slice of peanut cake or Vienna Kranz or some other central European goodie to keep me occupied while Papa, sometimes joined by his son Ted, and my father would sip coffee and converse in German. For hours it seemed they would sip coffee and speak in German, and if they happened to be joined by Werner Friedrich (always "Doctor Friedrich" to me then), my father's Swiss born comparative literature professor, it could actually be hours.
"Papa" Danziger caricature logo showing him reading Goethe's Faust
By then I was wandering around the store and into the kitchen where I would learn special secrets about the candy that filled Danziger's Franklin Street display window. So when my elementary pals pressed their faces on that glass after school and salivated about the mystery of white chocolate (an object of fascination then), I could tell them with authority that it wasn't really chocolate. That would take us inside for a Papa D explanation, in English, about the difference between cacao and cacao butter und a schnitzel of each. Now, Freidrich at least noticed when my antsiness was nearing critical mass and would begin quizzing me on the German pronouns, or the names of states or countries outlined on cards he always seemed to have with him or the meaning of the "Famous Quotes" painted on Danziger's wall or he'd offer a synopsis of what was being discussed even if I didn't really understood what he was talking about. Tried explaining Hegel, Kant or Goethe to a five or six year old? Freidrich gave it a good shot, though. "Vhat can you zink ov zat you vant zo badly zat you vould zell your zoul to ze devil to have it as Faust did, Arthur?" ... "Uh, Black Forest Cake?"
Inside Danziger's Old World Restaurant and Candy store Franklin Street Chapel Hill. For the last 35 years this has been the located of the Shrunken Head.
Yes, there's a reason Papa D's caricature in this Danziger's ad is reading Faust. He had seen poor choices made on a mass scale and was looking for answers. So was my father, and that was their main common ground so far as I can tell.
Papa was Jewish according to the Nazi's definition, saw the handwriting on the wall, and left Austria. In fact, his family had been Lutheran for two generations. He was also a philosophical man with many questions about the roots and appeal of that master race evil that replaced the residual protections of the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern reigns. A mild anti-Semitism may have been part of the natural social order in both countries just as it was all over Europe, but why would millions of people sell their souls to Hitler and go along with an extermination of Jews and others who had been their friends?
This is the Quotation Wall inside Danziger's Old World Restaurant and Candy Store
Unlike the Japanese Imperialists he had fought who were not signatories to the Geneva Conventions and had no cultural concept of either honorable surrender or protection of civilian noncombatants, the German volk had a history of all three yet had trashed the lot of it. Why? My father wrestled with that question and many others about a people with a humanistic history descending into Nazi hell while also struggling against his warrior nature and the civilian he was trying to be.
He was already in the Army when Pearl Harbor was hit and had served in both theaters of W.W.II and then Korea. As a forward artillery observer and scout, he generally snuck around behind enemy lines and either liked it or didn't depending on the time of day and his mood. The "liked it" eventually won and he went back in the Army for for twenty five years of special combat units on the East German border and three tours in Vietnam. He was truly the proverbial man you did not want to meet in a dark alley and I noticed early on those in Chapel Hill, a town filled with war veterans, showed him that deference. But he was a hard man with a sense of honor who was troubled by the soulless Nazis and SS, as opposed to the typical Wehrmacht soldier, he had encountered. He admired the SS martial skill and ferocity, but he was also aware that many of those uniforms were filled with some of the worst degenerates humans had produced and were little better than rabid animals that needed killing for the sake of the sane.
Henry Gifford the man who "saved" the Rathskeller by installing steel beams to keep the ceiling from collapsing
In the meantime, he was attending UNC and doing construction contracting on the side. I used to hear Ted Danziger say that my father was the person who had saved the Rathskeller he had started under the candy shop by installing several steel I beams to keep the sagging ceiling nobody else had noticed from caving in. He also did some shoring of the several side rooms like "The Cave" Ted literally dug out (hauling the dirt away in the trunk of his car) sans building permits to expand the Rathskeller.
Dan "Arthur" Gifford and his father Henry Gifford in 1956 in front of their house at 738 East Franklin Street Chapel Hill
"The Rat" was a place I especially liked visiting with my father because of its high student energy -- drinking lots of beer will do that -- and the fact that everything was said in English. That meant I could take in the "my hard times during the depression were harder than your hard times during the depression" and the "my war experience was more terrifying than your war experience" stories everybody seemed to have. Papa D would occasionally come in and shake hands but "The Rat" didn't really seem to be his scene. It wasn't mine for a few weeks either after my mother asked me what I did with my father that day. My enthusiastic reply: "I watched daddy drink tea outa the bottle at the Rat."
That's when snicklefritz learned not to rat on what he learned at "The Rat."
Inside the newly opened Rathskeller - The Rat - Amber Alley Fanklin Steet Chapel Hill 1949
Comments:
Charly Mann
2:07 PM Mon 10/26/2009
Hey Larry - It was "Papa" Danziger's son, Ted, who started the Rat, then the Ranch House, then the Zoom-Zoom, and finally took over the Villa Temptesta to make it the Villa Teo. He died young, and his widow did a great job maintaining these businesses.
Ledbetter's was the only stationery store for decades in Chapel Hill, and seemed to always keep adding more rows of cards for sale. Mr Ledbetter's mother, by the way, had the last "boarding" house for UNC student through I think the early 60s.
Larry007
12:44 PM Mon 10/26/2009
I may not know my history too well but I thought Mr. Danziger also owned The Zoom Zoom and the Ranch House Steak House. Gosh, these were great places to eat. I also do not know who owned Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery but it was a great gift shop and I loved getting Christmas cards there to send back home.
J Morgan
6:25 PM Sat 10/24/2009
I graduated from UNC in 1953. For my money Danziger's Old World Restaurant was the best place ever to eat at on Franklin Street.
Peggy Holmes
3:47 PM Sat 10/24/2009
I'm a relic who goes back to when Danziger's was the best restaurant on Franklin Street. It was also the top place to get a coffee in the 1940s and 50s. By the 1960s it had evolved into a great gift store featuring crafts and dinnerware from Germany, France, Sweden, Austria, and Holland.
Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
Check out Charly Mann's other website:
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.
Your dad Henry Gifford gave a talk to our cub scout den about the time that picture was taken. The den used to meet in the barn, which is still there, behind 511 E Rosemary. The pack met at the Presbyterian Church, Cubmaster Bill Straughn, whose family lived on the corner of Rosemary and Hillsboro Streets, now a parking lot.
Yes, what great places the Danzigers ran. I beleive that Charles M. Jones was manager for them for many years after he retired from preaching at the Community Church of Chapel Hill. He'd been a cook in the Tex-Mex border before that. I recall taking my girlfriend out to a steak dinner at the Ranch House in 1966. cost: $12.