The Room
Eighty square metres, and the door is heavier than it looks.
The Mittelweg has been a street of good addresses for a hundred years. This one has been a barber's for most of them.
The room before us
There has been a barber behind this door since 1928, when the room was fitted out in walnut by a joiner two streets away. The panelling is his. The bevelled mirror is his. The brass coat rail was added in the fifties and has been polished so often that the lacquer has gone from it entirely.
Wilhelm Brandt took the lease in 1974 and changed almost nothing. His granddaughter and her two colleagues work here now, and they have also changed almost nothing — new chairs, better light, a proper coffee machine, and a shelf for the members' razors where the till used to stand.
The light is kept low because it is kinder and because it is what the room was built for. Four lamps, tungsten, no overhead. You will notice it the moment the door shuts behind you.
Look around
Photographs from the room. Select one to see it larger.
The three people in it
Ask for anybody by name when you book; if you have no preference, we give you whoever has the hour.
Matthias Brandt
Master barber, and the one who answers the phone
Trained in Hamburg and Copenhagen, behind this chair since 1998. Cuts thick hair better than anybody in the room and will tell you honestly when a fringe is a mistake.
Signature cut, grey blending
Juliane Voss
Barber, straight-razor specialist
Came from a shave bar in Rotterdam by way of a theatre wig department. Does around forty open-blade shaves a month and strops her own razors every morning before the door opens.
Straight-razor shave, the gentleman's hour
Emre Kaya
Barber, colour and beards
Fifteen years of barbering, seven of them spent on colour. The person to see if the grey has arrived faster than you expected, or if a beard needs shape rather than length.
Grey blending, beard work
Finding us
Getting here
U1 to Hallerstraße, then four minutes on foot up the Mittelweg. Bus 109 stops at Böttgerstraße, thirty seconds away. There is metered parking on the Mittelweg itself and a car park on the Rothenbaumchaussee.
Access
One step of about twelve centimetres at the entrance; we keep a ramp behind the door and will put it out if you tell us when you book. The room itself is level throughout and the chairs are height-adjustable. There is no accessible WC on the premises.
Opening hours
- Monday
- Closed
- Tuesday
- 09:00–19:00
- Wednesday
- 09:00–19:00
- Thursday
- 09:00–19:00members from 19:00
- Friday
- 09:00–19:00
- Saturday
- 09:00–16:00
- Sunday
- Closed
Thursday evenings from 19:00 are kept for members.
Mittelweg 112
20149 Hamburg-Rotherbaum
On the map
Mittelweg 112, 20149 Hamburg
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