- The Bavarian Sovereign Elect Maximilian I founded Hofbräuhaus Traunstein
The Bavarian duke and later sovereign elect, Maximilian Ist, with his assumed name the ‘Great’, was well aware of his Traunstein subjects’ great thirst for beer and it was there that he set up a ‘Weißes Bräuhaus’, which was completed in 1612 and opened initially with a public bar.
Traunstein Salt Works, which was there at that time, brought about a speedy upsurge in the sovereign brewery, since the people working in the salt works had very dry throats. The “Traunsteiner Hofbräuhaus” was rich in tradition and this lead to it being in the old sovereign elect Bavarian coat of arms. With the lions and white-blue diamonds as the symbol. The foundation charter and the historic literature are stored in the Bavarian main state archives in Munich.
For the Wittelsbach sovereign Maximilian I., who laid claim to the monopoly on wheat beer, the new “Weiße Preyhaus” generated income to balance the budget and repay the burden of debt which he had accrued by way of inheritance from his father.
As a puritanical sovereign, Maximilian enacted, in spite of the financial benefit from the Weißbier edicts, against “opulent guesthouses” in the rural population and against excessive wine and beer consumption.
Maximilian at the time enacted a decree of protection and on account of the impending threat from the Turks, introduced general shooting and target practice. The best marksman received leather trousers as a prize; the council of the town of Traunstein contributed to this “trouser money”.
