Hotel Bristol (Berlin)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hotel Bristol on Unter den Linden, Berlin, around 1910
The Hotel Bristol was on Berlin's boulevard Unter den Linden, old No. 5-6. Detail from Sineck's Berlin plan, 1882.

The Hotel Bristol was one of the finest Berlin luxury hotels from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It stood in the southern Dorotheenstadt on the south side of the street Unter den Linden . In 1944 it was completely destroyed in a bombing raid.

history

Share over 1000 marks in the Hotelbetriebs-AG Conrad Uhl's Hotel Bristol-Centralhotel on June 10, 1905

The Hotel Bristol was built in an era of economic boom and steadily increasing travel and business traffic. It was built between 1890 and 1891 according to plans by Gustav Georg Carl Gause for Conrad Uhl , fifteen years after the then leading luxury hotel Kaiserhof (built 1873–1875) and the Central Hotel (built 1880–1881), which rivaled it . For the new building of the Hotel Bristol, two residential buildings had to be demolished, which had been in the possession of the secret Commerzienrath Liebermann. It initially had the address Unter den Linden 5–6; after the numbering of the buildings in this street had been changed in 1936/37, the number 65. The hotel area reached back to Behrenstrasse 67.

In 1904 the Hotelbetriebs-Aktiengesellschaft (today Kempinski AG) acquired the Hotel Bristol (Unter den Linden) . The company paid more than 10 million marks for the property on Unter den Linden, while it took over the property at Behrenstrasse, which had a book value of 1.2 million marks, as part of the liquidation of Conrad Uhl's Hotel Bristol AG.

In 1914, the then police chief Traugott von Jagow demanded that all institutions with English and French names be given German names; this renaming order was followed by some hotels. However, the Hotel Bristol kept its name.

On February 15, 1944, an Allied air raid on Berlin destroyed the Hotel Bristol. After the Second World War , the Soviet Union built its embassy in Berlin on the site of the former hotel .

Standard and services

The Hotel Bristol was considered to be one of the most elegant luxury hotels in the capital of Berlin. In 1904 it had 350 rooms and a garden. In a travel guide published in 1905, a hotel expert described it as “the most international” of the Berlin hotels, as the one with the “strongest social finish” and certified the high-priced hotel as “American-English supremacy”. Later the hotel had 515 salons, living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms. It also had a restaurant and, in the 1930s, the Bristol Bar. It also lent its name to the later opened Bristol confectionery on Kurfürstendamm. Of course, the house also had its own exquisite house band, which played both salon and dance music there and which was led by the famous German violinist and conductor Ilja Livschakoff until 1932.

Known incidents and guests

  • On September 30, 1897, a predecessor to the first International Motor Show took place in the Hotel Bristol. Eight cars were presented at that time.
  • In April 1904 Ferdinand Sauerbruch lived in the "Bristol", which later became his favorite hotel and was one of his regular restaurants in the 1930s when he and Johann von Mikulicz presented the Sauerbruch vacuum chamber at a surgeon congress.
  • From August 1, 1931, during his stay in Berlin, George Bernard Shaw stayed at the Hotel Bristol.
  • On February 27, 1940, the German artist and architect Peter Behrens died of heart failure in the Hotel Bristol.
  • When the Hotel Bristol was destroyed by Allied bombs on February 15, 1944, a. the Dutch National Socialist peasant functionary Jan Barendregt , the Dutch Reichslandbauberater JR Vries and the German area commissioner Lohrmann, head of the "Eastern Works Ukraine", perished.

The Hotel Bristol in Literature

The Hotel Bristol was probably first mentioned in literature in Theodor Fontane's novel Der Stechlin . Old Dubslav von Stechlin is quartered in the Bristol when he is attending the wedding of his son Woldemar with Countess Armgard von Barby in Berlin. Fontane lets old Stechlin judge: “Everything of the first order, no doubt, what's more, the mere name cheers me up, which has now practically excluded any competition [...] as it was then with the jokes, so now with the hotels. They all have to be called 'Bristol'. I keep wondering how Bristol got into this. In the end, Bristol is only a second-rate place, but Hotel Bristol is always great. "

Vicki Baum gained her experience working on the novel People in the Hotel in the 1920s as a maid at the Hotel Bristol.

In his autobiography, the surgeon Sauerbruch mentions a few details about his favorite hotel.

literature

  • Berlin and the Berliners. People, things, customs, hints. J. Bielefeld Publishing House, Karlsruhe 1905.
  • Berlin. Griebens travel guide Volume 25. Small edition. Extract from the 60th edition of the large edition. Albert Goldschmidt Verlag, Berlin 1920/21.
  • Karl Baedeker : Berlin and the surrounding area. Guide for travelers. 13th edition. Verlag Karl Baedeker, Leipzig 1904.
  • Karl Baedeker: Berlin and the surrounding area. Guide for travelers. 18th edition. Verlag Karl Baedeker, Leipzig 1914.
  • Bodo-Michael Baumunk: Grand Hotel. In: The trip to Berlin. Ed. I. A. of the Berlin Senate for the exhibition of the same name, Berlin 1987. P. 192ff.
  • Renate Düttmann: Berlin inns of the 18th and 19th centuries. In: The trip to Berlin. Ed. I. A. of the Berlin Senate for the exhibition of the same name, Berlin 1987. pp. 181–191.
  • Michael Klein: Aschinger Group - Aschinger's Aktien-Gesellschaft, Hotelbetriebs-AG, M. Kempinski & Co. Weinhaus und Handelsgesellschaft mbH. (Introduction, overview and summary). In: Landesarchiv Berlin: Find aids. Bd. 34. Inventory group A Rep. 225. Berlin 34.2005 (PDF; 1.5 MB) extensive lit.
  • Hasso Noorden: German big city hotels. In: Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte, Vol. 24, Issue 1, pp. 42–55.
  • Volker Wagner: The Dorotheenstadt in the 19th century: from the suburban residential area of ​​baroque style to part of the modern Berlin city. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998, ISBN 3-11-015709-8 . Publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin, Vol. 94.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bodo-Michael Baumunk: Grand Hotel. In: The trip to Berlin. Ed. I. A. of the Berlin Senate for the exhibition of the same name, Berlin 1987, p. 192
  2. ^ A b c Michael Klein: Aschinger Group - Aschinger's Aktien-Gesellschaft, Hotelbetriebs-AG, M. Kempinski & Co. Weinhaus und Handelsgesellschaft mbH. (Introduction, overview and summary). In: Landesarchiv Berlin: Find aids. Bd. 34. Inventory group A Rep. 225. Berlin 34.2005 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. (PDF; 1.5 MB), p. XVIII. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.landesarchiv-berlin.de
  3. ↑ Unter den Linden 5, 6 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1885, part 2, p. 237.
  4. ↑ The Splendid Hotel in Dorotheenstrasse was z. B. renamed the castle hotel .
  5. ↑ Berlin and the Berliners. People, things, customs, hints. Verlag J. Bielefeld, Karlsruhe 1905, p. 427.
  6. ↑ Ferdinand Sauerbruch: That was my life. Kindler & Schiermeyer, Bad Wörishofen 1951; Licensed edition for Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1956, pp. 62–69 and 358 f.
  7. ↑ "Rouwplechtigheid te Berlijn", in: De Standaard, March 10, 1944, p.2; http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:011132076:mpeg21:pdf . Sa: "Gevallen in den Vreemde", in: De Courant, March 7, 1944, p. 4, http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:010330788:mpeg21:pdf , "Teraardebestelling J. Barendregt ", In: Haarlemsche Courant, March 13, 1944, p. 2, https://nha.courant.nu/issue/HC/1944-03-13/edition/0/page/2 , Goedehuys," Kameraadschap in Leven en Dood ”, De Waag - Algemeen Nederlandsch Weekblad, The Hague, March 10, 1944, 8th year, No. 10, p. 1 http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:010310975:mpeg21 : pdf
  8. ↑ Theodor Fontane: The Stechlin , 33rd chapter
  9. ↑ Ferdinand Sauerbruch: That was my life. (1951) 1956, pp. 63-69.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '58.1 "  N , 13 ° 23' 0.4"  E