1898 – A colorful trade card featuring Mephistopheles advertising a special beer originally brewed by Adolphus Busch specifically for serving in a friend’s restaurant which at the time was the finest in St. Louis

St. Louis. Missouri, 1898. Unbound. Very good. This colorful card measures approximately 3¼” x 5½”. The front features Mephistopheles from Goethe’s classic tale of the Faust legend in a medieval tavern announcing,

“Well say, what your desire to relish I’ll give every man his choice. Very well. If I should choose give me a glass of Tony Faust Beer.”

The reverse features the famous Anheuser-Bush logo and a bird’s eye view of the huge brewery complex in St. Louis. . Anthony Edward Faust, a young German immigrant who worked as a plasterer, was accidentally shot in the leg by a volunteer militia man as he watched a parade in St. Louis (truncated) at the beginning of the Civil War. Unable to continue working in his trade, he opened a small bar and café. A personable man, his small restaurant attracted large crowds, and by 1870 he had relocated to a much location in the city’s theater district, adjacent to the Southern Hotel, one of the city’s finest. He built his business, Tony Faust’s Oyster House and Saloon, around “every variety of oysters, clams and fisH that the East or South can furnish.” The hotel and Tony’s business were badly damaged by fire and rebuilt in 1877, as a new two-story restaurant with a rooftop garden terrace for warm weather dining. It was incredibly opulent with special ladies’ parlors should they wish to dine separate from male customers. Entry was atop an elegant staircase that rose from a ‘piazza’ with parapets, fountains, statues, shrubbery, and colorful globe gas lights. Feeling squeezed for space, Faust built a larger and even more magnificent venue that could seat 1,500 diners at once at the cost of $98,000 (about $3.5 million today). In addition to serving regular patron’s, the restaurant catered to leading businessmen and beer barons with a special “Millionaires Table” where Adolphus Bush lunched daily with Faust. The men became fast friends and later in-laws when their children married. At Tony’s request, Adolphus created a special beer, originally only available at the restaurant, which he christened, Faust. When Anheuser-Busch began to market the beer, the company used Goethe’s classic telling of the Doctor Faustus legend complete with the Devil to whom he sold his soul for its advertising campaign.

(For more information, see “Tony Faust’s” at the Lost Tables website.)

A rather scare bit of pre-prohibition advertising, although examples occasionally appear for sale on and at breweriana websites. . (Inventory #: 010446)