Curt Elschner

Curt Elschner (born January 15, 1876 in Willerstedt ; † December 12, 1963 in Erfurt ), Dr. H. c., Privy Councilor of Commerce , was a successful restaurateur and hotelier in the Weimar Republic .

Life

Curt Elschner was born as the youngest of nine children of the master tailor and innkeeper Friedrich Elschner in Willerstedt near Apolda (Thuringia). From 1890 to 1892 he completed an apprenticeship as a waiter in the hotel “Norddeutscher Hof” in Leipzig and then worked in this profession for several years in various cities. On October 1, 1897, he was called up for two years of military service in Infantry Regiment No. 94 (Grand Duke of Saxony) in Weimar . Following this, he again took several positions in the catering and hotel industry in quick succession, including a. in Hamburg , Göttingen , Frankfurt am Main , Düsseldorf and Apolda.

On September 17, 1903, he married Berta Mansfeld in Braunschweig . A little later he appeared in Erfurt as the leaseholder of the “Metropol” hotel and in the following year became the owner of the “Schwarzes Ross” hotel in Freiberg and the “Werthers Garten” inn in Weimar. In 1907 he set up the "Elschner-Passage" restaurant in Erfurt and opened the Rathaus-Café in Hamburg in 1911. Two years later he acquired the “Esplanade” hotel there , which he fundamentally modernized.

After the First World War , he became a business partner of the influential industrialist and member of the Reichstag, Hugo Stinnes (1870–1924). a. the Berlin luxury hotel Esplanade, owned by the so-called Fürstentrust. In the course of these business transactions, he had the opportunity in 1919 to take over the Hotel Excelsior opposite the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, which he expanded into the “largest hotel on the continent” in the following years.

In 1922 Elschner became an honorary citizen of his place of birth Willerstedt. In 1925 he donated a collection of paintings, the Elschner Gallery, to the city of Eisenach , where he was also made an honorary citizen in 1926. In 1929 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Würzburg .

Elschner made himself unpopular in the long run by the fact that he did not want to rent a room in the Hotel "Excelsior" to the NSDAP chairman Adolf Hitler when he visited Berlin in 1928. At the end of the 1930s, this meant that SS members and later even all NSDAP members were forbidden to visit the house. Elschner then made countless unsuccessful attempts to have the house ban lifted, and in this context repeatedly referred to his National Socialist sentiments. Finally he was informed by the Reichsführer SS , Heinrich Himmler , that it was not possible to lift the ban. Thereupon he withdrew from Berlin a short time later under circumstances that were not entirely clear.

Curt Elschner spent his twilight years with his wife in the hotel on the Wartburg in Eisenach, which he had leased since 1923 and which was a branch of the Hotel Excelsior. The hotel on the Wartburg was thus part of the "Excelsior", the largest hotel on the continent at the time. When his wife died in 1960, he moved to the "Kaiserhof". He died on December 12, 1963 in Erfurt.

literature

• Karl-Heinz Arnold: Burned splendor at the Anhalter Bahnhof . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 5, 1999, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 25–31 ( luise-berlin.de ).
• Theodor Michael: Being German and black too: memories of an Afro-German . Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-423-26005-3 . (Chapter "Hotel Excelsior")
• Dieter Schäfer: Friends and supporters of the University of Würzburg. 80 years of the Society for the Advancement of Science at the University of Würzburg . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2001.

Web links

• Website of the Heimatverein Willerstedt e. V.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 1928-1939: No room available for Adolf Hitler. ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.