Hotel Handelshof
The Hotel Handelshof is a historic hotel in the city center of Essen . The six-story building made of reinforced concrete has been a listed building since 1985 . It is located on Willy-Brandt- Platz across from the main train station , at the beginning of Kettwiger Straße , which is where the pedestrian zone in downtown Essen begins. Since 1950 , the illuminated lettering "Essen - the shopping city", flanked by the modified - but heraldically correct in this form - Essen city coat of arms has been attached to the roof .
history
In the Middle Ages, where Kettwiger Strasse joins Willy-Brandt-Platz, the Kettwiger Tor was located in the Essen city wall that was torn down at the beginning of the 19th century . In 1861 the station of the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn was built here as the forerunner of today's main station. The Handelshof was built in 1911/1912 on the property of the Hotel Zum Adler with the Adlerkeller , which was built in the 19th century, according to a design by the Cologne architects Carl Moritz and Werner Stahl . The Hotel Handelshof was opened in 1913. At that time, the 350 rooms in the building housed the hotel as well as two restaurants, a café, a pastry shop, a cinema, as well as several shops and numerous offices.
The hotel was initially run by the parents of the actor Heinz Rühmann , who was born in Essen in 1902 , Margarethe and Hermann Rühmann. A sign on the facade of the building reminds of this. The sources provide different information about the duration of this line; In any case, it was not financially successful and ended in 1916 at the latest when Rühmann's mother and her children moved to Munich after the separation from her husband and his alleged suicide.
After the Rühmanns, Otto Blau leased the hotel. Under his leadership it became known nationwide. The upscale hotel included a café and restaurant, as well as a beer cellar called Löwenbräu and a wine bar. It had 220 rooms. There were cows that were kept specially for the Handelshof. The “mad reporter”, journalist Egon Erwin Kisch , mentioned in a report he wrote about his visit to Essen in 1920 that the Handelshof was “respectable in size”. In 1929 there was a fire in the hotel.
On the occasion of a visit by the Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini accompanied by Hitler in Essen in 1937, a banner with the inscription “Welcome to the armory of the Reich” was hung up at the Handelshof. The building was badly damaged in the course of the air raids on the Ruhr area during World War II , but was repaired after 1945 without any major changes.
After the Second World War, the reading hall Die Brücke was set up in the Handelshof on July 18, 1947 . On September 8, 1952, the Hotel Handelshof reopened with 360 beds. The hotel was later rebuilt and completely redesigned while retaining the facade. It resumed operations on April 21, 1981. Between February 22, 1983 and December 7, 2015, it belonged to the Swiss Mövenpick Group . The name Handelshof was retained.
On the night of October 29, 1988, the hotel burned due to arson, so that 280 guests had to be evacuated and relocated.
In 2009 the city of Essen sold the hotel to the SFO company as part of the construction of the Essen stadium . This is owned by the family of Sylvia Ströher , heir to the founding family of Wella .
On October 16, 2010, the left city coat of arms (3 × 6 meters in size) with the words "Essen - The Shopping City" fell from the roof, and nobody was harmed.
Around 1915
Around 1929
West wing 2013
Change of ownership in 2015/2016
Until December 2015, the hotel included: Jimmy's cocktail bar with a range of over one hundred types of whiskey, a Mövenpick restaurant that housed the home-style Kiepenkerl restaurant prior to the takeover by Mövenpick , six conference rooms, some of which can be combined, and 198 rooms with upscale, contemporary furnishings including several spacious suites. There are also several retail stores and the tourism headquarters of Essen Marketing GmbH in the building .
On June 10, 2015, it was announced that the Mövenpick Group had given notice to all employees at the end of 2015 and that the hotel was closing. Mövenpick was unable to come to an agreement with the owner company SFO to extend the lease. The Mövenpick Hotel closed on December 7, 2015.
The Hamburg-based Novum Hotel Group took over the Handelshof and initially leased it for 15 years. After renovation, it reopened the hotel in November 2016 and called it Novum Select Hotel Handelshof . This means that the historical name Handelshof is retained in the name.
Web links
- Photo of the 1929 fire
- Hotel Handelshof monument (PDF; 397 kB)
- Website of the Novum Select Hotel Handelshof
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Anja Greulich, Guido Knopp: Heinz Rühmann. In: Guido Knopp (ed.): Hitler's useful idols. 1st edition, C. Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-570-00835-5 , p. 14 ff.
- ↑ Dominika Sagan: Fire in the Handelshof: Essen escaped a catastrophe in 1988. In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , October 28, 2018
- ↑ a b The Hotel im Handelshof closes. On: DerWesten.de , June 11, 2015, accessed on October 29, 2018
- ↑ The cause of the crash of the city arms is still unclear. On: DerWesten.de , October 17, 2010, accessed on October 28, 2018
- ↑ New operator rents Handelshof initially for 15 years. On: DerWesten.de , December 2, 2015, accessed on October 29, 2018
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 9 ″ N , 7 ° 0 ′ 49.2 ″ E