Hotel Britannique (Spa)
The Hotel Britannique was a luxury hotel in the resort town in Spa in Belgium. The building has been used as a boarding school since 1958 .
history
The hotel was first mentioned in 1669 under the name City of Antwerp . At the time of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, a revolutionary tribunal met there. In 1851, the wealthy Polish emigrant Count Valéry Rottermund bought the house and turned it into a luxury hotel. In 1852 he sold it to the hotelier G. Faller, who renamed it Hotel Faller . After being sold to Edward Sury, it was renamed the British Grand Hotel . In 1865 it went to Frédéric Leyh, in whose family ownership the house remained until 1958, and was named Hotel Britannique .
1914-1918
After the German Army occupied Spa on August 4, 1914, the staff of the X Army Corps initially used the hotel as their headquarters . On August 16, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia stayed there. From October 1914, the city became a center of the Imperial Convalescent Home with more than 40 public and private buildings. Convalescent soldiers were billeted everywhere. In Spa, the emperor resided in La Fraineuse , the villa of the Belgian industrialist Peltzer. For the spring offensive of 1918 , the Supreme Army Command (OHL) relocated the main headquarters to Spa in the hotel in February 1918 , where a bunker was set up in the basement. From March 8, 1918, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff used the hotel until the end of the war.
“At the beginning of March, the large headquarters left Kreuznach , where it was stationed for over a year. The new headquarters in Spa had meanwhile been set up. We are very well accommodated there. The business rooms were in the Hotel Britannique, where I was already staying when I marched into Belgium in autumn 1914. Spa was much closer to the front and with Verviers provided space for all parts of the Supreme Army Command. But it was still too far from the front to direct the battle and to carry out operations. I had therefore considered Avesnes as quarters for the reinforced operations department . From here all parts of the front were easily accessible in the motor vehicle. I intended to see a lot myself and to send the gentlemen of my staff to the events in order to also get direct impressions through them. "
From here all strategic and tactical instructions were taken and orders issued. On September 29, 1918 at 10 a.m., the decisive conversation took place there between the State Secretary of the Foreign Office , Foreign Minister Paul von Hintze and the OHL ( Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff ), in which the military leadership admitted the impending defeat. With the November Revolution, the debate arose as to whether the Kaiser should resign or seek the honorable death of a soldier at the front . Your eluded Wilhelm by October 29, 1918 in the protection of the GHQ traveled to Spa and Villa La Fraineuse moved. On November 9, 1918, he let Chancellor Max von Baden know that he would remain King of Prussia but would forego the imperial crown. In the afternoon, too late, the telegram of the abdication of the throne arrived in Berlin. In view of the demonstrators who had penetrated into the government district, Prince Max had arbitrarily announced Wilhelm's waiver of both crowns at lunchtime. It is not clear whether he signed his deed of abdication on November 9, 1918 in the Villa La Fraineuse or in the Hotel Britannique. Wilhelm traveled from Spa on November 10, 1918 to the nearby border of the Netherlands and asked Queen Wilhelmina for asylum . The owner of the hotel, Madame F. Leyh, claimed that the emperor had signed his abdication at the Hotel Britannique. Her son later notarized the process and described it as follows: Wilhelm is said to have appeared there in the early evening hours of November 9, 1918 in military uniform. He was sitting there alone at a large table and officers of higher rank talked him nervously and vehemently. The Emperor reacted briskly and hit the table with his fist until, when there was a great silence, he signed something. The German sources report nothing about it. But neither do they report that the Emperor of La Fraineuse drove straight to the train station. It is also quite possible that he gave Hindenburg sole supreme command there and ordered the return of the army.
1939-1945
During the Second World War the hotel was used as a hospital. On September 10, 1944, troops of the 1st US Army under General Courtney Hicks Hodges occupied the city. Although Hodges did not move into the hotel, but in the Villa Le Bocqueteau, he still housed almost the entire staff in the former rooms of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Overall, the Americans occupied the hotel from September 20, 1944 to August 1945. The large restaurant was also confiscated.
post war period
After 1945 the hotel tried to reconnect with the great, glamorous times, but the emerging mass tourism was looking for other accommodations. In 1958 the Leyh family sold the building to the Belgian state, which has been running a boarding school there ever since.
Individual evidence
- ^ Kurt Otterski: A year and a half in the main headquarters . Corpszeitung der Altmärker-Masuren 64 (1978/79), pp. 1616–1619
- ↑ Erich Ludendorff: My war memories 1914-1918: Berlin 1919, page 477-478.
- ↑ Erich Ludendorff: My war memories 1914-1918: Berlin 1919, page 583
- ^ Biography of Wilhelm II.
- ↑ Irene Strenge: Spa in the First World War (1914-1918): military hospital and large headquarters. German occupation policy in Belgium p. 166
literature
- Irene Strenge: Spa in the First World War (1914–1918): military hospital and large headquarters. German occupation policy in Belgium , Würzburg 2007 ISBN 382603693X
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 29 '26.7 " N , 5 ° 52' 9.7" E