Hotel Traube Tonbach

In 1789 the Finkbeiner family opened a small inn in the Tonbach valley, a side valley above Baiersbronn in the northern Black Forest, serving the woodcutters and raftsmen who worked its forests. The raftsmen bound felled trunks into rafts and floated them down the Murg towards the Rhine, a trade that shaped these valleys for centuries. More than two centuries later the same family runs Hotel Traube Tonbach, a luxury hotel in Baiersbronn whose Schwarzwaldstube ranks among the most celebrated restaurants in Germany.

History

For most of its life the Traube was a modest country inn. Its growth into a large hotel came in the twentieth century, as the Black Forest became a holiday region and successive generations of Finkbeiners added rooms, pools and restaurants on the slope above the stream. Heiner Finkbeiner led the house for decades before handing it to the next generation of the family.

The hotel's culinary reputation rests on the Schwarzwaldstube. Harald Wohlfahrt won a third Michelin star there in 1992 and held it without a break until he left in 2017, one of the longest three-star runs in Germany. A whole generation of the country's leading chefs passed through his kitchen. Torsten Michel, his long-time deputy, succeeded him and kept the three stars.

On 5 January 2020 a fire destroyed the historic main building, which housed the Schwarzwaldstube and the hotel's other restaurants. The hotel wings were spared. The family opened a temporary restaurant pavilion so that the kitchen could keep cooking, and the main building was rebuilt and reopened in 2023.

Architecture and design

The Traube is a group of buildings along the valley slope rather than a single house, with the rebuilt main building at its centre and the hotel wings beside it. The new main building takes up the forms of the Black Forest house, and its restaurants are lined in timber, as the old rooms were.

Dining

The Schwarzwaldstube serves classical French cuisine in a panelled room with views over the valley. The rebuilt main building also houses the 1789, a second fine-dining restaurant named after the year of the founding, and the Köhlerstube, a more relaxed room for regional and international dishes.

Wellness

The hotel has indoor and outdoor pools, saunas and a spa with treatment rooms. Walking trails start at the door and climb into the forest above the valley, and longer routes lead towards the ridges of the Black Forest National Park.

Location

Baiersbronn spreads across several valleys, with Tonbach, Mitteltal and Obertal among its villages. Tonbach is a narrow side valley a few kilometres from the centre, and the hotel's position on the slope gives wide views across the forest. Hotel Bareiss, the other three-star house of the community, lies in neighbouring Mitteltal. Freudenstadt, founded in 1599 by Duke Frederick I of Württemberg around the largest market square in Germany, is a short drive away, the Black Forest National Park borders the Baiersbronn area, and Baden-Baden can be reached in around an hour by car along the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse or through the Murg valley. The Mummelsee, a small mountain lake, and the Hornisgrinde, the highest summit of the northern Black Forest, lie to the north-west along the ridge road. Baiersbronn station has trains to Freudenstadt and down the Murg valley to Rastatt and Karlsruhe. Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden is the nearest airport, with Stuttgart a little further.