Hotel Bellevue (Dresden)
| Bilderberg Bellevue Hotel Dresden
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|---|---|
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| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 1985 |
| Seat | Dresden |
| management | Bilderberg Hotels |
| Number of employees | 130 |
| Branch | Hotel industry |
| Website | [1] |
The Hotel Bellevue ("beautiful view") is a hotel of the Bilderberg Hotels in Dresden . It is located in the Inner Neustadt and has been operating as the Bilderberg Bellevue Hotel Dresden since 2020. Its location on the Neustädter Elbe bank across from Dresden's old town became famous for its Canaletto view . The view, named after the painter Bernardo Bellotto , known as Canaletto, shows the panorama of Dresden with a view of Brühlsche Terrasse , Frauenkirche , the art academy with the Catholic Court Church and the Semperoper . The baroque central building of the hotel was designed by the builders George Bähr and Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann .
Today's hotel takes its traditional name in Dresden from the house of the same name on the opposite bank of the Elbe that ran until it was destroyed in World War II. This Hotel Bellevue , which existed from 1853 to 1945, was located next to the Italian village .
history
The house is the only remaining building complex of the once famous Große Meißner Gasse because of the special splendor of its baroque town houses, with a view of the Elbe and the old town on the garden side . The facade of building no. 15 was built between 1723 and 1727 and is a typical example of the first phase of Dresden baroque architecture .
The part of the building designed in the Baroque style was part of the closed town house development on Große Meißner Straße. George Bähr made the plans. Johann Georg Gebhart was responsible for the front building in 1723/24. The house was used as a living, brewing and malt house until 1733. While the structure of the pilasters is based on the façade order of the aristocratic palaces, the abundance of different ornaments expresses the bourgeois need for decoration.
The Sächsischer Hof then acquired the house with the aim of converting it into a law firm. The drafts for the renovation from 1734 come from Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann , the architect of the Dresden Zwinger . His plans were implemented by Andreas Adam. When it was used as a law firm from 1733, the building had reached its final structural form. From 1736, the baroque building was primarily used as the seat of ministries. This fact earned the house the name “Kollegienhaus” or “The Government”. Contrary to what the rather narrow facade suggests, it is a large double courtyard. Architecturally, it is about the compositional union of originally two separate houses, a bourgeois town and brewery with inner courtyard and the transverse building added by Pöppelmann in 1734 towards the Elbe, which was connected to the old building by a side wing; this gave the house its double courtyard.
August the Strong concentrated on urban development with the contract for the Japanese Palace on the Neustadt side of the Elbe. The upgrading of Dresden Neustadt had the function of forming a counterpoint to Dresden's old town. The choice of No. 15 for the office building was also part of the plan to profile the Neustadt side as the administrative headquarters. Until 1904, No. 15 housed the Ministry of Justice. The state building then served, among other things, as the state government, state directorate, district head office and chamber of accounts.
The destruction of Dresden in World War II by the Anglo-American bombings from 13th to 15th centuries. February 1945, building No. 15 survived unscathed as one of the few in Dresden. The surrounding ruins were subsequently removed. No. 15 was also to be demolished in 1950. Citizens' protests prevented the planned demolition in 1950. After its rescue, the baroque building was used as a stand-alone structure in various functions until the beginning of the 1980s. Among other things, it became the seat of the family company "Heckers Sohn". In addition to the hardware store at headquarters No. 15, the company had other branches in the city. Despite its use, the house was not maintained and fell into disrepair. Therefore, the building was to give way in the early 1980s in favor of a new hotel complex. A citizens' initiative made up of preservationists (headed by Hans Nadler ), architects and angry citizens were able to prevent the demolition literally at the last minute. The decision was made to incorporate the baroque structure as a central building into a newly designed hotel structure.
Interhotel
The Japanese Kajima Corporation (responsible architect: Takeshi Inoue) received the order for a new building without taking the baroque building into account. After the decision to keep the baroque building, which the conservationist Hans Nadler was able to enforce with perseverance, the new building was redesigned and the old building was integrated. The renovation and new construction took place between 1982 and 1985; it was inaugurated at the same time as the Dresden Semperoper reopened on February 13, 1985 and became the first house on the square. The express goal was to meet the international standards of the tourist industry in the GDR as well. Another function was the acquisition of means of payment in freely convertible currencies. The hotel became a " foreign exchange hotel ", in which only western currency had to be used. The construction was also seen as a measure of inner-city revitalization. In terms of urban planning and urban history, this should take into account the upgrading of Dresden Neustadt. In addition to various state-owned building combines and a Swedish construction company, Department N (news), Department 26 (telephone monitoring) and Department VI of the Dresden District Administration of the MfS were involved in the planning and construction .
With the new construction, international hotel standards were achieved with the creation of a wellness and congress area. A garden with contemporary and neo-baroque elements was created on the area surrounding the hotel. This also included cherry trees planted according to Japanese tradition. The composition of the park was made available to the public regardless of the hotel use. It was considered the most successful system in gardening and landscaping in the GDR.
The target group of the Interhotel were mainly guests from western countries. GDR citizens were usually not able to stay overnight; Exceptions existed for representative figures from politics, sport and culture. Since the Interhotels were subordinate to the tourism department of the Ministry for State Security , the requirements of the State Security determined the additional technical equipment of the hotel. There was an Intershop on the ground floor of the hotel .
The employees of Department 26 of the MfS were given a permanent presence in a basement room officially known as the "emergency switching room", to which only they had exclusive access and in which the telephone traffic could be monitored undisturbed. The equipment of this room included u. a. an interception circuit that could identify the connections of the incoming calls, as well as automated tape recorders, by means of which incoming and outgoing calls were recorded in the guest and duty rooms as well as in the intercom of the hotel. A monitor room on the first floor of the hotel officially only served to secure the public areas of the hotel as permitted by law, but was regularly used by Department VIII as a basis for operations and to obtain useful information.
Furthermore, there were often requests within the MfS for a designation disguised as "Measure B" for the monitoring of people in their hotel rooms using hidden microphones. "Measure D", on the other hand, referred to the possibility of spying on private and intimate areas in some hotel rooms using hidden cameras.
From 1992 the only Dresden casino was located in the hotel. The Jupiter Bar was the hotel's attraction until it opened; it was closed when the casino opened.
The hotel's 46-seat Buri-Buri restaurant was also not open to the public . As the only restaurant with Polynesian cuisine in Dresden, it enjoyed great popularity among hotel guests. In the last few years of the GDR it was also open to the public, but a six-month waiting period for table reservations was to be expected. In April 1997, the Buri-Buri took its last reservation.
Use after the political change
After the political change in 1989 , the Hotel Bellevue initially remained part of the Interhotel chain. At the end of 1989, the Hotel Bellevue was a place for political meetings on several occasions. Mention should be made of the meeting between the Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl , accompanied by his Chancellery Minister Rudolf Seiters, and the Prime Minister of the GDR, Hans Modrow . In 1989, as part of the negotiations for reunification, further meetings between Helmut Kohl and Hans Modrow took place in the hotel.
Between 1992 and 1996 it belonged to the Maritim Hotelgesellschaft . From 1996 the Interhotel chain took over the hotel management again. From 2000 to 2006 Interhotel was a franchisee at “ Starwood Hotels & Resorts ”. The Hotel Bellevue was a Westin hotel under the name The Westin Bellevue Dresden between 2000 and 2019 . The Blackstone Group took over the Interhotel chain as an investor in 2006.
After the 1990s, major political events continued to take place in Bellevue. From May 6th to 8th, 2007, the labor ministers of the G8 countries met in the large conference room , chaired by Franz Müntefering, Minister of Labor .
When the Elbe floods in August 2002 , the hotel was badly affected because of its close proximity to the river bank. The water level rose to 9.42 m. The conference rooms facing the garden, the terraces and the Canaletto gourmet restaurant were particularly hard hit. The hotel remained closed during the six-month renovation. In the spring of 2003, operations were resumed despite the renovation and redesign work that had been going on until the end of 2004. In the business area, a daylight-open conference area with 22 conference rooms was created. The 340-room hotel now comprises 14 suites, seven junior suites, six deluxe suites and one presidential suite . The hotel architect Tassilo Bost designed the deluxe suites. The Berlin architect received the “Best Guestroom Design Award” for his work on the interior design in 2004. In 2006, Robbie Williams chose the hotel's presidential suite for four nights during his stay in Dresden.
The terrace of the “Canaletto” restaurant offers a view of the same name over the Elbe.
The kitchen of the "Canaletto" restaurant is located in the atrium of the baroque wing. The hotel also has the “Vinothek” wine cellar and the “Elbsegler” beer garden on the banks of the Elbe. In order to prevent future flood damage, a flood protection wall was built, which protects against flooding up to a height of 9.70 m and can be erected within 24 hours.
In November 2019 it was announced that the Dutch Bilderberg Group will take over the hotel on January 1st, 2020 and that the hotel will operate as the Bilderberg Bellevue Hotel Dresden from January 1st, 2020. It is the group's first hotel in Germany. A room renovation will be implemented by mid-2020. The total investment is 10 million euros.
Guests
Helmut Kohl was a guest at the “Bellevue” several times during the GDR era. Contemporary witnesses report that he always ordered jacket potatoes , which the cooks first had to buy, as there were only peeled potatoes.
Web links
- Building history
- Hotel website
- BStU , topic: MfS surveillance measures in the Hotel "Bellevue" in Dresden
Footnotes
- ^ A b c Nora Domschke: Why Hotel Bellevue will soon be called differently . In: Saxon newspaper . November 27, 2019 ( paid online [accessed November 28, 2019]).
- ^ Hagen Bächler and Monika Schlechte: Guide to the Baroque in Dresden , Dortmund 1991, p. 106
- ^ Georg Dehio : Handbook of German Art Monuments . Dresden arr. v. Friedrich Kobler, Heinrich Magirius , Mathis Nitzsche and Hartmut Ritschel. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-422-03110-3 , p. 123.
- ^ History of the historic Bellevue Hotel Dresden - Bilderberg Dresden. January 10, 2020, accessed on April 23, 2020 (German).
- ↑ http://www.das-neue-dresden.de/hotel-bellevue-1985.html
Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 29.6 ″ N , 13 ° 44 ′ 21.6 ″ E